Chapter 5

The journey wasn't as smooth as he thought in his head, it had always been his father driving for hours not him. Wiltsville was the nearest big city and as such his first destination.

The car crashes were more in number as he got nearer to the big city. 'So many taken from their everyday lives and met with unknown fates.' Ralph gaped at the scene.

Driving through that wouldn't be possible. He got out of his car and picked up a nearby bike that he believed would help him drive on the dirt road, but then he grew humble as he remembered his history with the "safer" cars he drove(crashed). He gave the dirtbike a longing look, "I don't want to get thrown off a bike just yet".

He got the car off the highway and safely drove to the city, well, what was left of it anyway. It was a carnage of metal and concrete." Well, the way these cars are entering the buildings here, I might've been a goner had I dozed off here".Ralph decided to walk at a distance away from the buildings that didn't look so stable.

He walked and marveled at the destruction caused by a plane wreck.

"Wow, that's kinda scary, to think that plane crashes destroyed on such a large scale".

When he turned around the corner of a large building, he saw something that shook him down to his very core. He hurriedly went back the way he came from without turning around and held his breath as if to diminish his existence.

He saw a skeleton that stood next to a building. He described it as standing next to the building because it quite literally stood at almost the same height as that of the high-rise building. And most important of all was that with its hollow eye sockets the size of a round table, it stared in his general direction. His gun didn't make him feel so safe anymore.

Ralph hadn't held his breath this hard even when he passed the graveyard as a kid. At this moment it seemed like one of those skeletons buried in the graveyard had felt him breathe and out of envy had come to steal his life.

Ralph didn't know whether the monstrosity had seen him or not but he could only pray that it didn't. This standstill only existed for a small while.

As if to solve his doubts, the 400-foot-tall monstrosity screeched out at an unholy frequency that caused Ralph to go deaf in his ears, his tympanic membrane had burst along with several blood vessels, blood slid down his eyes, nose and ears. With bloodshot eyes and lack of balance he became disoriented and fell headfirst.

He couldn't hear it but he felt the ground and the hair on his skin vibrate as the giant took steps towards him. He barely stood up, still lacking balance but pushed his body to the limits as he somehow walked towards the nearby alley. His eyes were blurred due to the blood but he still kept going towards the false hope.

The alley was so near, that he could almost feel its warmth reaching out to him.

His condition degraded his senses to the point that he only realized it was over when he felt pressure on his head or was that feeling the only thing he felt before being crushed due to his head being so close to his brain?

That's how quickly it went, the monstrosity only realized that the prey was dead after all signs of life disappeared from its senses that peered through souls.

That's right, it didn't even realize that the fleshy mush of a corpse was still stuck to its toes, dangling from the mass of dense bones. It just went back to the place it came from, a simple-minded creature indeed.

He felt drowsy as he slipped in and out of a dream-like state and caught a glimpse of the nurse he last saw at the hospital before he finally went into deep sleep.

When he woke up, he didn't remember all of it but he felt the last split-second stabbing at his brain out of his memories. It felt so surreal that he collapsed on the familiar hospital floor, foam coming out of his mouth, good thing he didn't choke or bite his tongue off. That would've been a pitiful end to the regained life.

He convulsed on the floor and the nurse ran towards him, dropping some items off the reception table in the process but her worry was short-lived just like her.

She disappeared from the place she was at a moment ago as if she drifted into another dimension.

Time no longer flowed in a straight line or stopped like Ralph thought it had.