Wasps, Closing Time, Tower

We followed the trail of the two racing horses through the muddy path in this park, around a bend on a grassy hill with a white house, and from there they went on up another gentle slope into the small forest. We stopped there at the bend and looked up at the people who came down the broad gravel path towards us. A pensionist was the main part of them, a man in his sixties with mean humour in his face. We wanted to continue following the riders, but it was unwise to move quickly now, because the wasp nests sticking to two of the trees looming over the path were very busy. There were five of them in all, four on the tree closest to the house, and a single one on the other. The wasps were of different races or they weren't all wasps, but they certainly weren't afraid of us. In fact, they became more numerous and frisky, and I wasn't sure whether I should move at all, watching the four nests, when we heard a slight commotion coming from the single nest on the other tree and the half-old man made a sound and started running. I wondered if he had damaged the nest on purpose, but only vaguely, because I was mainly grateful that he pulled all the wasps from us and we could move again.

The supermarket is busy almost until closing time. Everybody hurries out and stands around in the dark parking lot and waits for the last handful of customers to come out, because they all know that if they don't make it outside before closing time, they will be locked inside and we don't know what will happen then. I use the restroom before I leave and when I float out onto the nightly plane of parking spaces in my thickcollared, grey bundle of cloak I see a small group of young men standing there. They are nervous and the one in the middle, facing me, stares at me with round, terrified eyes. I give him a dreamy, mildly curious, questioning glance as I hover towards them and he tells me that he has forgotten his glasses in the restroom. I turn back and hover towards the supermarket's glass doors and hear him call out that it is already too late. There are less than forty seconds left until closing time. That is enough, my shredded thoughts tell me, and I open the door and hover inside, push open the white restroom door, through the small white-tiled anteroom, the next white door, there are sinks but no glasses, the next white door, there are stalls and sinks and no glasses ... I turn and turn and see them sitting on a sink. Relieved, I take the glasses and open the white door, float hastily through the sink room, open the next white door, and I can tell, this is a different room than before, I might be trapped and there is so little time, I yank open the next white door, hurry to the next, hurry through the next, there is another, and grim and harried I finally step out of the restroom and push open the glass door to the parking lot. I hover to the astonished young man and hand his glasses over. He is very impressed. I turn back and watch the supermarket close.

The tower was newly built, it had wallpaper in fresh colours and comfortable rooms, large windows facing the sea, and it was really all new. The storeys of this tower were a little offset. We didn't know how much, but the ground floor was one or two storeys above ground, so when we entered it on ground level we ended up at least one or two levels above ground, without taking stairs or being lifted up in any way. So there was something more below us, and we were curious to see what that was. There were levels below us and maybe even below ground, who knew, so we took the circular staircase and looked forward to exploring the lower part of the tower. As we descended, rhythmic rumbling began to waft up to us and at first that only peaked my curiosity, but after only a few seconds I realised what it must be. I turned around and ushered my companion up again urgently, and even as I did that the rumbling and drumming became louder. We ran up the stairs as fast and as far as possible and went up into the top level of the tower, hoping the orc horde would pour out of the tower exit and ignore the higher storeys. Up there a friend of mine had furnished the highest room for me to use and to live in. I would have to rearrange some of the stuff but it was nice, and I thought that it meant that we were going to be stuck up here for a while now.

Magellan

I was collecting and ordering information on something, archivist-like, when a letter was dropped onto the desk of the person sitting opposite me. It was typed and from you. It was a response to something they had written you. It started with the usual, a paragraph of politeness, and then: "Yes, I am Magellan." I snatched the letter and went outside with it. I'd known about the time travelling, of course. We all did it once in a while. I went to the balcony, it was raining a bit and I sat under the big umbrella on a bench from which the pigeons fled as I came, and I hunched over the letter to read it. "Yes, I am Magellan," then followed something about a sea map that you'd been trying to decipher, "I understand the map a lot better now," and I was excited, curious, and proud. Then out came the person you'd written this to, joined me on the bench, and you. Both of you began talking merrily about the map business and I squished the tomato pieces I was holding in my right hand (apparently I was eating them - don't ask me why, I hate tomatoes) and started sobbing dramatically. It was a bit embarassing, but it was serious. That you would have all those adventures, do something so important, be one of the most famous explorers of all time, and not mention it to me at all! was devastating. And that you would address it so matter-of-factly now, as if I already knew everything about it, was equally disturbing. I got up and tried to check myself against another onrush of The Sob, but when one of you asked me what the matter was, it started again, and I turned to leave.

There came a bit of something else aftwards, but it was pretty much just before waking up. I found it really interesting. Still do.

World Shells

F‧: Hey, something DID come to me in a dream
It had nothing to do with knives, but it's fascinating.
It had to do with world-shells.

E‧: Go on..

F‧: Or rather... bubbles
In each other

E‧: I see..

F‧: There was this chaotic, hostile world with warlords
With powers that shouldn't exist, and 'normal' people didn't have them.
Somehow there was fear hovering around in sort of immaterial large clouds, or planes, and you just happened to 'enter' it sometimes
And you were always hunted.

E‧: What.. me individually?
Or others in general.

F‧: That is, I was. Because I dreamed it and I was the main character of that dream
I was always hunted, but had there been other 'normal' people, they'd have been hunted too.

E‧: Interesting.

F‧: The most interesting thing is that this world contained another world.
Like a big tropical birdhouse with a forest in it, it was a replica of the original, 'good' world outside of the feary, feral one.
I happened to stumble across this place with a companion and discovered that it was safe for some reason.
But it was also fenced in, it was smaller, and surrounded by the wrong world, and artificial, but it reminded us of what should be. So I took this companion and left the safe space
to travel to the end of the 'wrong' world and leave it, and get to the larger, original, natural good world that was supposed to be all around the wrong one

E‧: Fascinating..

