[Volume One: Fallen Petal Start]
Dall was walking through the crowded plaza. The only guidance through this sea of people were the lights and billboards plastered all over the tall metal buildings--otherwise the scene would be painted with the dark night sky. The scent of alcohol and gasoline overwhelmed the city square. The cold of an eastern New England night radiated off the light concrete stained with all types of dirt and grime.
Everyone in the square was standing still with their heads perched to the sky like young children watching a plane pass; they were all chatting away idly in a group too large to hear any single discussion, all the words just blended together into one big clutter. For Dall, this sight was one he has seen every year that he's lived in New York. All he wanted to do was get home and get rest after a long days work; so he continued to gaze at his phone pushing through the crowd of foreigners and locals in awe of this yearly tradition.
At the end of December, groups of tourists flock to New York for this annual event, which marks the start of a New Year. It was just a light display, yet it brought so much joy to those watching. A radiant ball perched upon a building as the center piece of light in this square of concrete and rust. Maybe others saw it as a sign of hope—a beacon in an otherwise hopeless world.
Dall gazed at his phone screen, it read 11:58, he sighed and stopped walking, moving his gaze from the LED display of his phone to the light fixture standing above this crowd of eager onlookers. If I'm already here, I may as well stay to watch he thought to himself. He was positioned to the left side of the plaza, standing in the back behind a large crowd of people who held high and joyful expectations of what this New Year might bring.
What about Dall? What about his New Year? It didn't matter to him. To him, the most important part of the year was tomorrow. Despite being New Years day, his miserly workplace hadn't decided to close. This meant he was forced to go into work instead of spending time with the ones he held dear. This was the cycle of his life; work, work, and more work. He never caught a break, he probably wouldn't even get a break if he was breathing his last breath.
"3.. 2.." the eager onlookers chanted as the clock read 11:59:57; hints of Irish, British, French, and Spanish accents could be heard through the unison cheer.
"1!" they exclaimed, the cheer seemed to hold a certain lively hope that even lifted Dall's spirits for a moment. Though, only for a moment that is.
Some turned to face their significant others, embracing them to start the New Years. Others cheered and squealed as they jumped at their friends, happily starting a clean slate with those closest to them. Dall was cold and sore, celebrations didn't matter, not that he had anyone to celebrate with at that time anyways. As soon as that light turned off he began walking towards the street that he needed to take to get to his apartment.
The streets were relatively clamored with lights and music in celebration of the new year. People were stumbling drunklike and chattering about with rumors and gossip among one another. You could see the thick fog reflecting off the lights caused by the abundance of smoke in the area. Dall wanted to get out of this area quickly so he picked up the pace. Heavily smoked out areas weren't his thing, they made him feel sick.
He was relatively young, twenty-one years old and a worker at a logistics firm in Manhattan; so, it's no mystery that he is able to live a middle-class life in New York City without having to deal with the possibility of bankruptcy. Though, it doesn't mean his apartments in a nice area. His neighbors and the surrounding buildings are filled with rowdy individuals. It seems as though the government is giving middle-class housing to the wrong people. Maybe they should fill with with scholars and workers. Though they all probably made it to the higher class.
He bought the apartment as the street it was on was a ten minute walk from Times Square which was convenient for commuting to work and back.
Drearily, Dall was walking along the sparsely filled main street, eavesdropping on conversations of those passing by as he often enjoyed doing. He heard people discussing resolutions and goals. Heh. Goals. My only goal is to get a girlfriend. Dall scoffed to himself silently. Maybe business is his forte, but romance isn't. He wasn't a relatively bad looking guy, tall and blonde with green eyes. Though, in New York City he was just another overworked looking accountant. Plus, his sights were more focused on the promotion he'd get if he made better results in the workplace, not on romance.
...
His footsteps clattered in the silent concrete stairway of his apartment building. The night was dead here; except for the occasional ruckus every two or three flights up. The apartment building was 15 stories, so it took a lot of work to walk up to his unit--which was on the 13th floor.
Each floor was arranged into a hallway with 7 units on each side; the spacing between each door showed the large size of each apartment, matched with the luxurious looking carpet and entryways that was the selling point of each hallway. It looked like a rich hotel, and the rent wasn't any better than that of a luxury hotel suite.
He arrived on the 13th floor, it was silent. Dall didn't mind his neighbors as they were often not the rowdy celebratory type, but rather the hard working and persistent type. His unit was 1307, on the right side of the end of the hallway. The hanging glass lights at the end of that hallway that looked as though they were from a Victorian castle were flickering, indicating their push for survival.
Dall slid his keycard into the lock on his door and walked into his tight apartment entryway, slamming the door behind him. It was one bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room which held a built in kitchen near the entryway. It was not at all a small apartment but still not as roomy as his parents house in Northern New York. The only plus was that his room had a balcony, which perfectly suited the high-floor residence. He could easily sit on the balcony and gaze over most of Manhattan.
The room was dark, Dall had smashed his foot off of the wall trying to scramble through the unit; it smelt of clean linen and natural chemical cleaner. If not most things, one thing he prided himself in was his cleanliness; maybe in another life he would become a maid.
