This Bubble, Four

Silent asphalt and a hum,

Wrapped together in adventure and security,

Seeing an opened world…

Still two and a half miles north of the wrench.

“Let’s go see if everyone is really asleep.” Kathrin said.

She and Andy were sitting at one of the tables next to the window wall facing the town’s main stretch, sipping on their mugs of coffee. Not once did a car drive by. Everything outside the windows stood still, waiting and looking in, watching the couple.

Andy pulled his gaze from the main stretch and looked at her. “Asleep?” he asked.

Kathrin nodded.

“Instead of disappeared?”

She stared at him.

He considered, and then looked over his shoulder at his car, which was looking back at him, waiting to be used. He looked at Kathrin again who was still staring at him. He wanted to ask her….well, he already did, but she hadn’t answered, more worried about a stranger having appeared and then disappeared, but, that was the thing….a man disappearing instead of….what….falling asleep? Was everyone asleep? As in….they just haven’t woken up? It was another silly notion, but this was turning out to be a silly day.

Whatever the scenario, they didn’t know anything.

Guess it was settled, he thought, but first…

“I don’t know.” he said.

“Are we just gonna stay here all day?” she asked.

He stared out at the main stretch. She was right. He didn’t want to stay in one spot while something crazy was possibly happening elsewhere.

“Where do you want to start?” he asked.

“Let’s go downtown.” she said.

“It’s always quiet down there.” he said, grinning.

“Then it’ll be easier.” she said.

So, Andy thought, she is scared.

“But no one lives downtown.” he said.

“We’ll check the neighborhoods around there. You know which ones I mean.” she said.

“The historical downtown area?” he asked.

“Sure.” she said.

“It’s gonna be something else if we walk up to someone’s house and they ask us what we want.” he said with a smirk.

“I don’t think anybody will.” she said.

“You think we’ll be able to walk right into their houses and find them sleeping in their beds?” he asked.

“Yeah, actually.” she said.

“Their doors will be locked.” he said.

“This place wasn’t locked.” she offered.

True, he thought.

“I wonder why, though.”

“Maybe every door in town is unlocked.” she said.

“But why would that be?” he asked.

Kathrin sat her mug on the table and stared at it a moment. Andy was still staring out the window.

“Because,” Kathrin said, “it’s an opened world.”

He looked at her, “What do you mean?”

Right then, he thought he had understood how she felt all along. She shrugged to his question, but not before letting a thoughtful grin curl the tiniest edge of her lips.

He arched an eyebrow.

“It’s like a movie,” she said.

“A movie.”

“Yeah. Don’t you see? It’s like everything is a movie set. Nothing is real, so there aren’t any locks on the doors.”

“So, everything out there is nothing but a bunch of props.” he said.

“Well, not exactly, but…” she trailed off.

He took a sip of his coffee, “That guy, the dude with the funny haircut, who do you think he is? He knows something, I know that.”

“Well,” Kathrin said, “if this place is like a stage, then he’s like…a stage hand.”

Andy smirked, “Not the director?”

“No.” she shook her head. “I don’t think we’ll see the director.”

“So what are we, then?” Andy asked.

She kept gazing out the windows, her expression sizing up a thousand thoughts at once. “We’re the actors.”

“Ha!” Andy leaned back in his chair, “Then I guess we’re just ad-libbing, huh?” He leaned forward, crossing his arms along the table, “So, what’s the name of the movie?”

She thought about it while taking a sip of coffee. She sat the mug down and returned her gaze out the window. “First, we’ll have to figure out what day it is.”

Andy shared her view of the main stretch. “I don’t trust our cell phones.”

There was a clock hanging on the wall at the other end of the counter where the employees went to the back of the store, but the clock was frozen on twelve o’clock. Andy and Kathrin guessed it was declaring A.M. time.

“You think whatever happened happened at the stroke of twelve?” Andy asked.

“Not everybody goes to bed at twelve, though.” Kathrin said.

“I didn’t.” Andy said.

“Neither did I.” she said.

“Did you notice anything?” he asked.

“No, did you?” she asked.

