He decided to concentrate on running, seemingly faster and faster, yet he appeared to be getting no further away from them. Streets and junctions on either side of him flew past at tremendous speed, as if he was running at light-speed, houses and buildings rippling and popping out of existence one by one as his legs pounded the concrete, his bloodied knees weeping fiercely and leaving a trail far behind him. He saw a public park to his left, there were people there, this would be the safest place to be he thought, so he quickly darted in. He had no idea how he had managed to get here so quickly as he had been running for what seemed like less than a minute, and this park was easily more than ten minutes from his house. It must have been the adrenalin dilating his perception of time, like when you have an accident and you process everything much more quickly. He looked behind to see the shadow figures and the landscape monster still coming for him as he dashed despairingly across the grass. Up ahead he saw Emma and called out to her before he screamed at the top of his voice.
EMMA
Emma heard someone shout her name behind her, it sounded almost desperate and she couldn't make out who it was. She swiftly turned her head and saw Samir, seemingly running on the spot. His arms and legs were swinging wildly, but he was stuck fast, as if magnetised to the ground. What was happening? And how did he get here so fast? It had taken her ten minutes and she was a strong runner, Samir had never run in his life. She turned to run back to him, strangely fascinated by how he was moving without going anywhere; it seemed to defy the laws of physics.
She was about thirty metres away when everything suddenly got stranger. Samir screamed, louder than she had ever heard anyone scream before, and his eyes were wide with fear. She suddenly saw something behind him, figures blinking in and out of her view, like someone was switching them on and off quickly like a light switch. They were blinking in and out at a more rapid rate the longer she looked at them and then noticed that they all looked like the monochrome figure she thought she had seen outside his house. She was now confused and scared, her mind racing, trying to make sense of what was happening. As the shadow figures quickly seemed to take full form, she saw something behind them, moving in a wave-like way, something flecked with flashing blue strands. She started to hear a low thumping sound that seemed to make not only the ground shake, but also the sky. It was also getting more rapid, quicker and quicker until it was a long deep absorbing vibration.
Emma looked on in horror, tears streaming from her eyes, as the shadow figures started blinking back out of reality, their arms embracing Samir, who gradually started to blink in unison. She saw blue pulses flickering from behind him, gradually enveloping him until his body seemed to shatter into pieces. His limbs detached themselves, blood seemed to explode into shards of glass, and then as quickly as it had started, he seemed to collapse in on himself. Blue pulses grabbed each part of him and swirled around in a chaotic fashion before being swallowed by this rip in reality.
Nothing.
There was suddenly nothing, no sign Samir had ever been there, no sign of the apparitions she had seen, no hint of anything amiss. Everything was back to normal, which she couldn't comprehend. She looked around her at the other people in the park, all acting normally. Had no-one seen that? Someone must have seen what had just happened.
But what happened? Her friend appeared out of nowhere, when he couldn't have reached her in that amount of time. Then he ran fixed to the spot, defying the laws of physics, before being snatched away by shadowy figures and pulsing blue fibres. None of this made sense, it just didn’t happen. No one else had batted an eyelid around her so she must have hallucinated the whole thing.
She sat down quickly on the nearest bench, wiping the tears away from her eyes. She was now seeing things, this wasn't normal. Had she been exposed to whatever it was that Samir was exposed to? That's the only thing that could make sense, as she was fine this morning until she went to Samir's, and he was the one talking about seeing things. She'd had a glass of water and then left. Was there something in the water? That was the only explanation she could think of to explain these events.. She decided to get home as quickly as possible. She couldn't believe how real everything she had just seen felt to her, she needed to lie down and try and explain everything to Alistair.
She took a few deep breaths and then started up a light jog, but something felt wrong. She couldn't think what it was for a minute, but then it suddenly dawned on her that she was having a severe case of Déjà vu. She stopped in her tracks, looking around at the other people. They all looked familiar, as if she had lived this moment before, every detail around her seemed to get checked off a list in her mind, like she was expecting everyone to be doing what they were doing in this exact manner. Whatever was happening was mixing her thoughts up inside her head, twisting her brain activity round into the wrong parts, confusing her normal way of thinking. She tried to shake it off and started up a jog once more. After another hundred metres or so she realised that she couldn't feel her legs, but looking down they were moving perfectly normally. This was getting really intense now, she felt
