5.

James ducked his face out of the corner window of the car. All the windows of the front half were open. The gas and the powder on the floor had flown with the air.

The train was slowing. The detectives were well-hidden between the seats. His shoulder was burning, his head was pinning. Thanks to the dramatic backward jump he made when he surprised the detective who thought himself the next best thing to Sherlock.

Now, everything's all right if he gets out of this train. Everything's all right if no one say's "Hi!" to him at the door. Everything's all right if they don't wake up. They won't wake up, at least not before Madison, he told himself. But he couldn't think of anything else until he's out of this train.

The train came to a halt, and he bolted out the door to the empty platform. He felt like dancing, moved a little, remembered he sucked at it, but rotated on his toes anyway. He hummed his way out of the platform. Now he just had to hop in a taxi, and home. But the place was deserted except for one taxi, which was also empty. It was raining. No one was near, around or anywhere. Strange. The wet road shined when the lightning flashed.

James saw something lying by the taxi. At first, he thought of it as clothes. But that idea ridiculed him.

"Colt.45 semiautomatic pistol is not approved for use in law enforcement in this state, Detective." James said out loud to the image of that detective in his mind. James liked talking to himself. "How will a civilian know the difference between a real badge and a fake one? Usually, this time of the night, Dear Detective fetches his bottles, and drink and cry and drink until sweet sleep comes. Oh, his red, hollow eyes, foaming mouth, that white mark on his finger. It was a tough divorce, huh, Detective? Hey, it's not your fault! okay? It's not your fault that you are super smart, and that she felt like a piece of shit around you." He laughed silently at this. "Well, Ma'am, you tell me, two guys tell a person they're detectives and then take him at gun-shot, IN AN EMPTY TRAIN, and tell him he's under arrest, because They think he's suspicious. And that's why they will take him to THE POLICE STATION. Isn't that a great way to kidnap someone?"

Then he started laughing. I outsmarted two real detectives, he thought, and felt like leaping. He felt he was at the top of the world, for a few seconds, then those feelings faded like dark shadows saturated-in-front-of eyes do. He sighed. Nobody will ever know this. Nobody will tell the stories about the time when James outsmarted two real detectives.

He didn't had any friends. Ever since Mary did what she did he had cut himself off from the world. The first person in a long time James liked to open up to was her dad's first home-nurse, Jules. Two days ago, she got kidnapped.

Maybe he'll tell Dad, he thought, but Dad is rarely awake when he's home. Cancer's been preying on Dad since the month Mom died.

They were traumatized for life the day Dad found her lying by the dining table, her barely eaten lunch still on the plate. How long had her cold body been lying there...staring at the ceiling?

James was at a job interview when a stroke snatched her Mom away from him forever. He still didn't know it for the next couple of hours. Nobody did. They had no one other than themselves. Dad was from an orthodox background, and he left his family, society, and city behind for Mom. Still Dad invited his brother to Mom's funeral. But he didn't come.

Then, one evening, Dad fainted, and when the doctor said the word "cancer" James remembered something he once saw in a movie: a tall building demolishing –its concrete structure shattering like a tower of cards. Only this time he saw his life shattering.

Dad's medical expenses sucked up all his savings. James was desperately looking for a job, but rejections didn't cease.

Two months from today, a company from Pottsmain called. And James and his Dad moved to Pottsmain for a fresh start. Start for what? He didn't know or care, but at least now they'll have a roof over their heads. Now they'll have food on their table. Now they'll be safe.

James had thrown himself in his work, trying to keep his mind from the fact that disclosed a month ago, when Dr. Hendricks called him to the hospital and told him that his Dad will not make it to the other side.

Every night now James sits by his Dad's bed, holds his hand, and just looks at him. His body has become as thin as a rail, and when he smiles his loose skin folds deep in his wrinkles, and James can see how old he has become. He doesn't speak often, he just smiles. A smile that James's eyes have captured forever in his heart.

He smiles back, on the outside. On the inside, he's crying...he's always crying.

6.

Pottsmain is a small city, but it has a hospital which is famous for its world class hospitality. Why wouldn't it be? It's the only hospital in Pottsmain.

James was walking by the old factory (which is abandoned for half a century). On its tall wall James's shadow followed him. He turned to the wall and saw dozens of Missing posters, washing in the rain. Some were torn, some wore out, and some had flaps lying on the ground. These were weeks old.

Jules never got home, he thought, and remembered what he wrote about her in his diary: "

She left my house at 9:30

her house is half a mile away

approximately a 15-minute walk

she goes straight home

there are houses all the way

4 people missing from the houses on her way

She carries spray

No signs of attack on the road

"

He thought, maybe she wasn't followed. Nobody sleeps at this time. If there'd been any noise or scream, anyone would've seen it. It's insane. People are taken off populated streets without a sign. Human traffickers? No, this is BIG.

