little guard post.

Prologue

It grew behind me. It grew, and it grew, and it grew, and it grew. Soon enough, he stood tall, and low. The flat plane that resembled his body walked in the white spaces behind me, with the room's corners cutting in-between his torso and his head. This man had been following me for as long as I've been here. Inside this space that seemed to pulsate, expanding and contracting. Inside these spacious walls of nothing but black and white.

"It's been raining for quite some time now."

He said to me, mouth barely moving an inch.

I looked out the window, and he was right. All I saw out there was a swirl of painted clouds pouring over the dark earth. Every time I entered this room, the window showed the same exact scene every time. I opened the window sill, and reached my hand out onto the pouring rain — to clear my doubts on whether this really was a window or not. Surely enough, the white raindrops seeped into my hands. It glided through the cotton inside me, and escaped my hands by the lower end.

The grey man chuckled, giving the wilting flowers on the table a gentle kiss. There were two sitting on the wooden table. A pot of escargot begonias, and a tiny camellia tree.

"I've been taking care of these sweet li'l cuties while you were away."

He crooned, caressing them like they're his newborn children.

"They get oh so lonely when they're neglected, don't you know? They miss the feeling of cold water running through their roots. They miss hearing you hum as you shower them with water and fertiliser. They miss the hot breathe that comes out of your nostrils. It gives them nourishment for at least a day or two."

I looked behind me, and my eyes were greeted by an grotesque sight. The limp begonia blossoms resting on dying leaves looked like flakes of organs scattered over decaying green and white craft fabric. It's foliage looked unrecognisable — all muddled in spots of brown, scrunched up and distorted to the point where I forgot it was a leaf. Cream white strips of what used to be the leaves' spiral design separated it's carcass from the polished surface of the table. The camellias were engulfed in a black, viscous substance. It looked sticky to the touch; almost gore-like, even. Old traces of its natural pastel colour can't be spotted in the dripping mess.

I started seeing double, and my vision soon melted into a mixture of red, green, brown and black. I recoiled in disgust, and an unexplainable sadness rushed through me. My eyes ached, stuffing the tears back, and a traffic blockade stopped all activity in my lungs. I couldn't even begin to wrap my head around how strange my body was acting, all over a bunch of dying flowers. The mere sight of them held my neck at a chokehold, and shot an uppercut to my stomach at the same time.

I grabbed my trench coat, put on my brimmed hat and ran to the exit. Once I left the room, I sped forward, with no plan or destination in mind. All I knew is that I had to get as far away as possible from that sight. The landscape stretched far ahead of me, a thin grey line separating the earth and the skies. The rain drenched all of me. My limbs felt heavier and heavier as it absorbed more of the rainwater. Soon, I found myself completely paralyzed. My legs and arms wouldn't budge, no matter how much force I exerted on them.

In that moment, I truly was a ragdoll. Accidentally left behind by a child, limping beside a streetlight left to rot away as my innards collect more and more rain. It formed a puddle in my gaping jaw, leaking out from the holes on my eyes. My head felt three-fourths full. It made little waves in there like a storm at sea. Like there were schools of fishes swimming in the water filled cavity of my head. It all tasted awful.

For what felt like hours, I lied there, immobilised from head to toe. Just in a stroke of god-awful luck, lightning struck whatever was left of my body. It took on a quick flash of light that wrapped itself around me. and curiously enough — the screaming voice of a metal band singer.

And before I knew it, I woke up.