A Rainy Day

It was a gloomy day for Michael, the sky was an overpowering grey, with rain that pitter pattered on the stone path in front of him. He normally liked rain, the feeling of the cold splashes upon his skin would calm him, and the sounds of the raindrops smashing against the hard floor would normally have been pleasant, but today felt...different.
Every hit that each of the many thousands of raindrops made seemed to bring further an unusual sense of foreboding; Michael didn’t know what it was, he just...knew something was off – it was like his subconscious mind was shouting something to him, something he missed, but he could never decipher what it meant. He shrugged it off, and pulled himself from his deep thought as he walked to work in his black suit and blue tie. He worked as a project manager for a finance company in the centre of the city, and he had a lot of work to do this morning, so there was no time to waste.
He arrived at a local café to buy his regular dose of coffee to perk him up, and soon entered the towering structure he worked in, sat down, and sighed. Rubbing his eyes, he began his work, going through a fairly amount of paperwork, and some files on his computer.
It was almost lunch, and Michael sat back, looking at how much work he had done, and looking out of the large window that encompassed the floor of the building he was on. Seeing out, he watched the endless flood of people that weaved around the buildings near him; he looked closer at the people, wearing various clothing for their own purposes for being here in this city. As he observed from his nest, up high in the building, he noticed something strange – every so often, someone from that flood of people would look up at him. He looked over and over, random people just occasionally looking up at him, and he would meet their gazes only to see them look back in front of them, and go about their day as normal. He chuckled lightly and shrugged it off.
Lunch came about a half an hour later, which pulled him away from the work that he was almost done with – of course, there would always be more, but he would have reached his daily quota. He headed his way out of the building and, as usual, went to the same nearby café. He was much more aware of what was going on around him than he was in the morning, and saw that every so often someone from the crowds surrounding him would stop what they're doing, and stare at him.
“Huh?” he thought, starting to become concerned. “Why are people...staring at me?”
Now, at every moment, he felt a strong feeling of being watched, by some person in the masses. He tried his best to ignore it, after all, it had to be his mind just trying to make up patterns where there were none. He ordered his lunch and sat at a table as he waited for it to be prepared. He ate swiftly, and made it back to the safe haven of his office building, to get back to work.
“You weren’t gone long, you have an hour you know,” his co-worker, Daniel, said confusedly.
“Uhh well, I wasn’t that hungry,” Michael replied.
He hastily returned to his seat, before getting back to work.
“Why were people staring at me back there?” Michael whispered to himself, his head beginning to fill with many more questions.
He shrugged it off, and besides, as he had no choice but to get back to his work for now – he would think
about it when he gets home tonight. After a few minutes of intense concentration on his work, he began to
notice the strangest thing, something he never noticed at work before.  The whole office floor was completely silent.  Not a single stroke of a pen, nor the tap of a keyboard could be heard in the room.  His eyes moved up briefly to look at what was going on; all of his co-workers had stopped as if they were frozen in time.  He sat up in his chair as he looked about the scene, now confused and not knowing what he should do.  Time seemed to slow as he noticed that, slowly, people began to turn their heads. He glanced at each and every person, who now looked directly at him blankly.  He didn’t know if this was a joke or a prank or what.
“Uhh…guys?”
Almost immediately, they gradually stood up if they weren’t already, and turned to face him.  This was too much for him, and as soon as he noticed he shakily made his way to the door, still unsure what to make of this situation.  He went to the bathroom to wash his face.
“What is happening?”  He thought as he sighed in the mirror, his heart clearly pumping faster and harder.
However, he noticed, in the corner of the mirror, he could see the head of a person rising from the top of one of the closed lavatory doors.  That was it.  He bolted out of the door, and was met with the whole crowd of people in his building standing closer to the door than before.  He ran straight downstairs, and out of the building, but he slowed when he observed the sheer numerosity of the people outside staring right at him, unmoving.  At this point, he knew something was definitely off with this place and these people, and he berated himself for not paying more attention earlier.
No cars, buses, or trains moved; everything was still, and even the innocent squawking and tweeting birds in the sky seemed to have disappeared.  He
sprinted to his car in the large car park for the employees of the business in which he worked, got in his car and drove.  He drove as fast as the car and the frozen traffic could take him.  He weaved through the congested traffic as he made his way through the labyrinth of roads.  Michael’s eyes darted everywhere, his breathing was quick, and he was desperate to escape, to make it home where it would be safe.  Just as he was starting to feel less anxious about his situation, the radio resonated static, undoing his effort to try and make himself calmer.  A raspy, dry breathing emerged subtly from the static, slowly becoming louder, until the static was nothing more than a silent hiss in the background.  The breathing then stopped briefly, leaving silence for a moment, before a loud, familiar whisper echoed in throughout the car.