James do have some thoughts—only thoughts-no evidence— about Roger Johnson, who is a big politician, and resident of Pottsmain, who also, few months ago, lost the election for Mayor (by a small margin) because his own people didn't vote enough for him. Well, say, if Roger Johnson had become the Mayor, hadn't he made sure his hometown was safer to live.

And now that he hasn't, over 100 people have been kidnapped in the past two days.

Who knows what the number will be tomorrow.

7.

James entered the spiderweb of streets, flooded with streetlights and shoulder-tucked houses. Some houses had little gardens; some were window-eyed shoeboxes. The wet road mirrored the streetlights.

He took a left, and looked up at the red apartment. Michael, who never returned from the bar. He looked at the last house before the turn. The flowers in this little garden waiting for old Mr. Johnson, who returned from Mexico, but never reached home.

It was drizzling now. He was walking the alone, on empty streets, the very streets people got kidnapped from, but he wasn't thinking about that. He was thinking about why they were kidnapped. He was feeling empty, there were no dots to connect. There was but the news of no return. They disappeared from the streets...like the fallen rain.

A great crashing sound flooded in the air above him. The sky was thundering frequently, but this didn't come from the sky. This came from far behind him. A great metal cry followed by great metallic screeching. The train, he thought. The sound of a train falling off the tracks is like no other. And when you hear it, you know it.

At the very corner of Pottsmain is a road, on one side of whom is the colony James is walking in, on the other are the woods which nest the rail tracks.

He ran, not the way he came, but a faster way out. He ran amongst the line of houses, in this spiderweb of streets. He stopped when he passed by a garbage dump on the side of the road. Something had caught his eye. An impossible thought occurred when he saw something gleaming in the palm-wide space between two black bags at the bottom.

The garbage had collected to the top of the wall; His shadow was falling on the dump. With one hand cupping his nose, he picked that object. Its red ribbon dropping into two separate stripes. It was an identity card of Pottsmain central hospital. When he turned it he saw Jules's photo and details.

He resisted the thought but his hand was already reaching for the red water-soaked thing beneath the bags. What he pulled out were red, torn clothes. Torn from behind, pulled from front. Tears came in his eyes, he hated himself for thinking that, but here he was, in the rain, holding her ID card, and her torn uniform.

He stood there with vacant space behind his eyes. Then, it suddenly came to him. This isn't the way...this isn't the way between our places. This is the way to the hospital.

He went in the dump again and found her cellphone, just where her clothes were. It was soaked-to-death.

"Why was she going to the hospital, James? Because the hospital called the nurse. Mystery solved. Ha-ha." But he didn't feel like laughing. He felt like crying.

If the hospital hadn't called her, or if they'd call someone else, she'd still be...

The warm vibrations in his cheeks were too much. His nose was feeling wet. And he was crying. Sobbing, like a child.

8.

He was walking, but he wasn't going anywhere.

The clouds crashed, lightning slipped, and the sky thundered. It was raining heavily now. wandering through the streets was a lonely wind seeking a traveler to share her tale. She blew past James and swirled around him, singing her melancholy. But the traveler walked past her along the rainy night, as if he was deaf, or she was dumb.

The street gave way to a left-or-right turn. Right in the middle, above the wall was a hoarding for a movie "The Wrong Turn". The words were at the top in bold red, and in the center a melting black skeleton hand was reaching out, pointing right at James.

He turned right.

A hint of fishy smell poked in and his nose wrinkled. He looked up from his feet to the narrowing long, straight road. A dog started barking at him from the 2nd storey balcony of an apartment 3 houses ahead. James glanced at him. Another hint of fishy smell. He looked down at Jules's clothes, or that what's left of them.

The dog quietened with a squeak when James passed by the apartment.

When James was long ahead, he heard the barking again. That made him smile for a quick second.

He felt surrounded by the fishy stench now. He sniffed her clothes and found the source of the stench. Decaying stuff, garbage.

He reached the end of the street where it gave way to another left-or-right turn. This street was lined with houses. He could still hear the dog. Fat rain drops were pouring all around him. A wind blew, and a whisk of that stench poked in his nose, stronger and harder this time. He looked down at each street as far as he could, then looked down his shoes and thought to return home now. His shoulders were ready to turn when his eyes met the man standing on the 2nd floor of the house in front of him, looking down at him through his big windows. The man was absolutely still, James thought he was looking at a portrait, but then the man's hand snapped the curtains close, and switched off the lights. It happened so fast that it seemed it never happened. James was still looking at that black rectangle when something happened in the corner of his eyes. He instantly looked and for a millisecond thought he caught a woman switching off her lights. At the next house the curtains rolled and the house went dark. He saw curtains rolling and lights darkening on his left, on his right, and in a second the street behind the streetlights went dark. His breath hid in his lungs, his body became as still as ice.

