I open my eyes and find myself looking up at a cloudy sky. It looks like a storm is brewing. I am lying in a field of dry grass near a barbed wire fence. The air is cool, but somehow stifling; pressure from the coming storm maybe.
Judging by the position of the sun in the sky where it shows through gaps in the clouds,, it looks like it's getting late in the afternoon. It will probably be dark in a couple of hours, and I feel like I do not want to be here when the sun goes down.
I look around and I see a house. It looks familiar, but strange at the same time. It's not my house, I don't know whose it is, but it's not mine. I don't know where mine is.
I realize that I don't even know who I am.
I'm dressed simply; a t-shirt and jeans. I check my pockets for a wallet, but find nothing but a multi-tool and a handkerchief. I decide to go check out the house.
As I walk, I look around. This house is the only thing out here. It seems like there should be a barn near it, but there is nothing but the fence, and some trees beyond it. The only noise I hear is the breeze rustling the grass around me.
I am at the back door of the house now. The door is splintered, like someone has kicked it open; the doorway looks in on a kitchen. The room is in disarray, like someone had a hell of a fight here. The chairs at the kitchen table are lying on the floor, and there is a glass on the floor at the edge of a sticky brown spot that was probably liquid not to long ago. There appear to be scorch marks on the floor, ceiling, and furniture.
“Hello?” I call, but only silence answers.
I feel thirsty, and since no one seems to be here to tell me no, I go to the refrigerator, or at least I assume it's a refrigerator. It looks funny; somehow old and futuristic at the same time. Like a prop out of an old science fiction film that has been put into actual use for a long time.
I pull on the handle, and it opens. It is a refrigerator, but the power has been shut off. There's nothing in the fridge except beer and soda. I take a soda, the can says “Zing Cola”, open it, and drink it.
The cola is a long way from ice cold, but it is cool and it tastes good. I think it's my favourite soda, but I don't know what my favourite soda is. Until a minute ago, I don't think I knew that Zing Cola even existed.
I put the can down, and go check out the rest of the house. I find the front door broken in, just like the back, and there are three vehicles parked in the dry dirt of the front yard. Well, two vehicles, trucks, but with the same well-used futuristic look on them as the fridge, and they have something that looks like the American flag on the door, but with the white stripes replaced with black, and the fifty stars replaced with one, large black one.
The third thing looks like a car, but it has no wheels. All three of these machines have large horizontal cuts in them, like someone cut them with something very hot; a laser maybe. I won't be leaving here in any of those.
I decide to explore the rest of the house. The upstairs is empty, and appears to have been spared from whatever happened on the ground floor. There are unmade beds that look like they have seen a lot of use, but no burns like downstairs.
In the largest bedroom I find a camouflaged backpack and something that I think is a flashlight of some sort, but it's very light, and I can't find any way to open it to check if there are batteries in it or not. I put the torch in the backpack, and take them back downstairs with me. I feel like I have a lot of traveling ahead of me, but I don't know why.
Exploring the rest of the house, I find a trapdoor leading down to a basement. There is a light switch, but nothing happens when I flick it. It turns out that the thing that I thought was a flashlight is a flashlight, or at least it works like one. It cuts through the darkness with bright, strong, white light.
The basement is cold; probably colder than the fridge upstairs was, and the air feels somehow... dense; oppressive. It's not like the air outside; it's thicker, and somehow unnerving. I almost feel like there's something hiding in the dark.
The room is largely empty, and my light flits over a few more burn marks like the ones upstairs. There is an overturned chair near the center of the room, but what draws my interest is on the far wall. There is a rough, old table that looks like wood, but feels like plastic. On it is something that looks like a pistol.
I pick the gun up, and much like the refrigerator and the trucks, this looks like something out of a science fiction movie. The barrel of the gun seems to have a lens inside of it; I can see the light from my torch bounce back off of it. Also, there does not seem to be any obvious way to eject a clip, or load the thing. All I can see on this that even moves without needing to have a screwdriver is the trigger, and a small switch on the side that hums softly if I flip it one way, and goes silent when I flip it back.
I tuck the pistol in the waistband of my jeans, and head back upstairs .I go back to the kitchen, and throw a few cans of Zing into my new backpack along with the food I find in the cabinets. There's two cans of beans, a can of corned beef hash, some Vienna sausages, and a jar of yellow liquid with dark lumps floating in it that the label identifies as “Biff Cheezy's Beefy Cheeze”. There is a picture of a rat wearing sunglasses next to the name. Hell, it's food... at least I think it is.
I feel like I should go now. I don't know where I am going, but I know I can't stay here. I'm not sure where here is exactly, but I know it's not someplace that I want to be. There's a dirt path out front leading out into the woods; it was probably used as a road by whoever lives here.. lived here.
I set out on this dirt road, my pack on my back, heading west, or at least I assume it's west. It's the direction that the sun is setting in at any rate. I don't know where I'm going, but I have a feeling that I'm a long way from home, and if I don't get walking I'll never get there.
As I head down the road, I turn to take one look back at the abandoned house and see that someone has painted graffiti on the side of one of the trucks with the weird flag on its door. The graffiti reads, “DON'T TRUST THE DARKNESS”.
I feel cold suddenly. I start walking faster; heading into the light seems like a really good idea.