“No.”

Kathrin gazed out the window again, sipping from her mug, “I wonder, if it did happen at the stroke of twelve, is that when everyone who is asleep now, like, passed out or something, and that’s why they’re still sleeping?”

“But think about all the people who were still out after twelve.” Andy said, “Despite this being a retirement town, lots of college kids live here.”

“Yeah, but if this is supposed to be Monday, then wouldn’t they be going to bed early for classes?” Kathrin asked.

“Who knows?” Andy shrugged, “but regardless, there’d be people driving around after twelve. If they all passed out, we’d see tons of wrecks. We’d even see people passed out on sidewalks or in restaurants.”

“But we didn’t.” Kathrin said.

“What, so at the stroke of twelve, everyone was under some mind control to head straight home or wherever and go to bed?”

Kathrin shrugged. “Let’s go see.”

¥

Three and a half miles northeast of the wrench.

Andy took it slow on the way to downtown, and so the businesses on either side of the street lumbered on by, watching his car pass. Just….watching. It wasn’t a good feeling.

It was some sort of isolation. Almost like being shunned, but invited all the same. Whenever they looked at the vacant spaces in front of the strip malls, they saw not only the lonely buildings but the unkempt parking lots and their grassy veins unable to feed the concrete, like blood feeds the skin, leaving the asphalt scaly and stained, loose gravel scattered not too far away from the busted corners or forgotten craters. Then there were the street lights standing rigid, skinny and somewhat naked with all that open space around them, and Andy and Kathrin wondered if they had ever noticed them before and whether or not they worked.

Every business was dark within, but Andy and Kathrin felt so many eyes looking back at them from within those depts. The eyes of all the inanimate objects wishing to be animate.

That’s right, Andy and Kathrin thought, all those things were in there, and if Kathrin was right about the doors being unlocked, they were free for the taking. In fact, Andy and Kathrin were starting to think that the whole town might be free for the taking. Were they the only ones who knew this, save for that strange guy with the weird haircut?

“All these stores,” Andy began, “they’ve been here just about all my life, and I can say I’ve never been in most of them.”

“Me either.” Kathrin said. “Never had a reason to.”

“Heh, it’s not like we have a reason now.” Andy said.

“But we could now if we wanted to, couldn’t we?” Kathrin said.

Andy considered, “Well, it’s like, before, they stood as what they advertised or whatever. A title. A name. A business that’s only there for business.”

“Now they’re just empty buildings with stuff in them.” Kathrin said.

“Exactly.” Andy said. “It’s like, without the people, do these businesses even remain what they were built for?”

“Maybe they would if we had memories tied to them.” Kathrin said.

“Yeah,” Andy said, “but we don’t. So, if we went inside one of them, it would just look like some building with office stuff everywhere.”

“Or, if it was a restaurant, it’d have its trademark stuff inside, distinguishing it from others.” Kathrin added.

“Yeah, true,” Andy said, “but without the logos or whatever, they’re just buildings with things inside them. No movement at all.” He shook his head in admiration, “It just goes to show you that people make all the difference.”

“What would they be if you and I went inside them?” Kathrin asked.

“Now?” Andy thought about it and then smirked, “Museums.”

Kathrin grinned, “You think so, huh?”

“Testaments to what they were.” Andy added.

“And will they ever be again?” Kathrin asked.

Andy’s smirk shrank a bit, “Let’s hope so.”

“But, in a way,” Kathrin said, “this is kind of neat.”

Andy glanced at her.

“Admit it.” she said.

He gazed out his window again, “I’ll admit…with everything open like it is, it’s like we own the town now. We can go wherever we want.”

But they stayed on the road, everything visible but out of reach. They just marveled at the thought, curious, but treated it as too-good-to-be-true. If this was a test, a stupid one at that, failing would be to give in. As soon as they tried to take advantage and take what they wanted, the authorities or whoever would show up right then, ending the test and telling them they had failed.

Of course, they didn’t think that was what was going on. All this just for a test of conscience? Yeah, right. Something else was going on, but still, they stayed away from the stores.

