Written Off
an excerpt

I sighed. Oh to be so carefree, I considered. I turned and headed back inside, back to my wonderings, and my need to find out something, anything about the book and the unanswered question it presented.
Several more hours of staring at an open word file, and looking through old Chicago Tribune news clippings and I still didn’t have anything else to go on. I decided I’d better give it a break, so I cooked up some dinner; freezer fish and frozen vegies, and sat down to watch Saturday Night Football, and some bad movie about a guy who finds out that his whole word is artificially created by computers so they can use him and everyone else as human batteries. He was just discovering super powers when I fell asleep in front of the TV, and for the third night running, I had dreams too disturbing for all but the highest TV ratings classification.
The world was shrouded in fog. It was cold, and I could hear the sound of the sea crashing at some distance. There was salt water mixed with the opaque vapour that surrounded me. I was on some sort of gantry, surrounding a metal pipe of some two feet in diameter. I felt the wind pushing the fog past me at a considerable rate. I was surprised it could stay so thick and constant while being moved that fast. Then, from below, there were sounds of shouting, a commotion of pipes clanging and voices raised in fear. Then a great whoosh, and the sound of claxons and alarms. More shouting, and some screams were added to the cacophony.
I felt frustrated. I wanted to know what was going on, to see if I could...
The fog began to break up. It shredded away below me into wisps. I began to see fleeting glances of what was going on below me. In less than half a minute, I could see for at least ten miles. I sorely regretted wishing to do so.
It turned out I was trapped on the gantry, at what seemed an impossible height over a drilling rig below. There were several more some quarter mile or so distant, and all were in the throes of disaster! Gouts of flame were spewing at what seemed random intervals from various places on the rigs. There were sounds of explosions and the clashing of pipes, steal, and the groaning of supports as the platforms swayed alarmingly. Workers ran for lifeboats, and were crushed by falling pipework and machinery, or were caught in gouts of flame that burnt them so quickly they became blackened husks. I gripped the edge of the railing until my knuckles were while with the effort, partly in frustration of not being able to help the poor people suffering below, and partly to stop myself from being flung from my high perch.
I tried to call out to them, to urge them on to escape before it was too late, yet my voice was whipped away by the gusting wind whenever I attempted communication. There was nothing I could do but bear witness, and yet I was not at all afraid for my own life. The last wisps of fog up at my high level were slothing away now, and I tore my eyes from the scene below to run them up another tall tower or smokestack to my right. At my level, my eyes stopped upon a similar high gantry level, and who should be occupying this similar perch but my faithful companions throughout my dreams; Heckle and Jeckle, the handsomely suited men in black. They pointed and laughed at the dying people below, as they munched on their favourite candies and snacks. It was like a big show to them; they reacted how a pair of somewhat board carnival goers might respond. Laughing and gauffing and stuffing themselves with food. They seemed to have little worry for their safety either.
I looked at these men, enjoying the suffering of others, as the drilling platforms died a slow, horrible death, and I felt an immense loathing for them both. I somehow knew that they knew this would happen, and could have stopped it, and instead chose to do nothing. I wanted to get over there, to fly to them somehow and make them suffer and pay for their uncaring attitudes. And yet there was no way to get there, short of flying, and I was fairly sure I couldn’t do that. So I returned my attention to the carnage below.
The seas were whipping up now, and the drilling platforms were bucking and buckling as if whatever they were mounted on below was heaving and tossing like a bucking bronco. More fires and smoke bellowed from the dying platforms. Several ships were leaving post haste from each platform, only to be drawn back by vortexes that started to spin in the waters around the rigs, pulling each and every boat to their dooms. The screams and the cries were pitiful, and so clear to my ears. It was odd how their voices reached me so far up here, and yet mine failed to cross even the relatively short distance to abuse my fellow watchers. Below us, the smaller vortexes were forming into large funnels, sucking at the legs of the doomed platforms, which buckled, bent, tore and exploded in part of their death rattles.
Finally, when I thought it might go on forever, huge gouts of red hot magma shot up through the drilling pipes, and volcanoes erupted through the drilling and pumping apparatus. The plumes of molten rock shot up between myself and the men in black, and the heat and pain was intense. The plume subsided almost as quickly as it had erupted, and both impossibly tall exhaust stacks were now collapsing down towards the churning, steaming sea and the bubbling magma. I glanced across to see the other stack falling in time with mine, and saw that the men in black had not been as lucky as me with the eruption; they were reduced to skeletons again, and it was odd that the magma had burnt away only their flesh, leaving their suits pristine and intact.
Moments before my perch would plunge me into the burning, steaming, frothing maelstrom, I glanced down, and saw that my own flesh was blackened and charred, my body like those that had been caught in the gouts of flame on the platforms before they had collapsed. I stared at my ruinous self in horror, a great wave of fear, revulsion, and loathing passing through me as I stared at the carbonized flesh that covered he bones of my hands and arms. I let forth a moan that turned into a scream, and then hell came up and hit me, and I...
I sat straight up in bed, soaked in sweat and gasping for air. Something fell from my right hand onto the floor, and as I shook my head to clear it, I heard the ringing of my cell phone. I leapt out of bed, grimacing as I noticed my pyjama pants sticking to my legs thanks to the cold sweat I’d developed while asleep. Still only partially sensible, I staggered out to the coffee table and snatched up my phone, answering it before it could shuffle the hapless caller off to message bank land.
“Huh, yeah, what?” I grumbled into the receiver, rubbing my eyes with my other hand and trying to work out why there was so much light outside.
“COLIN!” Gunthar’s voice demanded, while there were sounds of cheering from around him. “Where the hell are you? You’re about to miss the start of the game!”
“Oh crap, what?” I asked, still trying to get my brain out of the charnel pit it hand ended up in at the end of the dream. “What time is it?”
“It’s bloody one forty. The game starts in twenty minutes!”
“Double crap with sauce,” I exclaimed. “I’m hitting the shower, be there quick as I can.” I hung up before he could say anything else, helpful or no. I ran for the shower, shaking my head and wondering where the night went, and the morning for that matter.