A blink. The splatter of rain. Another blink. The warmth of fishy stench on his skin. Someone is behind him. His blood ran cold. The clouds sparked lightning behind him, and in that instant, he saw the pool of darkness surrounding him, stretching across the road to the top of the wall. Darkness again. He felt the bony fingers of the skeletal hand clutching his throbbing heart, and he turned mechanically. Clouds crashed and thundered. A bright flash in the sky. He looked up from under his brows. A black gigantic figure.

9.

James froze in disbelief. The pounding blood in his ears, the fatal smell in his nose, the freezing pull of fear, and the sense of being present. A pull down his throat, down his crotch. The push out of his tears. A swing in his legs, and he was running. The sky thundered. Everything warm. Everything bright. Brighter. Everything white.

10.

Summer green trees dancing in the summer breeze. The sun is shining brightly at the top of cloudless sky. Dad's palm is sweaty but James holds on ever tightly. The soil path looks like a line between the grass and trees on either side.

The high trees blocked the sunlight now, but the path is still rising. James's throat is dry, his blue T-shirt showed patches of sweat. He feels utterly exhausted but dad is still smiling. "Daddd, please stop," James said. His dad laughed and said "Okay. Last at the top-rotten egg!" and Dad dashed off. "You wait Mister!!" James said, an expression he learnt from his Mom, and ran behind him, laughing. Patches of sunlight on the path, dust particles moving in them.

The path surfaced and disappeared among the high trees. Their car was parked here and across the car was a broad grass path open between the high trees. There, on a white sheet his mother was sitting. She was wearing a light-yellow summer dress with orange flowers on it. Her skin was radiant, her long red hair open. White cabbage butterflies were flying around her. And behind her the cliff opened and the vast blue river gleamed. Sandwiches, chocolate cake, French fries, onion rings, and drinks were on the sheet with her. She was laughing and waving... but suddenly darkness started twisting around her, and everything went black.

The warm pull of darkness but adrenaline too high to let go.

James was lying face down on the road. He pushed up by his palms. His eyes were opened or closed he couldn't tell. Dots were swarming in his vision. His ears were ringing. He started moving. His feet were dragging. Why was he moving? He can't remember. Everything was happening unhappening or unhappening happening.

Some minutes passed by unnoticed. Then he thought he saw an orange moon. His eyes were hurting, it seemed far away.

He moved towards it, like a man in a cave move towards the light. His head was buzzing. The purple dots were fading. He grabbed his aching head. After a while, the exhaustion felt bearable. He closed his eyes tight, and opened. The moon was still there. Ugh, he was feeling disgusting, like he's inside a garbage dump. Worse still, he was feeling disgusting in his skin. When he came close, he realized it wasn't moon shaped at all; it was something like a glass bottle. After a while he realized his head was raising, he was in front of that orange glass bottle and saw it had arms and a head. It was a man, obese and tall as a ceiling. Its body burning orange-red like breathing lava. The stench here was smoky and eye burning.

Breathing horror, he pushed his palms on his head and yelled at the giant.

A rumbling sound came. He looked up through his fingers. It was glowing brighter and brighter. It shivered, shedding out fire dust in the air.

Then its head turned like an owl towards James. His heart stopped beating. The giant swung its leg and took a step. James couldn't believe it. He leaped to a run. It was black all around him like he's trapped in a bad dream. He ran and ran and ran, then suddenly, BAM! He slammed hard on a black wall. His face burned. The pain was so crushing that he couldn't hear his own cry.

The giant was coming closer, step by step. Its orange glow was reaching towards James.

In the swimming flashes of shadows James saw his death coming.

Curtains of smoke were rising from giant's back. Its legs were darkening from bottom to up. Soaking black diffused from giant's back to its front. Its head glowing brighter than ever. The giant's leg stepped on a small pool of water, rose, stepped again and kept going own, shattering to dust. The giant went along, falling to the ground, its hand still reaching for James. And as the giant fell, some of it shattered and some of it didn't, like a burnt log.

James forgot the pain when he saw the monster coming. Now, lying on the ground, everything seems quiet and still. Everything seemed to have stopped, except the smoke rising from the monster. The smoke is rising and cohering in a cloud. The cloud is piling and forming...a giant! The smoke giant raised his arms, took them behind and down his shoulders, then swung them above its head, bringing down a giant sledgehammer...

Black.