The main stretch forked when they reached downtown. They could only go to the right, though. The left side was a one-way street leading out of the downtown area.

Downtown was a gateway to what was and has always been. One could change the name of something so many times, but as long as it was the same building, each brick the same ones that were there in the beginning, then that something will always have that air of unconquerable. Something that no one could bring themselves to tear down and replace it with something else.

Andy and Kathrin felt that there were more artists than masons back then. It’s one of the many reasons why they fell in love. Andy thought that there wasn’t anyone else out there that at least appreciated the warmth of creation that always seemed to be tucked away in the past, a past that was nothing more than legend. Not real, but built by desires. Yet, somehow, it seeped into reality and stood before them now.

He met Kathrin through a friend at the very coffee shop they left, and after their first conversation, Andy found out she not only appreciated that warmth but wished for it to come back. Warmth was usually generated through friction, and that friction had to be fast, but there was no warmth in today’s society which liked to see things built in a hurry.

These buildings they were looking at now were built at a tender pace. Or so they believed. How could they feel that particular warmth from these buildings if there was no time taken to build them? So, yes, they believed.

“I’ve never stepped foot into many of these buildings, either.” Andy said, “Although I’ve always wanted to.”

“You’d think that since this is where city hall is, that someone important would be here, trying to figure out what’s happened.” Kathrin said.

After leaving the fork, two large buildings standing on either side of the road swallowed them into downtown. And then they were closed off from the outside world. This throat of brick and mortar took them into a shallow valley where an intersecting road offered avenues of escape, though Andy kept on this road, driving slow, almost a crawl.

The gray sky above matched the gray of brick, the old stains and cracks, the age, and somehow Andy and Kathrin didn’t feel as though everything was standing still here. Instead, everything was where it belonged, even brighter than usual. If time had indeed stood still, then it stood with all these building who had been standing here for years. Now, they reached up to shake hands with the gray blanket.

“You hear that?” Andy asked.

Kathrin looked at him, “What?”

Andy was squinting as he gazed ahead, though his eyes darted about, searching.

“What?” Kathrin asked again.

They pulled up to the next intersection and stopped. The red light, like all the other lights, was dead, but Andy put the car in park. He shut off the engine.

“What is it?” Kathrin whispered.

Andy was grinning, “You don’t hear it?”

Kathrin just stared at him.

They both sat very still, but if it was to let a certain sound come to them, Kathrin still wasn’t hearing it.

“Come on.” Andy said and opened the door to step out.

Kathrin did the same. They both stood on either side of the car, doors open, and stared at each other. Andy was still grinning.

“What is it?” Kathrin whispered again.

Andy didn’t answer. Instead, he gazed skyward, eyes resting on the upper half of a tall bank building on Kathrin’s side of the street. Kathrin turned and looked up as well. When she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, she looked back over at Andy.

“What do you hear, Andy?”

“You don’t hear it?” he asked again. He was circling around, eyes still skyward.

“No.” Kathrin said, making the occasional glance upward, hoping to see what Andy was seeing, but seeing nothing but the buildings shaking hands with the gray blanket.

“Do you remember,” Andy said, finally turning around to face her, “saying that everyone was asleep?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if they are,” he pointed up, “the clouds, they’re like one big blanket.”

“Yeah?”

“Kind of like the town is in bed and the clouds are the blanket to cover up with. You get what I’m saying?”

“I guess so. Yeah.” Kathrin said.

“But, what did you do when you were a little kid,” Andy said, “and your parents made you go to bed when you didn’t want to. You whispered to your little sister, didn’t you?”

Kathrin shrugged, “Yeah.”

“Well,” Andy said and raised his hands as though to indicate the downtown area, “it’s like that.”

“What is?” Kathrin asked.

Andy laughed and stepped back away from the car to put himself between an old theater on his left and city hall on his right, “Downtown! Haha! It’s whispering under the covers.”

Kathrin arched an eyebrow and scanned the building tops of the intersection. It was true the gray blanket darkened the world, but it also brought out the old colors of downtown, kind of like a subtle spotlight. So, she wondered, what did that mean?

