This was the third night.

At first, she firmly believed it was one too many horror novels before bed or one too many slices of cold pizza. Maybe it was a piece of a movie playing over in her head, worming its way through her subconsciousness to birth itself in her dreams. Alas, the dream was always the same. There were no voices, no twist ending in the story, no sunrise at the end of a long and arduous journey. It was inky blackness, all-consuming as it passed over the skeleton of Destiny City.

Christa could hear more than see each footstep she took through its empty halls, eyes glancing over each statue of a person whose visage was twisted in abject horror. She tried to touch them but when her fingers grazed their stone skin, the person beneath had crumbled to dust. Her gasp echoed through dead corridors where no birds would fly and no cars would travel again. She vowed never to touch them for they were like the victims of Herculaneum covered in a blanket of soot and ash, cooked from the inside out. Suffocated.

Their eyes stared out at oblivion and Christa, in her dream form, felt a chill wind rush past her. The limbs of the statues around her tore off from the force, colliding with each other and the ground to rain dust in their wake. Tall and lifeless, dull blue-gray buildings leaned on their foundations, the groan of metal and plaster the only sound she could ever hear. The buildings and street signs, the shops long closed and abandoned... all of it was so familiar. She knew these streets, knew this route. This was the way she used to walk to school. Air rushed to fill her lungs as she took off, feeling now the dull impact of her feet on pavement. Where were her shoes? She ran for miles, she thought, and her body ached as she careened to avoid plowing through another person, fearing she would turn them to dust.

The sun here was dull, muted, gray at its brightest. There was a fog, maybe ash, that hung low in the air and made everything taste stale. Rounding the corner, Christa felt her lungs were ablaze and she clung to the stone pillars that decorated Destiny City National Bank's front entrance. It used to be a bustling metropolis being so close to the high school and within walking distance of so many small businesses. Now its mighty front doors made of glass were tinged with soot and smoke, one door ajar letting in the stale breeze of the outside world.

Christa looked back towards Meadowview, the place she'd spent so much of her youth. She was awakened near here and she graduated not too long ago. The young woman took a few steps forward, wondering idly if she'd left her shoes somewhere. Where did they go? Did she ever have them? Reaching out to Meadowview, its stark visage hiding beneath a blanket of haze, Christa felt it before it blossomed before her eyes. One heartbeat was all it took and blackness bled into the sky, spilling onto the street like ink. It felt alive, it felt consuming, suffocating. Debilitating. Christa turned to run and cried out to see if anyone else was around to stop this, but her voice would not come. She felt thick and slow as the darkness rushed beneath her feet and suddenly the street was gone. She was falling,

falling...

falling...