Paths of the Moon

A stammering stint of light ripples across the room through the ashen lace curtains. It would have been pitch dark if it wasn't for the light, which brings an etheral glow to the whole room. The scene is set in a small bedroom in a suburb in Birmingham, the proganist Kramer Kronocaust is lying face down in bed, emitting loud, frequent snorts, as if he had swallowed a hedgehog the previous day. The room is bare apart from a few obsolete pictures which display long forgotten about people. It is approxmiately 3am and the faint humming of a milk float can be heard from outside, as if it were a hyperactive insect around a pot of jam. The curtains flap impatiently as if possessed (). Suddenly a loud crash can be heard from downstairs

Kramer : What the hell was that

Kramer cowers under the bed covers, but eventually picks up the courage to go downstairs to investigate. He begins to descend the staircase, each stair makes a different distrubed wail, as if 30 years of punishment had began to take its toll. Kramer finds the living room door ajar. He grasps the door handle cautiously, and begins to open the door slowly. The living room is pitch dark, the faint hum of a clock can be heard somewhere in the room. Kramer now focuses his attention on the noise of the clock, it appears to be louder than he originally thought. He dismisses it. SUDDENLY a light flashes in the kitchen, the noise of the clock disappears, Kramer's sanity disappears, with his heart beating like a buffalo trying to escape from his rib cage. He convinces himself its merely a taxi cab foolishly blinking its headlights. He approaches the kitchen door as if he were a prisoner making haste towards the electric chair. He slides the half-open door across and steps into the kitchen. NORMAL. Everything appears to be normal. He hears a voice coming from the corner of the room

Voice : I've been waiting for you

Kramer gazes into every corner of the room. NOTHING. He charges towards the living room phone, when the door slams in his face. Kramer falls to the ground in a heap. Suddenly the light which he had seen in the living room shone once more, only it is much much brighter. Kramer who is now on his feet gazes into the mirror, to see his worst nightmare. IT surely had been waiting for him, and now the time had come

Microwave : I've been waiting for you Kramer

Kramer : What the hell is wrong with me?? ~Kramer headbutts the wall~ I must stop eating cheese before bedtime.

Microwave : But Kramer......you are not asleep!

The microwave opens and closes its door frantically signalling intense laughter

At this point Kramer was desperately thumping the door. He knew he could never knock it down. But he tried and tried and tried. And eventually he did. He dashed through the livingroom and leaped through the front window, landing on the patio outside. He looked up at the moonlit sky, and thought about what his life had become. The sky that night was beautiful, full of exotic purples and blues, it was if time had frozen on a maginificent airborne firework. The expierence for Kramer was somewhat surreal, he never used to have arguments with kitchen appliances, that was until he slapped a three armed toaster who apparently called him a Son Of A Bitch. SILENCE. THE RIVER OF LIFE. HAS ENCOUNTERED AN ULTIMATIUM, ARE YOU READY FOR IT?.

Kramer : What?

Kramer stared up in the sky with awe as another shooting star penetrated the arch of heaven. Over the past year he had began to ponder his exsistence. ITS OVER

Kramer : Will you shut up?

An unseen force appeared to grab Kramer by the neck

Unseen Force : THE RIVER OF LIFE HAS ENCOUNTERED A FINAL ULTIMATIUM. THE GOD'S LOOK DOWN AND SEE NOTHING BUT ICELAND CHICKEN CURRY AND POT NODDLES. HOW DO YOU PLEAD?

Kramer : Who are you? What are you doing here?

Unseen Force : I was sent.....that is all you need to know

At this point the unseen force pulled Kramer up to at least 30 feet in the air, and dropped him straight on the patio. The sky had changed all of a sudden. A red cloud had emerged from nowhere. Before long this single cloud obscured all but one of the stars in the night sky. Kramer, obviously shaken by the fall could hear a harrowing sound in the distance. WAS IT THERE? His fear heightened. He ran for cover behind the nearest tree, but was it a case of too little too late? He could feel IT getting closer. He looked up towards the sky, but could see nothing. He crouched down, with his head in his heads in a complete sense of despair. His tears didn't stop IT. He decided to get up. "Self-pity is useless" he thought. "It wont help me escape this hell" All of a sudden it started to rain heavily, Kramer decided to take shelter in a deep growth of grass. He pondered the beauty of the rain dripping off those long blades of grass. The drops of rain reminded him of his own tears, his own realities, his own fears. He felt IT watching him again. When will it end? How will it end? Kramer sprung up from his temporary refuge. In the distance he could see a housing estate, full of bright lights. He breathed a huge sigh of relief.