Still laughing, Andy spun around, letting his arms fall at his sides, and gazed north toward another intersection where he knew the post office was on the right and some other building with display windows was on the left. He never found out what that building was. Maybe he’d find out today.

“Hey, Andy?” Kathrin called.

He spun back around.

“If buildings can whisper…what are they talking about?”

Andy blinked and rolled his eyes up in thought to consider such a notion.

“Hopefully good things.” Kathrin added.

Andy lifted his chin to bring his awareness higher, trying to pick up on any whispered conversations.

“Because,” Kathrin continued, “when I whispered to my little sister back then,” she was scanning the building tops again, one hand on the outer edge of the car door, “we were whispering about all the scary noises we heard in the dark.”

Andy dropped his gaze. Kathrin searched above a moment longer, and then leveled her gaze on him.

“So,” she asked, “what are they whispering about?”

His eyes rolled upward, searched, and then he shrugged. “Don’t know. It just…sounds like…”

Kathrin waited.

In the meantime, the familiar places of downtown changed. If buildings could whisper, then they had eyes as well. Andy and Kathrin had already established this being-watched notion, but now that Andy could hear them talking? They were surrounded by things that were a million times bigger than they were. What came next after being able to talk? Being able to move?

Were they really talking, or was Andy just losing it? Was this what happened to all the other people before they feel asleep? Was she going to be alone?

“Let’s go.” she said, almost whispering herself. She didn’t want the buildings to hear her.

He raised a hand in her direction, “Hold on.” He was raising his chin again, listening.

“I don’t want to.” she said, leaning closer to the car.

“But, I can still hear it.” Andy said.

“If you can hear it, then what is it saying?” she almost hissed.

He shrugged again, “I…I don’t…”

“How can you hear it whispering but not know what it’s saying?” she snapped.

Andy raised his hand again, “Wait.”

From the new look on his face, Kathrin gathered the whispers were making sense, yet she didn’t think she wanted to know what they were saying.

“Andy. Let’s just go.” she whispered.

“Te….” he began, his brow wrinkling as he listened closer.

Kathrin’s heart thumped in her chest.

“Temp?” Andy continued. “Temp….per?”

Kathrin’s eyes widened.

Andy shook his head, watching the walls of the surrounding buildings, “Tempor….us? No.”

He worked his lips in silence. “Temporis?”

“What does that even mean?” Kathrin snapped.

“Wait.” Andy said, but she thought he was talking to himself, or maybe even the whispers. It wasn’t her.

Andy gasped, his head jerking to the right, targeting the building face at the southwestern corner of the intersection. He pointed up at it, “Vi-vicis!” He dropped his arm, “Vicis?”

Kathrin spun around and looked up at the building. “Andy?” She caught herself from falling back into the passenger seat of the car.

Andy jerked to the left, targeting the face of the theater, his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open. Then he spoke, “Subsis….? What?”

Kathrin looked over the hood of the car at him, then glanced up at the face of the theater. “Andy, what’s going on?”

Andy’s brow wrinkled above his nose, “Subsisto?”

“Andy, you’re scaring me.”

Andy gasped again, jerking his face to target the bank building across the street, behind Kathrin. She squeaked and lost her balance, falling into the passenger seat. “Andy, what is it? What’s going on?”

“Hic!” Andy said it like he was cheering it, but the look on his face was devoid of cheer. His eyes were wide, but his mouth continued to hang open like a silent and lifeless moan.

“Andy!” Kathrin leaned over into the driver’s seat, “Get in the car! I mean it!”

“Kathrin, it’s….”

She was glad that he acknowledged her. It meant he was still sane for the most part. “I don’t care! Let’s get out of here! Get in the car!”

“But it….”

“Let’s go!”

“It has to be…another language.”

“Get in the car, Andy!”

He dropped his gaze to her, “You don’t hear it?”

“No, I don’t. Get in the car! Now!”

He started trotting over to the car, checking the upper halves of the surrounding buildings as he went. Just before he got in the car, Kathrin slammed her door shut. When Andy settled in his seat, he closed his door as well.

