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He remains in the space between waking and sleep for as long as he can, feeling the unremembered dream fall away as the contours of the world solidify around him. As the yellow-orange glow of daylight swells gently beyond his closed eyelids, various sounds emerge: birds, car motors, sirens. A word takes shape in his brain: Tuesday.
Then: canine footsteps, claws ticking against the hardwood floor. He steels himself to open his eyes.
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The job is simple enough, and it gives him plenty of time alone. The compound he’s hired to guard consists mostly of a former theme park as well as some additional outbuildings, all abandoned several years before and awaiting reconstruction or demolition. The years have given the buildings and roads a gentle, rounded look: windows hazy with dust, plants sprouting between bricks, painted signs paled by age and sun.
He has a standard route that takes about 90 minutes, meaning he can walk it four times per shift with time left over for other tasks. As he walks, he breathes in the strange dust-and-mildew smell of the abandoned buildings, feeling the early-fall sunlight on his face, watching as the shadows lengthen over the course of the afternoon and evening. This time of year, his shift ends right at sundown, and as he chains the park gates shut he can watch the sun set over the distant downtown skyline.
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He holds himself inside the half-dream, feeling its strange coolness still within him. A word takes shape in his brain: Thursday. Another word: October. Sounds, distant but persistent: a strange skittering across stone, a small whimper. Then the familiar yellow-orange light behind his lids, the tick of canine feet on the floor, and he lets the world take shape as he is pulled into waking.
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Fall turns to winter. The paths and roads of the park take on new tones during the late-shift darkness: blacks, grays, dark crimsons, cut through with the occasional pale-white beam from the spotlights set up on rooftops. He varies his route, taking the narrow alleys between buildings, peering through dust-covered windows to make out the dark scattered interiors, his flashlight beam revealing dropcloths draped over heaps of debris, detached stoves pulled away from walls, toppled chairs and tables, shattered glass that glints back at him like stars in a nighttime sky.
One afternoon, the sun already low in the sky, he turns down a narrow alley off one of the larger roads. He’s never taken the route before, and after a few turns the alley opens into a wider space between several buildings. The walls that border the space appear much older, with peeling paint and wood-and-metal eaves that look ready to fall at any moment. The late-afternoon light grows dimmer, and he clicks his flashlight on, passing it over the aged walls and iron-barred windows. The far wall looks especially old: its wooden boards are warped and have large gaps between them, and much of its white paint has flaked off.
Drawing the flashlight beam upward, he sees what appear to be words, painted in a vintage carnival style. Despite their dilapidated condition, they remain legible:
BEYOND THESE WALLS: THE CITY OF THE DEAD
ENTER IF YOU DARE - HOLD ON TO YOUR SOUL!
Below the words is a large skull, floating over a desert-like silhouetted landscape of hills, mesas, and rock pillars. To the left of the small mural is what appears to have once been a door, but is now covered by boards. To the right is a small barred window; he approaches it and points his flashlight inside. The window is filthy, and all he can make out within is vague debris on a dusty concrete floor.
Somewhere at the periphery of his hearing he picks up a faint sound, at first like a bird or the squeak of a window shutter moved by the wind. It grows louder and begins to take on a different tone, like the wheeze of labored breathing. He shivers despite his down jacket and steps back from the window; seeing how dark the sky has become, he quickly turns and leaves via the alleyway.
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He holds himself inside the half-dream, feeling its strange coolness. A word takes shape: Friday. Another: December. A third, which he can’t make out but sounds something like cropless. Sounds, distant but persistent: a strange skittering across stone, labored breathing through many thin nostrils. The light behind his lids is faint but present; after a few moments, the padding of canine feet on the floor, slow, cautious. He will not be pulled into waking in such a dark season, he knows; he must place himself into the world, choose to partake in the incarnation of another day.
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The day is dim, beset by a strange haze that only allows the faintest sunlight to filter through. He walks his rounds automatically, sticking to the main roads and paths. He’s been sleeping worse lately, which is unusual for him, particularly during the darker winter months; though his job is simple enough and doesn’t require much attention, he nonetheless finds that the more exhausted and underslept he is, the longer the days drag on.
Finally, long after the sun has set, his shift ends. As he locks and chains the main gate, he looks up at the night sky to the west; at first he can see a few dim stars, but they soon flicker into darkness. The train home is empty, which he doesn’t mind, and the streets are deserted on his walk home from the station. He lets himself into his apartment, walks and feeds the dog, then eats and turns on the TV but can’t keep his eyes open. He makes his way into bed, and as soon as he lies down he feels himself being dragged into sleep, forcefully, actively pulled from waking to dream.
Darkness, cool unmoving air, dust and mildew. The dream is all around him, he just needs to wake his dream-self to it. Someone, his mother perhaps, holds him in her arms, saying wake up, you’re back in Necropolis, it was just a nightmare. Shuffling and dragging of something toward him in the darkness, across cold dust-covered stone, whimpering through countless nostrils on a beaklike snout, pulled and dragged by many legs, evoking meaningless words from a fading, useless, soon-to-be-forgotten dream: Dog. Canine. Pet. His mother’s voice again: You were calling out, asking where everyone had gone, we’re all here, we’re all here.
He feels the cold vastness of the world taking shape around him, sees only blackness beyond his eyelids, hearing distant cries, like sirens or whales, muffled as if heard through countless fathoms of saltwater; closer, his mother’s voice again, telling him it’s all right, you’re safe at home, you’re back with your people. She continues stroking his face reassuringly with what some might call hands, telling him what day and year it is in an unending word, a deep modulating groan forced through countless tracheae and glottal passages. He breathes deeply, feeling hot acid tears on his face, and steels himself to open his eyes.