Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

I remembered that I hadn’t heard any real birds since getting here; it occurred to me that they probably didn’t have any.
    »Walter,« Eulie shouted back, slowing enough to let me catch up with her and then taking my hand so she could help me move at her pace. »Left here. That park, over there. It’s windowed. Hurry.«
    »Eule,« I panted, »what’s happening?«
    »When the breach underhorizons,« she said, nodding at the white gash in the sky, »that times it. Walter, hurry.«
    A few minutes more and we reached the park, a small strip of green running through the middle of Maplewood, at the bottom of the hill that led up to her house. We were surrounded on all sides now by people running, shouting; where they were heading, nobody knew, but I guessed that was as good a way to spend the time they had left as any. The screams in the air made me think of the last game in the Series the year before, Dodgers versus Yankees. Brooklyn won. No time for hot dogs here, though. Breaking loose of the crowd Eulie and I dashed into the park, stumbling through bushes, nearly running into a bench. A stream ran through the centre of the green; the water looked as if it were starting to boil.
    »Here!« Eulie said, coming to a dead stop in the midst of a sloping meadow. She knelt down, throwing her green thing back into her bag and starting to look for something else. I heard thunder, but saw no lightning. I watched this part of the town of Maplewood running toward Milburn. Eulie took out a small metal box the size of a cigarette pack. This one had a visible button, round and blue and located dead centre at the top. A thin red bar was inset along the side of the box. »Your world evidences no changes. We’re safe there, momento.«
    »What if this happens over there, later?« She shook her head. »Dryco can’t do anything?«
    »Nada,« she said. »Not anymore. Dryco’s going. Gone.«
    My head began to sting, as if someone were plucking at it with needles; as I watched Eulie slide a small red bar along the side of the little box, I understood where the pain was coming from. Our electrified hair was being pulled out, one at a time; I saw Eulie’s wriggling like thin worms as they drifted skyward.
    »Walter,« she said. »I’m uncertain if transience remains workable. If not –«
    »We won’t be worse off than we are.«
    »Ready yourself,« she said, looking off toward the west. As the white line drew closer to the earth its colour, nearest the ground, began to change. From white it darkened into something of a lemony yellow; then deepened further into Halloween orange. As the line dropped, the orange turned into firetruck red, and then into a deep predawn purple. The orgone in the sky shimmered, waved, seemed ready to catch fire; red halos flared up around everything in sight – trees, people, cars. There came a roar as if from underneath the earth, far below; as it grew louder and louder I saw blades of grass pulling out of the ground, sailing into the air; leaves fell upward from the trees, and then the trees themselves began to rise, their roots churning and tearing the earth apart into great clumps as they heaved loose of their footing. Nails pulled out of the boards in the park benches, and both flew into the air. The bricks of chimneys came apart, the roofs of cars, the laundry on lines. The sky was filling up fast with all the pieces of the world – kitchen utensils, shingles, bicycles, clothing, slices of bread, trash cans, twigs, frogs, dogs, children. Everything floated up more slowly than you’d have expected, as if being drawn towards the now rainbowed split. Just as we found ourselves beginning to lift off from her world, just before the split came up against it, Eulie pressed the button.
    »Godness, enshield –«
    » Valentine – !!«
    We both saw the flash, but neither felt nor heard it; we shut out eyes, and when I opened them again we were back in that place between, where all was flat and white and silent. This time I knew that what I felt or didn’t feel, was genuine, and not merely Pi-induced tactile sensation, and marvelled at how still everything had become, so suddenly. I was still holding onto Eulie’s hand, but wouldn’t have known that I was, had I not been looking at her. She looked back at me; smiled. For several moments we floated there, silent, at peace. I wondered why my ghost, that poor fellow trapped within, had never come to like it. Honestly, it seemed more like being on the