“Start the car.” Kathrin said.

He had left the keys in the ignition, so he just grabbed them and turned.

The wind picked up before he was able to turn the engine over.

They held their breath and listened to it sweep across the windshield. It was the first time since they woke up this morning, or whatever time it was, that they heard the wind. The sound was the first hint. A loud whisper against the car’s frame.

There were several small trees lining the front of the theater that grabbed their attention as the second hint. These were tall cedar trees that were trimmed to look like skinny columns, the sudden breeze tapping at their stiff branches.

Nothing else moved. Not the gray blanket above. Not the buildings. They stood solid, forcing the wind around them and down the streets.

With the wind came other occupants to commune with the lonely and whispering buildings. Invisible occupants that revealed the steps they took by a swirling breeze here, and ruffling whistle there, a dash above the car, and a howl coming up the hill ahead. They announced themselves to the downtown area, marching down the streets in neither a happy nor gloomy fanfare, but an eagerness, and together they arrived, passing by Andy’s car without so much as a glance, all heading toward one spot, it seemed.

This spot, where Andy and Kathrin rested their eyes, was at the top of the hill ahead. When they gathered, it was then that they took physical form. Kathrin saw the blurred shape hovering just above the asphalt, and that was good enough for her.

She gripped Andy’s arm, “Let’s go.” she whispered.

Either Andy didn’t hear her, or he ignored her, but he sat there fixed on the blurred image ahead. It started off as a small ball shaped cloud of heat. Well, at least that’s how he would have described it, but he didn’t think it was heat. Whatever it was, it stretched taller, the bottom yet to touch the ground.

The skinny cedar trees to his left were shuddering non-stop now. The streets were flooded with wind. The currents slapped at the back of his car hard enough that he and Kathrin felt a slight tilt, but then the winds just whistled and howled around the edges, racing toward the growing blur. As it swelled, it darkened, something more than heat. Something much more real. 

The blur sunk to the surface of the street, taking on a shade darker than the asphalt. When it touched the street, it spread like a giant raindrop landing in slow motion, only it paused before flattening into a puddle. There it slumped, its contour sinking into individual crevasses and bending into long curves. It was no longer a blur but a solid something, and when the curves and crevasses fixed into their positions, Andy and Kathrin were beginning to figure out what that something was…only, they couldn’t believe it.

“A…p-person?” Kathrin whispered.

One last change occurred just as a solid form of a human being was set into the dark shape. A thin line grew in an upward slant along what Andy and Kathrin gathered was this person’s back. It didn’t just grow upward, it also grew downward, slanting toward the surface of the road to look like a three foot line, now four feet, now five feet. Six feet, and it stopped. 

Then all the winds stopped. The cedar trees settled into their stiff stances. Andy’s car relaxed. The howling hushed. All the buildings were left alone to look upon the new person on the scene.

A person that had yet to be accepted here, or rather, wasn’t quite fully established. The dim light seeping through the overhead blanket wasn’t touching him. He was still covered in the black that birthed him. When the winds that brought him together had settled, they had hardened to a liquid before giving him shape, and perhaps he was still made of liquid, because that was how the black left him: from within him the colors swelled to the surface, swirling along his skin, blending with the black, and then washing over him entirely.

Kind of like stirring milk in coffee, Andy thought.

The man was wearing what looked like a raggy pair of pants and a sleeveless top. Both absorbed the new orangish-red color that washed the black away. His skin came to life with a thick and healthy light tan.

The black line resting along his back fashioned itself out of what looked like wood.

Now silence.

Indeed, this person was slouched over in a kneeling position. Then he raised his bald head, and opened his eyes.

“Andy.” Kathrin whispered, squeezing his arm even harder. “Start the car.”

Andy hadn’t taken his hand from the ignition, but he couldn’t turn the keys. He couldn’t move. He felt numb. There was no strength in his arm or his hand. He just stared forward, unblinking.

“Andy.” Kathrin whispered again.

