Dream Deaths, Pt. I

Red skies. Clouds of modern art reflecting splashes of color.

Wandering the industrial section of the town on a Sunday sunset, the hulking concrete and steel superstructures towering silently into the fiery sky. The streets were hollow except for me. Nary a car nor bus nor bird nor bee could be seen or heard. My steps didn't even echo in the silence.

And yet I walked on, knowing that eventually I'd hit something. I'd been on my feet for hours, and my soles and shins ached. But I figured that I had no idea what else to do, so I kept putting one foot in front of the other.

I was on a polluted waterfront when I first heard voices. The smells of sewage thickening my senses.

"Halt!" a gruff voice commanded from nowhere. I almost laughed. Pseudo-masculine adolescence vainly and overtly trying to prove itself. It was like a bad movie.

But I didn't laugh; instead, I stopped and looked around. A group of about ten teenaged punks, mohawks and dangling safety pins all of them, were materializing from the corners of buildings. One, obviously the leader, strode forward.

"Who are you?" he barked. Same fake gruffness.

"I-I don't know, actually" I mumbled. It hit me: I didn't know. All those interminable hours wandering around through post-modern desolation must have wrung all the identity from me.

He snickered, turning to one of his cohorts. "Another newbie" he laughed. They chuckled, then scoffed.

"Well, come with us," he said, turning back to me. "You're not going to last much longer out here on your own."