All of a sudden, she noticed that people were looking in her direction. At first, she thought they were looking behind her, but when she turned her head, she noticed the people she had passed kept their eyes locked on her. She stopped in front of an elderly woman dressed in a flowery jumper and loose-fitting jeans, whose eyes were concentrating deeply on her. She must be imagining this, these people can't all have their eyes fixed on her she thought; she was being paranoid.
“Can I help you?” She asked the elderly lady in front of her.
The elderly woman seemed to stutter, not just her voice but her whole being seemed like it fluttered in and out her view momentarily.
“It's coming” The elderly lady replied.
“What?”
“The Blackness”
The elderly woman never took her eyes of Emma, which really creeped her out. She carried on past the lady, trying to ignore her strange ramblings, but everything seemed to be getting weirder and weirder. She looked back at the woman and then noticed she wasn't wearing a jumper and jeans any more, but a dress. She swore she'd had different clothes on. She shook her head and carried on, still aware that everyone was transfixed by her presence. This is another side effect, none of this is real she told herself, and the people weren't staring at her. She jogged past a man who pointed behind her without moving his eyes from her, his eyes locked fast on hers.
“Can't you see it?” He said.
She was getting increasingly tired of this paranoia and wanted it to stop. She still looked behind her though, not so much out of choice, just automatically. As she turned, she came to a stop and her jaw widened. In the distance, up in the sky, was something growing. It looked like some kind of tear in the atmosphere, what was this? The tear widened until it was gradually seeping down to the horizon. As she stared in fascination at this strange sight, she noticed that it was creeping ever closer to them, gradually eating away at the view before her. She heard the low thudding sounds again, the same as before, gaining momentum and volume and increasing in duration and speed. Where the tear in reality started, she could see flashes of blue pulses streaming out, filling the dark void. This was similar to what she thought she had seen behind Samir. She looked around her, the people were all motionless, still staring at her as the gaping tear in the universe came ever closer. Her only instinct was to run away as fast as she could, whether this was real or not. The tear in reality was approaching ever faster, engulfing everything in its path. All the while the blue flashing pulses were getting steadily more intricate and contorting into some kind of living void creature, as the vibrations that accompanied it grew stronger and stronger.
She continued running, faster and faster, looking back to see the void consuming the ground below it and anything in its path, extinguishing anyone in its way. She couldn't feel her legs again and then found that she wasn't moving, she was pinned in one position. She tried with all her might to move her arms and legs. It felt like each limb weighed a tonne and the effort to move required incredible strength that she couldn't muster. The people close to her still had their eyes fixated on her, their faces starting to shudder from side to side. Monstrous distortions appeared across them, with blue pulses springing to their skins’ surface. What was happening?
The distorted people started closing in on her, their menacing stares giving way to a deep immersing blackness. They threatened to surround her from all sides, like a troop of slow magnetised zombies. She began to scream, but the sound seemed to echo back to her and slap her full on like someone had smacked her on the head with a tuning fork. Behind her the blue veins began swirling with ever-increasing complexity, the rip in space-time seemingly alive and grinning. The distorted zombies got closer and closer and then without any warning, they blinked out of existence in a split second. She was left there, alone in an empty park, with the endless void drawing closer and the blue pulsating tentacles pulling her stunned body towards it.
Except she wasn't alone. There in the distance was one other person, far away, just in front of the void. As quickly as the void rushed towards her, so did this figure, and in what seemed to be mere seconds later she was face to face with it. Her confused mind cried out for mercy as she was confronted with an image of herself, a mirror image perfectly reflected back at her, their eyes meeting as they gradually started merging together. They swirled together, a dance stranger than she could put into words. This doppelganger held the same fears as her, she could feel them. It had the same emotions and memories, she could feel them too. They were one with each other, and she could see both in front of her and behind her at the same time. She was stuck between the real world of sticks and stones, the park and the city glistening in the late morning sunshine, and the endless infinite void, where shadows moved eerily in a blackness that was only punctuated by the flow and pulsing of countless blue strings, a web of limitless nothingness.
Could she choose to turn and stay in the physical world, or was she doomed only to surrender to the void? Her two selves were conflicted and were trying to pull apart, each one desperate to find a way out of wherever they were stuck. The limitless web of nothing pulsated quicker and quicker, as shadow figures erupted out of strands of blue trails, the two becoming