The tanned man was facing away from them. They were looking at his left side. He continued to stare north as he rose to his feet in a slow and fluid manner. The wooden line on his back rose with him, the bottom end touching the ground and anchoring itself. This tanned guy didn’t bring himself into an upright position, instead, stopping himself in a bent knee slouch. Andy and Kathrin didn’t know if this was to prevent the wooden thing on his back from losing its support or not, but they didn’t like the way he looked. That stance, it said so much about him already.

Their belief in aliens just took root, and it was no surprise that it made itself look human, but that wasn’t enough to convince them that it meant anything else but misfortune.

“Start the car.” Kathrin whispered again. “Andy, start the car. We can get away from it. It won’t be able to catch us.”

For some reason, Andy wasn’t so sure. Nevertheless, he still couldn’t find the strength to turn the ignition. Kathrin felt him shudder in her grip, or maybe that was just her shuddering instead.

The tanned guy turned his head, gazing down at Andy’s car. The couple froze up. Kathrin’s teeth cut the air she sucked in making a hissing sound. The tanned guy stared in their direction a moment, and then turned to look the opposite way. Andy and Kathrin didn’t make a move.

Then the tanned guy stared north again and tilted his head back to either gaze at the gray blanket above or at the top of the business building before him. He sighed. Andy and Kathrin could see his chest contract from where they sat, but never would they have thought that they could have heard the breath leave him. The entire downtown area was flooded with his voice. It sounded like it came from the sky instead of from the figure himself.

Then he spoke, “Is urbs orsa.” His voice carried again, hitting the face of each building and bouncing off to produce an echo. He had a deep voice.

“That’s the same voice I heard.” Andy whispered. “The same one. The same…language or whatever. It was him. Only…not as loud.”

The tanned guy kept staring upward, saying nothing more, letting whatever the thing on his back was rest there. Andy thought the guy might not even realize he had something resting on his back. The tanned guy made no attempt to acknowledge it or reach back to secure it.

“What does he want?” Kathrin whispered.

Andy shook his head.

The tanned guy turned his head away from the couple again and gazed down the hill.

“What’s he looking for?” Andy whispered.

The tanned guy turned his head and looked in the direction of Andy’s car.

“Hopefully not us.” Kathrin whispered.

“Does he even see us?” Andy asked.

The tanned guy stared in their direction, unmoving. The couple stared back, holding their breath. Then the tanned guy reached back with his right hand and gripped the thing on his back. He turned toward them, and Kathrin squeezed Andy’s arm.

When the tanned man put his first foot forward, Kathrin shook Andy, “Start the car.” she hissed.

The tanned man took several more steps until he was facing them dead on. The thing on his back turned with him, revealing the rest of its rectangular shape. The tanned man strolled forward in his bent kneed hunch, eyes forward. The bottom of the rectangular thing scrapped along the asphalt, gripping the silence with a sandy metallic grind.

“Andy!” Kathrin shrieked beyond a whisper for the first time since this event started.

Andy’s hand never left the keys, but still, he hadn’t turned them. It wasn’t because of a numbing fear this time. The tanned man, he looked young, probably no more older than Andy was. Though, the guy’s eyes, there was something else there Andy could only recognize but not relate to. It was an unyielding focus. He could see that from where he was sitting.

“Andy!” Kathrin shrieked again. “Andy, what are you doing? Start the car, already!”

Closer now, slow and steady, and the couple got a better description of his garments. The sleeveless top was a red vest looking thing, unbuttoned in the front to reveal the guy’s tanned chest underneath. The brown pants were tied around the waist by a rope. The guy was also wearing a pair of sandals that looked like they were made of leather. All of this was a dead giveaway that this guy wasn’t from this region, probably not from this country. The foreign language attested to that. The only thing he thought he recognized was the guy’s attire: something oriental, like a martial arts master back in the day. Hey, guys might dress like that still. But something told him this guy wasn’t from that region. Maybe it was the tan, but he didn’t want to base it on that.

Closer now, the guy’s face didn’t shape itself like that of those races. The guy’s eyes, despite their resolve, were very large. Not abnormally large but were the dominate features of his face.

