Flux

managed to stay awake for a further half an hour until he too, succumbed to sleep.

    Iain didn’t want to sleep, not yet. Fetching another can he sat as his friends snored quietly, locked away in their dreamless sleeps. The nightmare of earlier in the day still played on his mind; he could vividly remember the feelings of fear and he shuddered. There was something else; two words which made him freeze, those two words which kept on being spoken; ‘join us.’ What did they mean? He didn’t know. Was there really someone, or something out there who wanted him to join them? Or was it, as he suspected and definitely the most logical answer, a figment of his damaged mind?
    Elvis was on the radio now, singing Jailhouse Rock. The reception had deteriorated further still until the song sounded as if it came from a wireless of the Rock and Roll era. Within a minute, the music was inaudible, replaced by the harsh sound of static.
    Begrudgingly, Iain struggled from the chair in which he was sunk deep, and onto his feet. Turning the knob slowly, trying to retune to a clearer reception, there was nothing other than white noise. He played with the aerial for a while; still nothing. Returning to the dial he tried again, even more slowly. The sound of a baby crying came faintly through the noise, ebbing in and out of his perception.
    Thinking he must be picking up a neighbours baby monitor, he turned the knob more quickly; a screaming child not being conducive to his relaxation. The wailing covered all frequencies, he switched from FM to AM to see if he could get rid of the sound that way, which was now strengthening in clarity, getting louder and louder. The same on Am; he was starting to freak out, the crying unnerved him, frightened him somehow. He turned the radio off, and silence once again reigned supreme.
    He didn’t want to be in the quiet, all alone. Casting his mind back to the hospital; he’d enjoyed silence then, it had helped him, but now it felt different. Silence would lead to him thinking, and at this point in time, the last thing he wanted was to be thinking too much; his own thoughts had started to frighten him, he couldn’t make any sense of what was happening.
    Iain started to panic that he might be losing his grip on reality.
    He turned on the TV; a set so big and so old, in technology terms, that the thieves who’d robbed him had left it well alone, no doubt thinking the back-breaking work of getting it down the stairs was not worth the pittance they’d have got for it on the black market.
    Static, white noise, call it what you will, filled all channels.
    “Gah, not you as well!” he spoke out loud. One of his friends stirred, he didn’t know which one.
    The crying started again, forcing its way through the hiss. Iain muted the TV set. He didn’t turn it off straight away though; he’d heard once, as a child, that static was made up of countless background signals from the cosmos, natural broadcasts from stars, planets and black holes. Not being a physicist, he didn’t know the truth, but liked the idea anyway.

    A shape started to appear in the snow on the screen, tiny black and white dots, thickening in places to form an image. Iain rubbed his eyes; the image was still there, and getting stronger. A writhing mass, tentacled, started to take shape, getting bigger, looming closer. Eyes became clearly visible in the centre of the screen, and they were looking directly at him. These eyes were not friendly human eyes, or even the unfriendly eyes of an enemy; they had pupils like slits, elliptical like a snake or a goat.
    Turning the television off with such force that it rocked on its stand, Iain went to his room.
    Sitting on the edge of his bed, shaking, he became more and more afraid that he was losing his mind, or that the hospital had missed something and part of his brain was damaged. It might be leaking blood right now, causing pressure inside his skull; he might go to sleep that night and never wake. He told himself to ring Doctor Goodman first thing in the morning.
    Although Iain didn’t want to sleep he finally succumbed, just as the sun was beginning to show its face above the horizon outside.
    He was back staring out over the abyss; the air full of fumes and the din of industry. Although his conscious mind had wiped the place from his memory, in his dream state, he knew exactly where he was.

Chapter Eleven
    A Trip Out

    The aroma of cooking bacon wafted through the slightly open door,