The sun was beginning to rise as Kramer walked fearlessly through the deserted fields.

A myriad of litter swept past his feet pulled by the easing winds. Kramer looked towards the heavens to see a circle of birds, flailing around in the sky like a velvet ribbon. He could see nothing in the horizon apart from the sun rising. Where was he going in life? He felt he must have been walking for at least an hour now, and was presently in a pedestrian zone. He had seen this place before, he was sure of it. The sky-scrapers loomed high in the air above him, with the office apartments appearing misformed due to the poor light. It was as if he was being watched, but from where? It seemed as if the area was completely covered in windows, "Enough to make anyone paranoid" he remarked to himself. He had walked past at least 30 of these sky scrapers, and was yet to notice a difference in the over-used grey marble facade. Suddenly he felt claustrophobic. He felt as if he was drowning in a sea of windows and cracked pavement. His heart began to beat faster, as he noticed that the sky appeared to get darker. He stopped. An air raid siren began to sound in his mind. He grasped his head with both hands trying to drain out the noise. He collapsed to the ground. Blood began to trickle from his head. FADING. EVER FADING. THIS IS THE DAY THAT IT HAPPENED. THIS IS MY DAY. WELCOME TO 'THE PLACE' KRAMER. THIS IS WHERE IT HAPPENED.

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SILENCE

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Kramer woke up in a long corridor, with a huge window at the end. Everything was clear, the magnificent combination of darkness and despair obliterated his body. He shielded his eyes from both the light and the darkness, he was not in any position to decide which was worse. The window cast vivid sillhouites all around the corridor. This corridor as far as he could see represented his life. There was nothing but a window. A window which caused irreversible dillemas through light and darkness. Light and darkness were one as far as he could see. For at least the last 10 minutes he had been standing there looking out of the window, looking for a revelation, looking for the end. The end refused to come. Huge storm clouds drifted past the window, emitting what seemed to be huge sparks of lightning. The light emitted from these clouds lit up every corner of the room. Nothing made sense. Kramer started to approach the large bay window. The clouds were still moving ever slowly, inconsistently firing bolts of fire towards the earth. Something caught Kramer's attention, before this moment he could not see any walls, the light from one of the storm clouds revealed a dark coloured plasterboard wall. In the plasterboard, he could see the word PATHS. Kramer became frustrated "If only I had a path to follow, at least something would make sense" He stood completely alone in the darkness for at least a minute. His anxiety was at a peak. Suddenly a huge bolt of lightning followed by a magnificent drum roll of thunder came from the storm cloud nearest the window, this lit up the whole room with a fiery glow. Kramer looked to the wall once more. "PATHS OF THE MOON LIE DEAD LIKE THE SEA" was etched into the wall, with what appeared to be a sharp instrument. At that moment, the corridor appeared to extend, the window grew further away from him, he could hear that noise he had always feared as a child. Something was calling him, yet pulling him away. He was moving rapidly away from the window. At that moment the siren began to sound in his mind once more, this time taking a different pitch. From a corner of the room a sillhoute appeared. The sillhoute began to beckon to Kramer. Something told him to push himself further back. There appeared to be no end to the corridor. Kramer looked towards the clouds outside, they appeared darker and larger before. At that moment a huge spark of lightning annihilated the window, the force of the blast lead to the floor begginning to crumble. Kramer turned away and ran as fast as he could away from the collapsing floor, but he knew it was too late. He could feel the crumbling pieces of floor hitting him in the back of the leg, he knew the fall was certain. Without notice the piece of floor which Kramer was running from broke off. Kramer struggled to grasp hold of the nearest piece of tile, but it was too late, he was already falling. The impending darkness swallowed everything.