“Andy!” Kathrin was shaking him now. “Andy! Andy! What’s wrong?”

The guy’s eyes, what color were they? He could tell from this distance, they were…golden? No, glowing! Couldn’t be.

“Andy!” Kathrin called. “Andy, look at me!” She took both his cheeks in her hands and turned his face toward her. “Andy! What’s the matter? Are you okay? Say something!”

Andy blinked. “Uh.”

“Are you okay?” Kathrin asked again.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

She turned his head back toward the tanned guy, “Look! He’s coming toward us! Don’t you see?”

Now Andy heard that sandy metallic scraping sound, saw the tanned guy in his bent kneed hunch, trudging his way toward the car, one hand reaching back to secure the rectangular object on his back, the other hand dangling forgotten in a back and forth sway while his hazy eyes remained focused ahead, and he was only a few yards away now.

When did he get that close, Andy wondered.

“Start the car!” Kathrin cried.

Andy blinked again, glancing from the tanned guy to his hand on the ignition then back up. Finally, he looked away from the guy and turned the key. His hand shook; he was still numb with fear. He had turned the keys, but not all the way. All the lights around the gas gage and other instruments in front of him turned on. So did the clock over the radio display.

“Do it!” Kathrin cried. “Do it!”

Andy couldn’t feel his hand anymore. Though, he knew he still had control, so he told himself he could turn the ignition. First motion was his wrist pivoting forward to lead his thumb to press into the top of the key, hoping to bring his other fingers around to press the bottom on the opposite side, turning the key. His wrist rested in a position where all that should have happened, but his thumb lay limp against the key. He told himself to pump strength into it, but his hand just shuddered.

“What are you doing?” Kathrin cried.

“I’m…!” Andy said, “I’m trying t….!”

He looked up. When he did, his voice caught in his throat. Kathrin gasped, cutting her own voice off. She gripped his arm and squeezed. Her grip was her scream.

The tanned guy neared the front of the car. His glowing golden eyes were staring right into the windshield.

But which one of us is he looking at, Andy wondered.

The guy wasn’t looking at them. He was looking right between them, through the windshield, through the inside of the car, out the back window, and on down the street. He took one more step. His next one would put his dangling hand against the grill.

But the guy pivoted to the left. Slow, dazed, awkward. His eyes raked across Andy, not even making eye contact, just taking in the objects that were along the way from a straight shot down the road to resting on the corner of the intersection. And he took the rectangular object with him, the end still scraping along the asphalt.

Now the guy was circling around to Andy’s side of the car. The couple watched him. Soon, Andy thought, the guy would be right beside him, and his window was rolled down, so there would be no separation at all.

Kathrin realized this too. “Your window.” she whispered “Roll up your window.”

Andy could have, because the ignition was turned on, despite not having turned the engine over. Yet, his other hand was fastened to the steering wheel. It was numb as well, but there was strength being pumped into it, because his knuckles were white.

“Andy!” Kathrin whispered.

Even if he wanted to, Andy couldn’t let go of the steering wheel. He just watched as the tanned guy stepped past the side view mirror and step before the opened window. One foot. Maybe one foot. That was all there was between him and the tanned guy.

Kathrin’s grip on Andy’s arm continued to scream for her.

Though, all they heard was the sandy metallic scrape below.

The guy’s eyes never strayed from their dead forward focus. Being this close, Andy saw that the guy’s lips were parted a bit, instead of having a slack jaw like he thought the guy would have. But then they opened just before the guy left the space on the other side of the driver’s side door.

He said, “Adveho, electus testis.”

Kathrin screamed as a reflex to the boom that raced about downtown, delivering the message. Andy flinched, then felt his heart pounding, the sweat dotting his skin that just went cold.

And the tanned guy kept going, trudging to the west in the direction in which Andy and Kathrin came. They watched him as he stepped beyond the car, but they found out what the rectangular object on his back was before that. They saw the gray blanket overhead and the tips of the tall buildings reflected in its surface. It was a mirror.

Next Chapter: Scary Bubble