Everything went still... The cars all stopped. Not that everyone disappeared, if I were to look in through the windshield I would be able to see their still faces looking out to the road ahead of them. Not that they were dead either, but not exactly alive. I was the only thing moving. No wind. No squirrels or rabbits. Just me. In the entire world. I bet if I were able to fly up to outer space, the satellites would have stopped their orbit.
I needed to go. Even if time stopped, that doesn't mean I do. I was a peculiar man. All my limbs were outstretched in the parking lot, groceries still hanging on my arm. It should've hurt, my arms stretching out from my body like that. I was a peculiar man. Only at this specific point in time, I was comforted. If I saw this at any other point in time I would panic. I was a rather normal man. But I'm getting distracted.
I tried to move on, and I did. But my legs didn't move in front of the other. Instead, my legs remained stretched out, but I moved. My still feet slid across the ground in any direction I should choose. I slid across the black asphalt. If I saw it, I probably would have laughed. Sliding beneath the street light, limbs still outstretched, I slid across the ground looking for my destination. Not even I knew what my destination was. I slid to the nearest familiar place. Into the mall.
I expected everyone to be frozen like the people outside, but I met the contrary. There was no one. I could see all their shadows, though. The shadows were reflecting the movements of normal people, but no people were there. The shadows were grouped together, having soundless conversations. A shadow showed a kid upside down on a jungle gym in the playroom, yelling silence to his friends.
The entirety of the mall's lights were turned off. As my limbs loosened, and I could walk instead of slide, I began to walk through the mall, looking for something. As I walked down the extremely dark hallways, the lights that were previously off began being illuminated in my path and revealed more shadows going about their business. I found a familiar electronic store I decided to walk into.
As I walked in, a shadow walked toward me. As it did so, it rotated off the ground. From the flat shadow position, it made a 45 degree rotation so that it was standing upright. As it stood, it grew colors on its form. It took the form of a man in a suit with a name-tag. "Hello, my name is: Ⓧ" The symbol looked familiar. Everything looked familiar. Everything was alien.
The suited man walked toward me. His mouth opened as if to ask me if he could help me, but all that came out was a blur of static and jet planes. The man began to get seemingly annoyed at my confused face, and walked away, turning into a black sand, like gunpowder. I heard a door slam behind me.
As I did so, the hard, shiny mall walls turned to wood. The nice, large fluorescent lights melted into lanterns. There was a loud banging noise that broke the wooden walls into empty windows. I could hear a loud and strong wind outside, but the only thing that I could see was darkness. I felt comfort in my wooden, former mall. The wind picked up the gunpowder and blew it into the lantern. It didn't ignite it, but rather made the lantern fall and ignite the wood.
I began to run. I tried, at least. It felt like I was in water. Someone put life into slow-motion. As the fire crept up to me, I began to scream. What came out was the opposite. I heard laughter. As I looked around, shadows began forming into people again. Into men, women, and children. All the men were businessmen. All the women looked like stay-at-home moms. They were all laughing at me. I decided I would make them change their views.
As the fire continued to wrap around me and melt my skin, I forced myself to laugh. Their faces turned horrific. They literally twisted into a tortured swirl. The fire leapt from me and onto them, their laughter turning into screams. My screams. The laughter I made continued to sound like a group of people rather than myself. I couldn't stop myself from laughing as they screamed. If you saw it yourself, you would agree it was hilarious. The laughing and the smoke made the air in my lungs dissipate. Everything went black and I felt my head painfully bang against the melting wooden floor.
I woke up to human voices. I didn't want to open my eyes. I felt like a teenager again, not wanting to get out of bed for school. But that was so long ago. I finally opened my eyes and felt the rust on my body melt away. It looked like I was in an interrogation room. The voices I heard turned out to be owned by the shadows, except they were standing upright like their human forms. My groceries were dumped onto the table in front of me. All of a sudden, I felt water trickle down from a drain in the roof. Except it didn't fall. It looked like rising water, but from the ceiling. With it, my grocery bag wrapped around my head. My attempts to breathe were fruitless.
When I awoke, I was in the middle of the woods. I was used to this being the end. I was used to seeing men in suits come out of hiding from behind the trees. I was used to them swimming into each other and forming an extremely tall and skinny man without a face. I was used to tentacles sprouting from his midsection. I was used to them squirming toward me like serpents. I was used to the tentacles wrapping around me. I was used to the blackness enveloping my eyes and forcing me to have a vision. I was used to this cycle all too much. After it was all over, I was used to how it would start again.
Everything went still....