The giant hunk of metal takes off and disappears into the sky. Looking around, It seems I've already sent everyone off. 'Finally done' I rejoice in my accomplishment but It only lasts a second. The boundless sky is just as lonely as the barren ground beneath it. I'm the only one left.
The wide plane I stand on seems to stretch endlessly, but regardless, I know there's no one beyond it. I take a moment in the universal silence to stare at the stars in the sky that is slowly being closed off to me. A thick fog settles in before I hear the ominous roars and moans of the horror that I'll be stuck with. 'I'm not scared of death' I remind myself.
As if to spite me, a tear rolls down my face tearing through my stupid conviction. I still don't dare to open my eyes, but through the darkness I find my voice "I'm... not scared to die."
'But, will I really die alone?' I shudder and squeeze my eyes shut tighter.
...
...
"rrrrrng rrrrrrng"
The horrid metallic purr of my morning alarm fulfills its purpose almost exaggeratedly in waking me up from my strange dream.
"GOOD MORNING!" I yell with as much vigor as possible at the terrible thing, simply because I can. Of course there is no response from the inanimate object, or anything else, for that matter, in this small, destitute home. I slam the clock into silence before reluctantly pulling myself out of bed and into the reality of another busy Saturday. The looming morning silence is enough to convince me to audibly recall my to do list for the day as I walk through my bedroom door.
"Work, Relax, Homecoming...?" I say the last one questionably, debating if taking part in an event with such potential for embarrassment would be good for my social health.
"bzz"
Ah.
My phone buzzes and I open it to find a message as if in response to my internal debate.
[Hey, Michael here, just messaging to make sure you're coming to the dance tonight.]
"What!?" I cant help but let out my inner voice as I read the message on my screen before hurriedly texting back.
[Michael? How did you get my number?]
I sat quietly in expectation at the top of the staircase, staring daggers at the '...' typing indicator before the reply finally came through.
[I'm glad you asked. you're totally off the grid dude. I asked everyone in class and nobody even had your insta, let alone your actual phone number]
'Insta? Well of course they didn't have it. It doesn't exist after all...' But 'totally off the grid?' 'couldn't you just say I have no friends?' not that I don't appreciate the equivocation.
But my question still wasn't answered 'how did he get my phone number?'
Thankfully another message quickly came up after and partially answered my question.
[I almost gave up after messaging like 10 people last night, but in the end Valerie gave it to me without me even asking. She said she'd heard I'd been asking.]
Valerie? That darn woman. How sinister.
"Bzz" My thoughts were interrupted once again by the buzz of a new message on my phone.
[ Still, Valerie huh? I never would've thought! You're one lucky guy. That was probably the first time she ever messaged me at all.]
Yeah, still... It doesn't make sense, did I ever end up giving that evil woman my number? I don't remember doing such a thing. But also, what does this chimp mean by lucky? Is he the type to enjoy such high pressure social torture?
Well, enough theatrics.
[Um, yeah. I'll be there tonight..]
[Nice! Meet us at the west parking lot, the one by the field-house.]
'Ugh...' Well there goes my option of a free night. 'Us' though huh, I wonder who else will be there?
Whatever.
I have a whole day of work ahead of me before that, best not to let the thought plague me the whole way through.
..
...
Speero's Salmon, the main street destination for all your fish-related needs, excluding everything outside of salmon of course. Having dominion of only one type of product in the 'ever so lucrative seafood market' was always a strange trait of this local wonder. But questioning anything about Mr. Percel's business was equivalent to personally handing in my resignation letter.
During working hours Percel was always first on the job, finding the perfect place to sleep for the rest of the day somewhere in the backroom. So, for someone like me who has neither the reason nor motivation to run my mouth and wake him up with complaints or plain noise, the job was a perfect fit.
"Welcooome." I say unenthusiastically for the umpteenth time that day in reaction to the sound of the store's front door bell, careful not to disturb Mr. Percel's sleep. Despite the high-pitched ringing of the broken bell, Mr. Percel always found a way to sleep through the noise that permeated throughout the store.
Except for the closing bell, of course. He was always the first to run past me and out the front door, leaving the store keys behind for me to lock up after the day.
'Oh, the benefits of being a successful Entrepeneur.' I thought to myself as I figured that was at least 60% of the reason one would strive to do something as arrogant as start their own business when 'Amalon Brime' existed.
