I'm thirsty.
It's so dry.
My throat...
The fog lifted. What remained was hunger and thirst - the kind that cuts through everything else.
Damn it. Where am I?
He opened his eyes. Above him an old wooden roof, familiar in shape but wrong in every detail.
Did I get kidnapped?
THUD! In his daze he tried to get up and fell straight onto the dirty wooden floor. His body refused to cooperate his arms, legs, every joint rusted stiff.
Ouch..
"Huff.. Huff.."
He took a few breaths as he looked from where he fell. It was an old bed with white sheets.
He grabbed the bed frame and dragged himself upward until his back was against it.
Looking ahead - a table, a chair, a fishing spear leaning against the wall beside them. Above the table, through the window, two moons.
One large.
One small.
Is this even Earth anymore?
Next to the table a terracotta cooking stove, its chimney rising from the same material. To the right, a crudely made wood door.
To the left, two rolled sleeping cushions and pillows in the corner. A simple wooden cabinet beside them with a cloth bag leaning against it.
He looked down at himself. A slim body, weak, dressed in a white linen shirt and slightly darker linen trousers.
He stayed there until the rustiness began to fade, slowly moving his limbs , coaxing the body back into use.
When he felt ready he pressed his hands against the bed frame and pulled himself upward, shifting the effort to his legs until he was standing.
He made his way to the cabinet, one hand trailing along it to keep himself upright, and looked inside the cloth bag.
Old bread. Moldy beyond anything edible.
"Damn it." He set the bag down.
He moved to the table and rested his body on it while looking out the window.
There was a small apple tree in the yard, just slightly taller than a grown man.
Not wanting to waste what little strength he had on the door, he opened the window, placed his knee on the table and using the chair he lifted himself on it.
Legs first he pulled himself slowly through the opened window.
His bare feet landed on dry dirt. The yard was small, fenced with sticks driven into the ground and linked together. The brick house he had just crawled out of sat behind him.
The tree had only recently begun bearing fruit. Small, hard apples covered its branches. He ate them without ceremony, they were sour, tough to chew and barely ripe.
He ate every one he could reach.
"Tsk."
Water.
Looking around he took in the dirt road for the first time. Across it sat a house similar to his. On its door, a thick X drawn in what looked like chalk or paint.
To the left the road stretched until it split at a small stone shrine with candles inside and out inside of it was also a painting he could not make out from this distance.
To the right the road ended at a water well.
He moved towards it. Stone construction with a pulley system, bucket on a thick rope wound around a wheel with a stick holding it in place.
He pulled the stick free.
BANG!
Bang!
bang...
Then water. He waited, then turned the wheel slowly.
When the bucket came up he propped it on the edge and looked down at his reflection - a young man, around twenty, dark hair, hazel eyes, a slim face that looked like it had not eaten properly in some time.
He drank the whole bucket.
He sat beside the well for a while before walking back.
Details he had missed before were clearer now.
The house was red brick.
The yard fence was sticks.
Beside the house a small outdoor toilet, same brick, same crude door.
On his own front door was a large X. The same as the neighbor's.
Why are the doors marked?
Having no answer he went back inside.
He dragged the wooden chair and sat at the table.
His elbows on the table, he clasped his hands and pressed them to his forehead.
"Fuck."
A loud heartbeat was drumming as sweat began to drip from his face. He puffed in shaky, heavy jerks as his chest moved up and down.
His gaze shifted to the fishing spear; its long bronze tip was serrated in a way that would drag anything it pierced toward the wielder.
It was unused, coated in dust.
He stared at it for a few minutes before drifting off to sleep.
…
There was a gray, foggy wasteland where the line between the real and the unreal was blurred, and a constant, strange pressure was felt.
From the fog emerged a black, humanoid shape.
The first thing it understood was that something was behind it, and that it was dangerous.
It was then that the ground behind it thirty meters away exploded.
Before it had the chance to run, it was pierced through the chest by a familiar black, pointy appendage that tore through the ground, cracking it and revealing a static void.
Impaled, the humanoid felt as if its very identity was being assimilated.
The ground continued to crack, slowly falling into the static abyss and dissipating.
The pointy black tip attempted to remove itself and flee, but the partially assimilated humanoid refused to obey.
Before it knew it, the humanoid, along with part of what had impaled it, fell into the abyss, slowly dissipating.