Spawn of the Pickle Loaf

Part 14, In Which Things Start to Disappear

We've finally arrived, dear reader. I began my tale with a curious soliloquy, featuring an elusive Coca Cola bottle, and all this time you've likely been sighing and checking your watch and wondering when our tragic hero's going to finally close the circle, connect all the dots, and describe the particulars of his present situation. Well, my present situation has changed, so I'll need to cover more ground, but I can still begin with the events which were once the present and use them as stepping stones to reach what is our current present now (Isn't time elusive, dear reader?). 

The disappearances began some time after our last encounter. Having no other places to properly prostrate myself, I camped out in the plot formerly occupied by my easy chair and attempted to resume a relatively normal lifestyle. I began wandering my halls again and picking up my belongings and turning them over in my hands as I pondered philosophical questions. 

Unfortunately, these excursions never took me beyond the barrier. I avoided the whole sector like radioactive spill, which is a shame, considering how many years I'd been planning on fixing that room up and building a home recording studio (not that music was much of a sought after commodity anymore, what with the acid rain and scavengers and such; but I still believed in the principle of the thing). 

Occasionally, I'd doubt myself, mull over the sequence of events and wonder if I'd fabricated the whole thing. Then I'd remember the horrible disturbance and the unearthly giggle and the cryptic message and conclude that I was better of not finding out. Only a fool sticks his hand beneath a rock, where he suspects a snake might lie. 

And since I could do nothing to fix the problem, I began suppressing it, thrusting it into that secluded cranny I keep at the base of my mind. I desperately wanted to forget about the whole affair, and the more I strode back and forth, occupying myself with other concerns, the more I began to view the barrier as just another item in my bungalow. 

Anyway, I was preoccupied with more positive developments. I found my can opener, dear reader! During my excursions, I spotted it glinting atop a metal shelf; and, no, I hadn't put it there, myself; but I didn't press the issue, because fortune seemed to be smiling upon me again.

My eating habits grew more regular. I started cracking open a new can of beeferoni or chicken soup or pork n' beans at least three-times-a-day, and I'd sit cross-legged and munch the victuals while I watched the television screen a few feet away. Yes, I started watching TV again too. My viewing options were admittedly limited, given that every channel was a new variation of static cloud, but--get this, dear reader--I began to notice subtle images and sounds flickering behind the noise. Ghostly apparitions, fragments of speech, faces even. 

I couldn't guess the nature of the phenomena. My imagination, perhaps? A cable frequency playing on repeat in the aftermath of the disaster? Coded messages from the old ones? I didn't care which. Whatever the manifestations were, they provided sufficient entertainment, enough to supplement my habitual sitting and eating and gaping. 

Unfortunately, while my waking existence had improved significantly, the twilight world of my slumber became more turbulent. I started dreaming horrifying, preposterous things. 

Like for instance: I had a nightmare that the yellow extraterrestrial appeared again and this time gripped me by the forehead and morphed me into a tiny lab rat. I shrunk to the size of a tea cup, and the creature picked me up by the tail and placed me inside a maze constructed of cardboard, and I began to skitter back and forth in search of an escape route, while the monster's vacant face hovered above and its blood-red eye scrutinized my every move. 

Like for instance: I had another dream that I was caught in a forest of brambles. Someone or something had lent me only a rusty machete to aide in my escape, and whenever I set out in one direction, hacking and stumbling, all the other brambles grew up in my wake, confining me again. To make matters worse, I hadn't the slightest inkling of which direction to follow. For all I knew, I was staggering deeper into the thicket.