The Chaos Walker

Puzzle Me This

Fierce wind gusts gave way to a strangely familiar but eerie silence. The swirling, drowning waters evaporated from his lungs but still left his body in their embrace. His floating body stopped sinking, his feet coming into contact with an unseen surface. Both of his eyes were still squeezed tightly shut. 

 "Am I dead? If I open my eyes, will I see that long tunnel that leads to the light?" thoughts came to him in pieces, "Don't be stupid, this is reality not the Hallmark channel. Wait...Is it reality? Really? Open your eyes, bonehead."

Millimeter by millimeter he pried open his eyelids, half expecting them to be blasted by dirty, gritty, storm driven water, and then groaned.

"Again?"

The ancient, pockmarked table sat in front of him, unchanged from before. The same unfinished puzzle lying there unaltered, at least as far as he could tell. A rushed self-examination found him in the same joggers and polo shirt he had worn when he plunged into the storm. In the left pocket of the dark grey pants loitered the two infernal puzzle pieces that had appeared each time he had shifted between realities. 

He pulled them out and more drifted than walked over to the table.

"Is this where you two go?" he scratched an illogically dry head. "Great, now I'm talking to puzzle pieces. What's next? Trading poetry with Scrabble tiles?" 

He sighed and brought the two metallic chips closer to the puzzle.

Just like before, the border was complete but gave few clues to the overall image of the completed puzzle. It was mostly swirls of various dark shades. The entire center was vacant. He dropped the two pieces face up in the middle of the open space.

"I'm dead, this is hell, and my eternal torment is to work on this puzzle with only two pieces and no idea what it's supposed to look like when I finish. Which I never will because, duh, this is hell."

He massaged his temples with both hands. The adrenaline in his system was wearing off and a flurry of sharp pains were making themselves known all over his battered body.

"I didn't think being dead would be this painful." 

He stared at the table in front of him and tried to focus on the puzzle. The pieces he had brought with him didn't fit together. Nor did they appear to fit any of the edge pieces. A couple of times he thought he had found a fit, but as he was moving the sharp-edged piece into final position, he could swear he felt it squirm! It felt a little like making contact with an electric fence and he immediately dropped the piece and took a step back. 

 After a mental 10 count and no more signs of funny business, he hazarded a quick touch. Nothing. He picked it up and it remained dormant. He moved it back to the spot on the edge where he thought it might fit only to find both pieces completely changed.

"The hell???" His mind was starting to rebel at the whole situation. 

The swirling darkness around him seemed to extend to infinity. The sensation of continuous immersion in water was disorientating.  The single light bulb suspended from nothing and a puzzle with pieces that refused to stay still added to the unreality.   

"What...? How?...." His eyes darted around so rapidly he could almost hear them clicking up against the sides of their sockets. He spun around and scanned the infinite darkness, then turned back to the table, slammed his palms down and hung his head.

That's when he noticed the inky gray tendrils rising from his fingers. "Those weren't there a second ago." The detached thought clashed with the growing panic from just a heartbeat ago. Both hands looked to be oozing a thin, watery tar. 

 "Oh my god, what is happening now? My arms and shoulders too?"

His gaze followed the trails of reversed raindrops up until they converged above his head into a thick stream that led to......a darker darkness than he would have believed even existed.

 Its outline was vaguely human shaped but without features except for two softly glowing orbs about where you would expect to see eyes on a person.

"The thing from my dream? What is this?" As his anxiety rose, he both felt, and then saw the droplets rising from his body increasing in number and speed. The even thicker stream poured into the darkness above.

Sounds echoed around him approximating words, but carried no meaning that he understood. It became harder to breathe.

His heart pounded as the glowing orbs intensified, and the dark figure began to move towards him. "What do you want from me?" he shouted, but the only response was a chilling laugh that seemed to vibrate from all sides.

He tried to move, but the tendrils tightened their grip, pulling him closer to the shadow. Panic surged as he realized he was no longer standing on solid ground but being drawn into the very darkness.

"It's feeding off me!?" Intuition led to insight led to action. "Calm your ass down, Regis!"

He closed his eyes and willed his heart rate to slow. "Breathe in through the nose, out though your mouth." His memory coughed up a mantra of countless team counseling sessions that he had barely listened to.

"See a red square in your mind. Now make it slowly turn blue. Now yellow." He felt the unseen floor push against his feet again and opened his eyes. The two gleaming orbs set in mind-bending darkness were still there but more distant and diminished. The grey cord dripping from his hands and arms slowed to a trickle.

Relief washed over him and he dared a small smile.

A reedy faint voice fell on him from above and whispered a dire pair of words.

"Too soon."

The mocking laughter hit him like a tidal wave and knocked him backwards into complete darkness.

"Too soon...."