F‧: We even made it.
Almost.

E‧: Heh.

F‧: I'll tell you the rest later.
It's interesting, you'll like it.

E‧ nods.
You have the most imaginitive mind..
E‧: How old are you..?

F‧: About 110.

E‧: .. Seriously now.
E‧ smirks

F‧: Why do you think I'm so fascinated with WW I ?

E‧: Seriously, seriously

F‧: Why do you repeat yourself?

E‧: Exaggeration.

F‧: Good show
I like the expression. 'Good show.'
I learned it from The Charioteer.

E‧: ..
Hm.
Can you answer my question?

F‧: What question?

E‧: How OLD are you?

F‧: 25 years.

E‧: Your imagination is.. extraordinary.

F‧: Thank you. I wish I could use it better.
Will you be there in a few hours?

E‧: Possibly.

F‧: I hope so, because I want to tell you the rest, it has details.
-
F: E, do you remember what I told you so far?

E: Yes, of course.

F: My companion and I managed to get to the edge of the world, and for some reason we were a freshly married couple when we came there, and at the edge (It was a wall/shell/whatever) was a honeymoon motel.
We were in a disgusting pink room.
The back wall was the wall of the entire world, we knew that we had to get behind it.
In one corner of the room was a door frame with a screen of black.
I stuck my head through and saw Jeremy Irons or whoever on the other side. It was all white there and he was sitting at an easel.
When I looked through Winona Ryder with a red barocky dress came towards me, and I turned back to the motel room.
She walked out of the black and vanished somehow.
My companion and I couldn't go through the door yet for some reason, we had to figure something out first, but I don't know what exactly.
We went to bed and erm

E: ...

F: We tried to have sex

E: And you couldn't?

F: My companion was a redhaired boy, by the way. And very cute. We both couldn't.

E: Heh, interesting

F: There was something going on in the room that distracted us, and the black doorway of course..
I could feel him.

E: Who?

F: Well, that was it. I could describe how things looked, but that's irrelevant.
The redhead.
I mean, it wasn't just pictures, I could feel his body. That's what I meant
I'd like to go back to the wrong world and see if I can deal with it.

The End of the World

I was in a mall that we have close to where I live, it didn't look like it, but it was it. I was just passing through, or at least going to leave, but for some reason I was wearing clothes that I didn't want my old asshole classmates to see me in, and for some other reason I knew for a fact that right here around this mall was where I was most likely to encounter them, although it's not even in the city where we went to school and where most of us used to live. So I was thinking about that as two of the more obnoxious slags from school suddenly turned up, but they were not obnoxious this time at all, they were helpful - not friendly, but sincerely helpful, and told me they were going to help me with my clothes, and they dressed me in a T-shirt. Just that, a T-shirt. I still had my Springer boots on, but nothing else.  Then we were somewhere behind that mall, on some open field with strawy dry grass and a few building fences of thick wire, and I was going to go through that to leave, but that fucking T-shirt fluttered up and I had to pull it down and walk reeeeeally slowly. The two slags just watched and stayed behind. Then to my right in this field there were people climbing into some underground build and I wanted to have a look at that and went into that bunker thing after them. I had normal clothes on now. Down there there were quite large rooms, and one of them had maps on the walls and a big table, like a strategy room but the people there were just everyday civilians, I saw a young to middle aged man with a plaid flannel shirt and jeans walking around carrying stuff and ordering things on the table as if he lived there. The two girls had followed me down there and were standing in the hall just outside of that room, looking in through the doorless doorframe, and then the ground outside broke open and lava came flowing out. It flowed into our bunker and into the hall and everyone came into the strategy room. There was a phone on the wall where I was standing by that one huge map, so I took that and looked up an emergency number on a list beside the phone - it was for some reason an international number and rather long and complicated - and I explained to the man on the other end exactly where we were; city, state, country, and so forth, and explained really calmly and factually what was going on: earthquake, did this and that damage as of now, lava, came from there to here, is now just so and so many metres from my feet, and so on. I wasn't really afraid either, not even excited. That whole scene vanished and I was near the north pole. The poles were the only places where ground based living beings like humans and the likes could still survive, even with all those turbulences going on, but of course only with the right equipment. We'd flown there with an amphibic aircraft which we were watering now, beside a pod-like submarine that was really fancy and which we knew contained several of the most brilliant people. They threw out a rope and pulled us two by two on a little raft to the entry of the pod, on a really stormy icy ocean surface. The first two of those people were the Doctor and his companion. The next were two unknown men. Then I knew that we (not the Doctor, companion, and the two men, but some other group of people and me) had the assignment to sort out particular German comedians in that submarine pod, to take them with us, and to kill everyone else. We went in there (I met the others of my abduction/assassination group there for the first time), and we assembled the people who were down there (it looked like the inside of an office) in groups of four or five, in a room with a big sofa, so that my colleagues could find out who they were and pick out the right ones. I was one of those who were responsible for seating them on the sofa and killing them if they weren't the right people, so whenever my colleagues didn't say "That is " or something like that fast enough (they had a list with names), I slashed their throats open with a Japanese sword. By the end, we were short of one woman whom I had accidentally killed because we hadn't known it was her. And I knew I'd killed a few of the wrong people and the wrong ones were in our selection now, but didn't say anything because I knew it didn't matter. They're only comedians, after all, not as crucial as physicians or physicists or engineers.
Then I was in the kitchen, standing by the table telling my brother excitedly what was in the big book I was holding in my hands. A story, written by Edgar Allan Poe, in which Sherlock Holmes gets to assist the Doctor in an adventure!