The energy surge

I'm running. The street is narrow, and the wind hits my face far too hard to see the direction I'm going. The buildings looming above me are dirty and menacing. There are no sidewalks – the smooth asphalt under my feet (somehow unexpectedly) rises into walls. Vertically upwards. Tall and hulled walls. I seem to be on abandoned shabby street in a run down neighbourhood.

The two men are trailing me. The feeling is not something you can overlook - like ants crawling up your neck. Both guys are tall with dark clothing - nothing too obvious. The one on the left looks like a Hugo Weaving doppelganger but with a white beard. Upon second look it's not exactly white - it has some pepper-and-salt in it, and it's not a beard per se, but more like long, fat sideburns that gather in front of his face. He is frowning, and his features look as if this the permanent state of his face - scrunched, rough, with deep wrinkles cut into his forehead like giant cracks. The other guy is shorter, a bit scruffy, with spots of dust on his sleeve and right cheek (I'm not sure of his name yet, but it'll come to me sooner or later). He doesn't look that spine-chilling. They both walk briskly, and I feel that with each step the distance between us is vanishing, no matter how fast I go. I see an entrance, and I slip inside – stupid move - I instinctively recognise that whatever I do, they know it just as intuitively. Panic seems to be embedded inside me. The moment they pass by me, a cold, leaden ball of fear drops in my stomach.

However, I keep moving forward and find myself at an entirely different place. Once again I get that tickling feeling creeping under my skin, and I duck behind something large (it might be a car or a garbage container, but I'm too stressed to pay attention). There are another two men in front of me. I'm on a deserted street next to a red brick building that is already turning mud in colour. It's filthy, and dust rises in puffy clouds around me. Scraps of newspapers are floating in the wind like wounded birds, erratically flipping their wings striving to keep airborne.

These guys are very short, and they seem pretty harmless. One of them has an odd crinkled hat, a bowler hat and wiry glasses. There is something off about him, but I just can't put my finger on it. They talk in a very peculiar way - I realise it's plain old English, yet the words are incomprehensible to me. It's as if someone has encrypted the connection between my ears and my brain and I hear only beeps and buzzes. Suddenly he looks up straight at me. His eyes are strange - scary strange. They flicker like sinister little diodes. He seems to hesitate.

I back away slowly, but I feel an inexplicable current pass through me. "I told you that we would be late" - I hear the little man grumble. Suddenly the walls of the buildings begin to quiver. And just as if someone peeled a wallpaper off a different building is revealed underneath. You feel the energy rising vertically towards the sky, climbing the building walls. Like blue-green electricity. And though it sounds crazy for something like energy, sensation, smell to have unexpected physical characteristics such as colour, texture, taste, I could swear this energy was greenish and tasted sour.
The two little man look suddenly scared. Both their eyes are flickering now. That's right - flicker. I know they're not robots, but whatever they are, I feel they're dangerous. However, my fear has suddenly dissolved into a raging bravado. I head straight for them - I want to know what this is all about. Poof - they literally evaporate!

Now that's a plot twist if I ever saw one!

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Artwork by Darek Zabrocki