That's Odd

In which the narrator encounters something odd.

     I am alone.

     I am the only thing here.

     These candy-colored landscapes, with their lime green grasses and candy-red flowers sprouting everywhere,  The glassy blue sky, with perfect cotton clouds showing twin suns taking turns so there is never night, this stream, (so clear, so welcoming you'd almost forget it's as cold as ice) all are abandoned.  They always have been.

     Today though, I sense something is different. The myriad of sounds in the air (The cool babbling of a waterfall, the soft rustle of a flower-scented wind through the grass, a shush of silver leaves) now entertains a new visitor.


     I am not alone?

     There is something else here?

     Somewhere, far away, a new sound has come. It sounds like speech, but like no language I've ever heard. Clicks and churrups, along with vocal sounds like ours. I wonder how the speakers broke into my little world. Perhaps the same way I got in, but then, how did I get in?

     I shut my eyes and concentrate on the faded world I left behind, If I am to meet my new adversaries, I must be prepared. A breath in, a breath out, a breath in, a breath out, and suddenly the air becomes thick and difficult to take in, and I know that I am "home". I forgot how heavy our air was, how dirty and slow. I open my eyes and am met with the dullness so many don't notice. I grab a knife from the kitchen of my small apartment and go to the bedroom. I close my eyes, and focus.  focus on the knife in my hand and the vivid memories of the brighter world.

     Slowly, painfully slowly, the world becomes lighter, the air thinner, and I can hear my stream again. Somehow, I managed to bring the knife with me, although it's blade has become almost impossibly sharp and it has somehow elongated. I hold it straight down at my side as I carefully approach the sound of alien speech.

     I can see them just there, two oily black humanoids that look lengthened, as if pulled tightly, stretched, and their eyes. Their glittering gold eyes look quizzically at me, the taller one takes a step forward, c***s his head to the side and churrups at me. I stared back, "What?" I asked, knowing it was useless before it left my lips. (I noticed then that my voice sounded cleared, warmer, in this world than it did in the other.) The oily creature clicked and purred and spoke strange syllables. It was useless to me. They looked at me with a deep sadness in their eyes, they looked at eachother said something, and turned back. There was an apologetic peep then a raising of a smooth, black rod he held it up to the level of my head, and shot.  There was a flash of white light before everything went black.

I woke up in a dull grey room I did not recognize.

Author's Note

It's a short thing, hardly deserving of the word "chapter" but there it is. It doesn't make much sense, but neither does any of it. Bluh.