I’m outside the world’s sketchiest house. I feel that I’m running from something, so I open the world’s flimsiest green wooden door and go inside. There’s music playing, but it’s turned down real low, so I can’t make out the words in the song, and even if I could, I expect I would have never heard that song before.
I hear a man yell: “I’m going to get you.”
I run quickly into the nearest closet, another flimsy green wooden door. The paint is peeling off and the edges are worn. I slowly shut the door behind me when I hear a loud stomping noise come down the stairs. The stomping ends at the closet door. He yells out my name, “Ryan . . . I’m going to get you.” Then he moves on.
A woman’s scream bellows out from the basement. What if he is torturing her? What if he’s killing her? I run downstairs to an unfinished basement to see a woman wearing only an expensive new red bra and matching red panties. She has dark brown hair, a plain face, and the body of a 40-year-old office worker who doesn’t exercise. She isn’t overweight, but she isn’t exciting to look at either.
There are hypodermic needles spread out over the grey floor, and there’s an old man wearing tight white underwear and sitting down on a very old, unpainted, wooden chair that has four distinctly round legs.
“Who are you?” I ask the lady.
“I’m Lotta.”
She comes over to me and starts touching my chest. I’m not really attracted to her, but as a man, I’m programmed to never shrug off female attention, especially if that female is in her underwear. I kiss her cheek, grab her back gently but firmly just above her panty line, and just at that moment I hear stomping on the stairs.
A man with crazy anger in his eyes, thick dark hair, and a meat carving knife comes raging towards us. The old man runs away in terror, and the crazy man heads towards him, as though he will run upstairs after him. I move towards the crazy man, but he runs around me in the opposite direction, straight for Lotta, and he plunges the knife directly into her heart.
I run for Lotta, trying to help her, but I know it’s too late. I’m down, kneeling on broken needles, next to her fallen body, trying to hear the last few words that she’s gasping out. The crazy man breaks some sort of small vial on the floor next to us, and a puff of smoke comes up into the air, clouding my eyes. I see the smoke, but I don’t run away from it. I inhale it deeply, but I don’t know why. I’ve been poisoned.
My journey has begun. I see my wife and kids running out of my funeral. It’s the end of the world. There are these weird giant frogs, the size of dogs that keep eating up small children. A wise looking man comes to me and says: “get to a church; you’ll be safe there.” He seems to be the only one who can see or hear me, so who am I not to listen.
I’ll be at a church soon, and my trip will be over.