High Off the Lows

Chapter 00

Johnny's vision had blurred to the point that all he could make out was the faint outline of a doorway or window a few meters above him. His throat was dry and his arms and legs felt weak as if he had run for several miles. He did not recognize where he was, or how he had gotten there, and he definitely could not remember what he had eaten in his last meal. He supposed that if he had the energy, he might have been able to figure out what was going on, but it appeared that he was quickly losing consciousness. Succumbing to his weakness, Johnny laid down, wrapping his tail neatly around his legs and placing his head onto a very annoyingly uncomfortable surface. His eyes narrowed and shut as he drifted off to sleep.

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Johnny's eyes shot wide open at the obnoxious squawking of his bedside alarm clock. Part of him quickly recognized the symptoms of yet another bizarre, body-swapping dream, but he fumbled around his backside to check for a tail anyways.

On a normal day, Johnny would have woken up before 6:15, turned off his alarm with an over-confident whack, and rolled clumsily out of his bed. He would have trudged over to the shower and let the cold water jolt him awake before it heated up. He would have, still in his undergarments, cooked three slices of bacon, scrambled two eggs, and toasted a slice of bread to compliment his morning coffee. And, after donning the rest of his clothes, he would have left his apartment and quietly seated himself on the 6:50 bus that drove directly to the office building where he worked.

However, this was not a normal day, as the alarm clock clearly identified that Johnny was precisely twenty minutes late, which meant he would probably have to skip breakfast. He sighed deeply and proceeded to rush through a condensed morning routine. Before he left, he glanced out the window of his bedroom and noted the presence of a medium-sized tabby cat sleeping on the fire escape outside, its tail tucked neatly behind its hind legs. He let out another intense sigh and locked the front door as he vacated the apartment.

The office was a two-mile walk away, and Johnny had no choice but to take the risk of making the commute on foot. For the tiniest moment, he thought about losing his life getting caught in the crossfire of a gang battle, falling through a horribly placed portal, getting mugged by an invisible thief, being crushed in an exploding building, or, Heaven's forbid, tripping down a flight of stairs. These were, of course, very common occurrences within the city bounds, so he refused to dangle the dreadful thought in his mind for any longer.

Johnny walked past his aging apartment building, making his way through the already crowded sidewalks and diligently avoiding contact with any of the slithering, crawling, floating, or otherwise moving beings of the bustling port city. He had gotten used to the diversity, but he could never fully expect what he was going to encounter on the streets. In fact, despite the remnants of the former Chicago, he could not imagine the city from less than a year ago, without the rippling tears into interdimensional space, multi-worldly creatures, and random blasts of colorful magic. Amalgam was the strangest and certainly the most dangerous place Johnny had ever lived in, but his humanity and average build did, to a certain extent, help him blend in to the majority of the crowd.

"Um, excuse me?" Something tapped lightly on Johnny's shoulder. Turning around, he saw a young man with unruly black hair, dressed in what Johnny vaguely recognized to be an Amalgam military uniform. Most notably, however, was the man's slightly exposed metallic left arm, which was now conveniently placed on Johnny's shoulder.

"Can I help you?"

"Sorry to bother you, sir, but I'm looking for a person who was last reported seen around here." The man pointed at a bar across the street from where Johnny stood. He shuffled through his pocket and pulled out a tablet with the image of what looked like a human man with scarlet hair and large, fish-like fins on the sides of his head. "Have you seen him before?"