Anyways, the customer who had just entered the store wore a large black trench coat the likes of which you would see in a movie where so and so had his daughter kidnapped and decided that gothic fashion choices was the foremost step to taking down the criminal undercity in order to get her back.
Seeing the man wander through the store without so much as a nod in my direction for my cordial greeting caused a tinge of annoyance to surface in my expression in the form of a tiny lip twitch that soon passed.
'Wait till you get to the front counter, I'll ring you up an extra 1.5%!' I thought to myself deviously as the man continued to walk in long strides around the salmon's display cases that were lined up across the store.
Reaching the display case which contained the freshest batch of salmon that we had received, the man soon reached his long and slender arm around it to grab one of the raw fish and bring it back into his trench coat.
'A fish robbery!?' I shouted inwardly, astounded at the extent to which people were going nowadays for a quick buck.
"Excuse me sir~" I spoke in a feminine manner that would (hopefully) give him reason not to see me as enough of a threat to beat me over the head with the fish he just stole. From first person experience I could tell you, taking a beating from a fish was quite a bit more painful than you'd think.
"You're going to have to pAY FOR THAT!" I said louder than I initially planned as the man quickly made his way towards me while I started to speak. I quickly pulled myself away from the front counter. Just out of fish-slapping range, to be extra safe.
The man slowly pulled out something that glistened and shone at its edge from his trench coat.
'God no.' I thought.
'Not the sterling silver salmon.' Legend had it, that 45 years ago when Speero's Salmon had just opened there was an entirely silver statue made of the founder's, my boss's father's, favorite salmon. Somehow, this salmon statue was so realistic that when one of the workers who was employed there saw it, he mistook it for a real salmon and sold it into the hands of a very unlucky business tycoon owner.
A couple days later, when the man had died from trying to eat the silver salmon, his son came into the store and used the thing to viciously beat the man who had sold it to him in the first place, resulting in his untimely death. Since then, it is said that there have been multiple instances of the son's descendants coming in on the anniversary of that day to continue the tradition and deliver a brutal beating with the salmon that they passed down through generations to the unlucky employee manning the register that day.
Of course, I never believed such an insane story when Mr. Percel had first told me.
I mean, who can't differentiate metal from fish before it kills them? Such a thing was ludicrous, but thinking about it now, perhaps the businessman was so rich that he was unfamiliar with the 'common' food at the time, and simply assumed that poor people ate metal so he would be fine doing the same.
Much like how most people nowadays assume that the air of Mexico is really dyed yellow, or that Switzerland is a real place.
Which it isn't, by the way.
Anyways, back to reality. Oh yeah, I was about to get beat by a metal fish.
"AAH!" I screamed out loud in panic as the man pulled out a long metal... -Oh.
Along with his arm, a few metal coins clunked down onto the table in front of me after escaping the abyss of his trench coat, which seemed to have been the source of my baseless panic.
"Oh, uhhh, thank you?" I answered haphazardly, still recovering from the scene of a fishy death that continued to play out in my mind.
As the man pulled his arm back in, however, I spotted strange red markings that were drawn in spider-like shapes across the back of his hands.
'Huh.' I wondered as the man quickly turned to leave out the front door, sounding the broken bell once again.
'I guess metal is making a comeback?' I spoke my thoughts inwardly, staring blankly at the door that closed behind the lanky man before returning my direction to the coins below me.
"What?" I thought in surprise as I inspected the strange, metal coins that had the faces of men unknown to me engraved on their sides.
'Who the hell's country did these come from?' I wondered. The men on the coins looked to be ancient, along with the coins themselves. They were crudely shaped; to the point that I could just barely make out the intention to be a circle in their forms.
The men on the coins, on another hand, were dressed strangely, wearing medieval clothes and the strangest part: possessing supernatural features on some of their faces such as fangs or pointed ears. Some among the 10 coins he had left me even had unnaturally shaped eyes that were nothing similar to what a human's eyes should look like.
"Damn role players." I cursed aloud as I had no idea how to ring in these coins in my possession. As if Mr. Percel needed any reason to be upset with me in the first place.
'I could just say I was robbed.' I thought, pocketing the strange coins before turning to go face the sleeping predator in the back room.