IS

This wasn’t happening. This wasn’t real. This was just a very bad dream from which I was sure to wake from very soon!

I was there. The place you go to when there is nothing, or no one left in your corner to give you hope. The place you find yourself in just before you open your eyes and sit up, thanking the heavens above for making it all just a terrible nightmare, and then praying that it never comes again. Only this wasn’t a nightmare, this wasn’t even a bad dream. This was exactly what it seemed-–as real as real gets.

It had been quiet now for several minutes. There were no whispers or voices, there was no surprise music, and from the floor below the kitchen sink, I could smell no odor whatsoever. I sat there with my back against the cabinet doors, knees pulled close to my chest in the quiet dark. But my nerves were now beyond the extent of survival, buried in the midst of horrid expectation. I didn’t understand why Powder had abandoned me in my hour of… well, whatever this had now become. The end, I suppose; whatever, and however that would turn out.

I began to think of my family, and how they would miss me in the end. However I was to be disposed of, I’m sure to them I would just become missing, forever, like the children in that news special on TV. I only hoped that when that moment came, I wouldn’t feel too much pain. I had suffered enough. Perhaps if I agreed to go willingly, it would make my end quick.

Just then, as I sat there wallowing in the thought of my tragic demise, headlights flashed through the far left window. The concentrated glow rounded the living room walls, announcing the arrival of a car at the front lot of the school. I could hear its ferocious growl of power. I rose to my feet for a look. As it slowly came back around and passed under a light, I could see that it was a dark, possibly even black Camaro. It finally came to a stop, the headlights shut off, and it aggressively roared twice before dying off into silence.

I rushed to the window just in time to see the driver’s side door open and the figure of a man dressed in uniform step out. Even though he was a stranger, and possibly a hundred yards away, the tangible existence of his human form somehow brought a miniscule amount of comfort to me. I wanted to look for my binoculars, but my fear of any space outside the immediate one I now occupied took precedence. I felt a hunger to open the door, leap from the deck, and race to the stranger.

I don’t know if it was because of my destroyed nerves, but I remained there, undecided and unmoving in my dark quiet space, watching and wondering about my new human visitor; all the while keeping a close vigil, and not trusting anything around me. I watched, shaking, as he leaned back into his car and returned with a flashlight. It was only seconds before something caught his attention, as he then turned his light in the direction of the playground at the rear of the school.

“No no no, Don’t go there!” I nervously announced to myself.

Nothing good could possibly come from him trekking blindly into the evil abyss at… I then looked at the clock to find that it was almost ten thirty. And when I looked back again, he had already started to move that way… straight into Satan’s playground. I hoped that with that uniform, he also carried a gun. A weapon I was not fortunate to claim for myself. And if he was so privileged as to acquire such a gift, I hoped that it was a big one-–he would need it.

Officer Dan Daniels was off duty. But as he moved around the school in the direction of the strange sounds and loud noises that pulled him that way, he had never felt more involved, and frankly, more alive in the whole eight years he had served on the force then he did at that very moment.

Something was obviously bidding for his attention, and succeeding, but he didn’t mind. He was up for the task at hand. He was actually beginning to feel enthralled with anticipation when he ran out of brick wall to his left, and started his decent into the dark open area amongst the large towering trees and playground equipment before him.

Shaking a little, Dan placed his hand over his silent partner. “Stay with me, Will,” he whispered. “You and me, buddy.” He then heard a strange growl coming from somewhere directly in front of him. He released Will, and brought him into the action. Will felt cool and strong in Dan’s hand as he continued to slowly move forward, sometimes glancing to one side or the other, and every few seconds back over a shoulder. In his other hand, his left hand, the strong beam of his light dissected the blackness with awesome precision, taking away any unforeseen surprises-–or so it seemed.

“Daniel?” a timid female voice called out. He quickly swung his light to find a woman standing in its beam, maybe forty feet away. He couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Sarah.

“Sarah? What-–what are you doing out here?”

“I was looking for you, Daniel. I’ve missed you so much,” she responded.

To anyone else, it would have seemed awkward and questionable to see her out here alone in the dark playground, practically stalking him, taunting his affection. But to Dan, who over the past several months had ached to hear those very words, it was not only normal but willingly accepted, and with great joy.

Her face seemed cold and expressionless, as she just stood there half naked, wearing only black panties and a matching black bra, while her long flowing blonde hair moved freely with the warm subtle breeze.

He began to feel a bit strange. He looked to the ground, shook his head, and returned his sight to an empty beam of light. “Sarah?” he yelled, turning in circles, desperately trying to find her again.

