The Confluence

The Confluence Part I

I

There is a house. A house that lurks in the darkness of night like some kind of primeval predator. No matter what city you're in, there is one like it. In one particular town, a small place nestled between a large forest and a mountain, there is a house much darker than the rest. It is this house where this story begins.

Rain was spitting out of the thick black sky, crashing down on the old dilapidated house at the back of a dead end road. Behind the house, a foggy rail yard spread out beyond the property. The windows on the house stare out into that wet dark, akin to the blank gaze of a long dead corpse. There is no life that pulses through that house, only a seething void, howling in its silent language of the unmade. All that house seemed to know was hunger. It was a house that shouldn't be, a tumor upon reality.

Not far from that crouching horror of a house, in a lighter part of town, a man was in a dive bar. The kind of man who you might meet at any work related party, and then five minutes after shaking his hand, his face and name seem to fade out of your mind. Thomas Ericson, who was already falling into that abyss of blackout drunk. Thomas sat on a barstool, body slumped, eyes drooping, attempting to watch the news on a dusty TV above the bar. A man and a woman with better clothes and whiter teeth than him were babbling about another cold front and more rain. Always more goddamned rain... he thought to himself. "What was that?" Thomas blearily looked around, almost comically. "Hey, asshole! What the fuck was that?"

A sallow, pasty faced punk was staring at him, frowning. "Oh, nuthin..."

He muttered, turning back around. He felt the punk's eyes drilling into his back. Thomas leaned forward, almost feeling the weight of the punk's stare. He looked down at his full pint and started chugging. From behind him, one of the punk's friends said to him, "Johnny, come on. What the fuck is that old fart gonna do to you?" He felt the heavy stare leave him. As the weight lifted, he took the glass away from his mouth completely drained. He'd been drinking like this since he got off work. He couldn't bear going back home not completely wasted. Thomas had married his high school sweetheart, but after twenty years, things had soured. She was a bitch, constantly nagging about the kids, about him, and flirting with her goddamned boss.

So now he buries his feelings in the bottle, and refuses to come home unless he's so far gone he can barely stand. Because Thomas is afraid. Afraid that, one day, he'll snap, strangle his wife, bludgeon her, stab her, and then blow his own brains out. He thinks maybe he can drag on the marriage for another year, maybe more. But for now, it's time to drown in that numbing sea of drunk. The news is still babbling. Their grinning faces become more threatening, even widening, until they stare out of the TV with a lusty hunger. As the blackout was gathering rising force, the shape of man lumbered towards him, and tapped him on the shoulder. Thomas slowly rotated, wobbling, praying it wasn't the punk, Johnny whatever-the-fuck come back in vengeance, but this shadow of man was too large to be that skinny toothpick of a person. As darkness began to take over, he heard the shadow mutter "Can you see it? Can't you see? I can show you such wondrous things."

The last thing Thomas remembered was saying "Whassafuck?" before his mind slipped into that black abyss.