Exercise in fear

The boughs of the great oak stretched against the sky like black fingers, strangling the sunlight into muted submission as it filtered to the ground below. Leaf scattered pavement, burned red, orange, yellow announced the arrival of fall as always, predictably in the same cycle, over and over. In this dark, green, almost subterranean seeming road, people wandered aimlessly, as if lost, amongst the steaming stalls of food, the haphazard shops scattered in utter disarray and pools of humanity which gathered at the points of lowest altitude.

It was a hazy, ethereal place at one moment perfectly ordinary and at the next uncannily perverse. Walking down the autumn avenue, you might catch glimpses every now and then of the strangeness of it all-- of the darkness and smokiness which pervaded the air around, of the slight discordance in the constant chatter around you. It was in these brief moments you realized the horrifying aspect of it all, and a heaviness would enter your stomach, a metallic taste flood your tongue and teeth as the crazy fun house of mirrors closed around you. The uneasiness was sickening and growing beyond your capacity, and the sun was not the sun at all, but a fat drop of blood hanging on the horizon. It was at that moment, at that precursor to articulated fear, that prologue to insanity, that your mind broke, and you forgot you had seen anything at all.