After the late night, he all had no intention to stay awake much longer; he headed to his bedroom, kicking off his shoes near the bed frame and not even bothering to change his work attire before diving into bed. It had been a terribly hard workday, filled with constant HR complaints. He thought he was a good co-worker, though his fellow accountants must not have thought so. He sighed.
But alas, he was finally in the sanctity of his home, the one place he was most at peace. The place he felt the most at ease in. Finally, he could get some sleep...
He faded out...
...
...
"Eruoushh~"
A sound creeped through Dall's dormant mind. It was slow and drawn out, like the wind amongst a sea of winter trees; it was ghastly, seeming as if it came, not from any one point, but was created from all ends of his mind. A phantom in the truest sense.
It was sound that was like a whisper directly in his head, it was quiet and drifting; a vagabond thought. Like a tsunami, it flooded all corners of his subconscious—one may think of it like glue! It crept across his thoughts and stuck like a blanket of reverie.
But wait, he could hear? Or at least that's what the sense felt like. This truly was a strange dream. Dall was fully awake at mind, fully able to think, comprehending all aspects beyond his consciousness; it was as though he was floating in his own thoughts. He had just been sleeping moments before, so how did he arrive in this dreamland of subconsciousness?
Before this moment, Dall hadn't been dreaming. It was like one of those nights where all memories slip through—as though you had fallen asleep and awoken instantly—like the effects of an anesthetic. However, for Dall, he hadn't awoken, but instead was transported into this dreamlike realm within his own psyche. It felt like a dream, but it wasn't--it was real.
It was strange... Yet despite this harrowing unknown, Dall had felt no fear. Utter peace. It was like nirvana, a land of pure peace. A land like heaven, of purity and serenity.
He couldn't see anything. The surrounding was an inebriated blue, as though you had shone a flashlight through your closed eyelids allowing the colors around you to shine in through a blanket of flesh. It was like his eyes were sealed shut—not as though they had been glued—but as if a thick sludge was covering them; preventing Dall from opening them to the fullest. The blue was a color he hadn't seen before. It was bright and fluorescent.
Even though it felt as though he was existing behind his eyes, he floated; holding a corporal body which he could feel the surrounding environment. This threw away the possibility of it being just a dream. He wasn't inside his head, but was in a real existent space drifting like a meteor in the cosmos.
He was falling.. falling through a space of nothingness. It was warm, it was deep. Yet, it was endless, a space so large he couldn't tell the boundaries...
He was just falling. Like a flower petal in the wind. A dandelion seed flowing through the vast sky in a dance of splendor and glee.
...
Clack
A sound echoed through the realm. It radiated through the space like a pulsar. It was like a shockwave that spread through the endless space without stopping. It just continued moving farther and farther away without colliding with any solid boundaries.
Was this space truly endless?
Dall noticed that when the click happened, the sludge on his eyes seemed to have fallen off simultaneously. He could open his eyes now. No longer bound by the restriction of blindness.
He opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed was the space he was in. It was indeed endless, and as far as he could see was a bright blue. Atop the space, in what one might consider to be the sky, was a giant light. It was also blue, but not a bright blue; it was a dark light that covered the entire space which somehow glowed a radiant cyan. This space denied all known physics.
The next thing he noticed, was that he was truly falling. Well, it's a better description to say that Dall was floating. He was moving downwards, but in this endless space, it was as though he wasn't moving at all. He felt the wind of movement surround his body, which indicated surely that he was in motion.
It was endless. Like the personification of infinity. The wind caused by his ethereally slow movement, wasn't cool like a normal breeze--but rather held a certain heat, kind of like opening an oven. He could move, but he couldn't turn. His back was positioned downward, and no matter how much he tried, he could change his center of balance. His hands and feet were free, but his torso wouldn't twist. The same went with the neck.
His eyes were fixated on the dark blue flare, which enveloped him in the only sense of coldness that existed in this realm.
...
...
It felt like hours had passed and Dall was still falling. Floating freely in this endless expense. Nothing had happened. Though, he had felt the light had gotten a little bigger. While he felt like he was falling backwards, the space seemed to be moving him forwards.
It took hours, but the first thing--and last thing--finally happened.
Swoosh
From the side of this endless palace of azure, illusionary neon blue flower petals flew in and began to circulate around Dall. His head had freed a few hours back so he turned to follow them. They began to spin around him, in a slow motion. They were multiple different shades of blue, but all glowed a bright neon. They settled at a slow pace and began to rotate around him counter clockwise.
They made him feel at peace. In this endless space, something was there to appease his sight. He focused on them.
They swirled like a whirlpool around him, as though he was the sun and they were planets orbiting his gravitational pull.
He had a thought, what if he were to touch one? What would happen to the flowers and the space around him.
..
Dall extended his hand, stretching as far as his could. He stretched... and finally came in contact with one.
SWOOSH~
The space around him turned, it began it spin. It was like Dall had stepped into a tornado.
The flower petals began to spin, and gathered into a line which flew at Dall. Each petal disappeared into his chest.
His body began to fade--this threw him into a state of fear.
No! he tried to call out but only the thought came across. He could no longer move
The falling sped up, and the blue light grew more..
and more...
until the dark blue tundra-like center of this space enveloped Dall completely.
Everything ceased; sound, sight, feeling. It all went cold, it all froze.
Everything went black.