Hide and Seek

Part 4

"Who's that?"

Dan limped towards him.

"I heard that you're searching for a job, right?" Said the weird man. Dan mumbled: "But how did you..." the weird man said in a very cold voice that made Dan freeze: "It's not the matter of how did I know, it's the matter if you accept my offer or not." Then he marched away as if he said: "Come behind me if you accepted my offer." Dan felt so useless and tried to catch up. He could barely see his way or what surrounded it. He just tried to keep his eyes on the man moving in front of him, who was disappearing a moment, and appears in another.

After some time he couldn't remember, Dan started slowing down, until he suddenly stopped, and... nothing! He could see only darkness everywhere.

Dan started to feel what's around. Is this his downy sofa that he adores to lay on it after a lengthy day of work? No, no! He started remembering what happened; searching for work, meeting the weird man and... oh! He lost consciousness!

Dan was exhausted and didn't want to open his eyes, yet he did after hearing a voice, a deep, deep voice saying: "Daniel Grogger, welcome." Dan thought: "Oh no! Am I dead? Isn't that the sound of my dead father? This is for sure his sound. He is welcoming me for coming to the dead's world, the second world!" Dan felt that he wanted to cry with heartburn. "Wake up! It's not time to sleep!" Dan felt that his eyelids were ponderous while opening them. He couldn't see anything except a tall old man wearing sailors' clothing and saying: "Wake up son; it's time to know your new job."

Dan followed the weird old man. He looked like a retired veteran ship captain with his ancient but fine-looking ship captain's blue suit. There were several honor medals lined up next to each other on the upper of his left side of his chest. They walked through a long-narrow corridor after passing a rickety wooden door towards another one. Dan felt he was less exhausted and he looked at his watch to check what time is it. "Oh my god!" He thought. "It is 5 o'clock! I am in tomorrow... I mean tomorrow is today... I mean today is... I slept more than 12 hours!"
They were in the second room when Dan realized he is in a cargo ship when he looked through the glass curved window in the other side of the circular room. It seemed to be very modern in compare with other rooms. The old man asked Dan to sit on the orange long sofa – which was curved too – placed in front of the window.

"Welcome to Modern Explorer III!" Said the old man while sitting on the orange bench. Dan sat in the other side of the bench, his eyes still staring towards the different colors of cargo boxes settled on the rest of the great ship. "This is a new ship, which was designed by my brother, who worked in ship engineering and designing. He always said he liked modern classic ships that may look classic from outside, and very modern from inside. This was the last ship he made before..." The old man took a deep breath and completed: "Died in very mysterious ambiance." One tear sled from one of his eyes, slowly crossing all wrinkles appeared on his oval face, and stopped on his long curly white beard.