“Wake up...  You have to wake up...  Please, wake up.”
In the background, he could hear the faintest beeping sound, though it was mostly muffled by the static.  It continued for some time as he continued driving back home.
“What the fuck...  Why is this all happening-”
His train of thought stopped when he glanced in the wing mirror of his car, which surveyed everything...and everyone behind him.  Thousands of them stood behind him, never walking though, just...standing, yet getting ever-closer every time his eyes weren’t staring directly back at them.  He saw how some of them twitched in uncanny ways; sometimes their fingers or arms would bend backwards slightly, before snapping back straight; or their face or neck would twitch randomly.  His eyes began to dart around again, looking for any more in the outskirts who might sneak up on him.  As he was looking back, occasionally glancing forwards to navigate the desolate roads, he noticed that slowly, the crowd began to dissipate, people leaving this mass every time he looked away and back.  Feeling relieved, he looked back more frequently in an attempt to get them to go faster, which worked, surprisingly.
The crowd behind him now consisted of a few stray people, so he felt that he wouldn’t have to look back any longer.  Focusing more on the road, he made his way back home, calmer, but still on alert, still...anxious about what had happened, as innumerable questions flooded his mind.
He entered the town in which he lived, giving him a relieving sense of safety, but his heart stopped once he saw what was in front of him... in front of his house.  All of them, every single one of them from the city were now standing there, in front of him.  In a panic, he tried to turn to back out...but looking back, he found that his exit was blocked by even more of them.  He was surrounded by them, all just...staring at him.
“Don’t you feel tired?” The crowd said in unison, all with penetrating voices, as if they were all demons in human clothing.
He was thrown aback by their sudden speech – he had never expected them to speak, and the way that they did was frightening and seething with uncertainty.
Step...
Step...
Step...
Michael froze when he heard the cold footsteps of the things around him, moving slowly – one step at a time – all synchronised into short, loud thuds.  The radio started again, its static wavering through the air in a haze as he listened.  This time he could hear the beeping much clearer.
“What is that sou-” Michael said to himself, but interrupted by a sudden realisation, “Oh dear God”
Michael ran back into the car, and listened closely to the radio for a voice.  Her voice, that spoke earlier.  The voice of his wife.  As the things closed in, he began to cry, and hoped to hear her voice again.  And there it was, the light, impossibly beautiful voice of his wife, speaking through the radio.
step
“If you can hear me in there, the doctor says that you won’t last much longer, but I know you can do it, I know you can wake up,” the last part of that sentence was slurred under sounds of her crying.
“No, wait!  I’m here!  I’m right here!  I’m alive!  Please hear this, please please-” Michael was interrupted by his wife once again, showing that she hadn’t heard him shout into the radio.
step
“I’m sorry, but they said I have to go for now, but I’ll be back as soon as I can, promise.”
“No, no no no no…”  He was reduced to tears as he now began to lose hope in his situation.
step
The staring people were getting closer to his car, and still closing in.
“Why not go to sleep?” They all said together.
He all but felt hopeless, and huddled down in the car, shaking.  The creatures were moving faster now, their steps beginning to swiftly fall out of synch.  Their paces quickened to a slow run, and within moments they were throwing themselves at his car, causing the glass to crack and the metal to dent and scratch.  He was looking around, seeing all their wide-eyed, desperate faces, like he had something that they needed, but as he surveyed the far window, he shook upon feeling a cold hand land on his shoulder; snapping his head back, he saw the figure that stood just outside the near window, who, unlike the others, possessed a wide and content smile.  Almost immediately, he began to feel tired and weak, his vision burring and his eyes feeling heavy.  That crooked, content smile was the last thing he saw before his eyes closed, and he blacked out.
Beep
Beep
Beep…
Michael’s wife, Amy, was about to turn away and out of the door, until she swore she saw her husband’s eyes flicker.  She was shaken with hope, and rushed back to his side.  She kneeled there, next to the hospital bed, for the longest of minutes before her husband’s eyes finally opened, and almost immediately teared up in happiness; at once, Amy screamed for the doctors.
They performed checks on him to make sure he was okay and conscious, before allowing him the day in the hospital bed for his mind to come back to normal.  The next day, he awoke to the warm sunrise, and took a deep breath of the fresh air.  After the final checks, He and Amy both left the hospital together, Amy with tears in her eyes and him with the widest, most content smile.
Category:Beings
Category:Dreams/Sleep