“Daniel!” her voice cried out, desperate, somewhere beyond the tree line just ahead of him.

“Sarah,” he whispered, as he slowly began to head in that direction, progressively increasing his movement to a full out run, leaping into the tall weeds inside the tree line, when he found himself falling onto the remains of what once resembled the bottom half of a deer. His fingers sunk into its soft decaying flesh and fur. He pushed himself off of it, fighting the stench that now filled his nostrils and sickened his stomach.

“What the hell!” he blurted out as he slowly stepped back and spit, wiping the remnants of death across the front of his pants before gathering up his flashlight, and eventually, his powerful companion. Dan took a moment to wipe away the blemishes of dirt and grass from Will’s pristine appearance before regaining his composure and refocusing on the reason he was here to begin with.

“Sarah!” he called out once more. When, out the corner of his eye, he saw movement, and the quick fleeting glimpse of her golden hair disappear behind a tree several yards ahead of him. “Sarah! Wait!” he called out in the same direction. He started to run, when a disgusting smell much more intense and far more revolting than the dead carcass took hold of his lungs, making it hard to breathe, burning his eyes. He stopped running and reached for a small tree, missing it completely and falling into the tall weeds. Choking for fresh air, he had lost his flashlight, but not his Will, as he clamped his grip even tighter around his only true friend.

“Will-–I can’t breathe–-and my eyes,” he announced, coughing and dragging his arm across his brow, trying to clear his vision, when he then became aware of a figure leering over him. He looked up through watered eyes, and noticed only that there was no flowing hair. There was no hair at all, from what his vision would allow him to ascertain.

“Sarah?” he quietly whispered, still clinging to an image in his mind that conflicted with what now stood before him. Delusion was beginning to set into his brain, which was being manipulated to limits beyond any human expectation. He began to convulse, coughing and spitting blood as a result of being torn from the inside out. In one final attempt to make a stand, to not be overtaken without some kind of fight, Dan Daniels feebly raised Will into the air and pointed him at the blurred hairless figure, crying tears and gurgling something that resembled affirmation to his creator—just before Will exploded, leaving nothing above Dan’s right forearm. Officer Daniel Lee Daniels exhaled his last frail breath-–and was no more. Time of death… 10:41 pm.

I heard what sounded like somebody setting off a mortar, maybe something left over from the Fourth of July. I heard something that sounded like that-–but given these circumstances, I was sure it had to be a gun.

My heart was beating fast once again as I listened and waited for a sign of any movement. But as I continued to stand there with my nose pressed against the glass like a curious child, and more time passed by, I turned to the dark Camaro that waited under a light in the front lot of the school. Still and patient, abandoned, but still hopeful.

Peculiar that a beautiful inanimate machine could come across as something with emotion, that feelings could be experienced for something not human; sadness for the forsaken, or the derelict. I went into the garage, maybe for the last time, and pulled another club from the bag.

The funny thing, the absolute irony of my choice of weaponry, was that I had never gotten the chance to play with these clubs on a real course. Their heads had never touched the finely trimmed and manicured greens to which they were meant for. My father-in-law had gotten them for me last year for my birthday, never dreaming that they would become my first and last choice of defense. These hand-precision instruments of sport were designed to hit a tiny white ball, not to bash in a large white cranium. But I would certainly do just that, if the circumstance called for it.

I drew a random iron from the bag, not being able to see, or even caring for its numbered status before heading down into the basement to possibly regain power, and ultimately, light. Once again I descended down the count of eleven steps into the cool subterranean area of the house, this time needing my large yellow flashlight to guide the way.

When I arrived in front of the electrical panel, the main breaker was in the off position. I had been wandering around in the dark for so long that when I reset the breaker, the bright light that followed hurt my eyes for a moment. It was as if I were a miner, coming back to the bright surface after being trapped in a dark tunnel for days.

Next, I found myself standing on my deck, gazing toward the school and most likely the playground of fear that contained frightening mysteries within its shadowy boundaries. It certainly wasn’t something I wanted to do, but rather something I felt I had to do. I stood there for a few seconds longer, hoping that maybe there was only a delay to the stranger’s return, and that my heroic endeavor would eventually become nothing more than a nice gesture. But gesture and compliance would become one and the same, as the grounds remained still, with only a thin mist for movement, as it slowly infested the field.

I tipped back my head and sucked in a deep breath of fresh night air, just before exhaling and simultaneously stepping off the deck, beginning yet another journey to my favorite school yard. The black Camaro sat dormant and shiny under the bright pole light as I walked past. Wondering if this was a mistake in progress, I swallowed hard and pushed on.