Something crunched beneath my feet. I looked down. There was...snow? There hadn't been snow on the ground a moment ago. I looked up at my surroundings--a pine forest, covered in snow. We'd been in an alley before, I could have sworn it. My two companions--if you could call them such--didn't seem to notice the sudden change of scenery. Over in the distance where the trees thinned I could make out a city, but I wasn't sure if it was the city I'd just been in.
"Where are we going? Who are you, anyway?"
One of the men, the talkative one, turned and winked at me. "Don't worry, we'll be there soon."
It wasn't the reply I was looking for, but oh well. I tried to look at the other man, but my eyes just seemed to slide off him. It wasn't so bad just looking at his back--I could recall what he was wearing, a black hat and a black overcoat--but I knew I'd seen his face when he'd come up to me and I couldn't remember what he'd looked like. A shady character, to say the least. The talkative one wasn't so bad; he seemed friendly enough, if a little...odd. In fact, this whole forest was odd. I kept seeing...things...through the trees. Things you shouldn't be finding in a forest. Things like...glimpses through windows into another world, almost.
Suddenly, I wasn't sure I wanted to know where we were going at all.
The snow sucked up sound and muffled it, like being under a blanket. Mr. Talkative started talking, to break the heavy silence of the forest. "So how about that last guy, eh?" He said, to no one in particular it seemed. If he was talking to Mr. Shady then he didn't get any response. He turned to me. "Eh?"
"Er...what happened to him?" I winced as a loud sound shot across our path, something like a cross between a howl and a scream. The other two didn't give any indication of noticing it. <******** took out my eye, the b*****d did. Didn't take the news too well. Do you know how long it takes to grow a new eye? Too ******** long," he said, and then gave an odd, barking laugh.
He had both his eyes, although maybe the left one wandered a bit and wouldn't quite focus. I thought it best not to pursue that line of questioning.
"What news?"
He shook his head. "You'll find out soon enough--and I'll thank you not to get violent on me then, yeah?"
I didn't have a reply to that.
"We're here," Mr. Shady said abruptly, the first words I'd heard him say. I looked around; there was nothing to indicate what was so special about 'here.' Except...I thought I could hear music, faintly, but I wasn't sure if I was just making things up in the silence that weren't really there, like a ringing in my ears.
We took a turn around a large pine, and we...weren't where we had been. We were in a long grey corridor; concrete or dull steel I couldn't tell, but the walls were smooth. There was a strip rug running down the center, faded red and grimy white. I looked behind me--glass doors, but all that was behind them was blackness and the occasional neon flash.
They started walking down the corridor, and I followed.
"Okay, you got to be careful in this place. Right. Make damn sure you don't doze off," Mr. Talkative said. "We're right on the edge of dreams. You fall asleep, you're gone." He snapped his fingers for emphasis, and I jumped. He laughed again. "Grinds is the most famous coffee house this side of reality."
"Which side is this side?"
He grinned. "The side you're not used to being on, of course."
I noticed the corridor was slanted ever so slightly downwards, and focused my worry on that instead. We didn't go down all that far before the corridor turned and opened into a small room. There was a saucy-looking lady standing there, chewing her gum. "Public or Private?" she asked, after taking out her gum and sticking it to the underside of her little podium. I cringed.
"Private," said Mr. Shady.
She opened the door on the left, and we followed her through. The room was a cozy one, with nine booths--three each against three of the walls--and a counter with various interesting-looking espresso and coffee machines and whatever else I couldn't identify. She sat us at the middle booth on the right from where we came in. I glanced around as I slid into the booth behind Mr. Talkative. There were two other people, one in the booth next to ours and one sitting outside that booth, next to the counter; and two other...things sitting in a booth on the adjacent wall.
"And you?" the waitress asked, startling me. I hadn't even heard her ask for the orders of the other two.
"Uh...just water."
She gave me a skeptical look. What, didn't they have just water here? "...or apple?"
"Er..." Flavored water? I hadn't heard the first thing she'd said, so, "apple."
"Red or green?"
"Red?" I hazarded. She marked it down on her little pad and left. Next to me, Mr. Talkative gave me his annoying barking laugh again. I ignored him, and heard him slide down to the other end.
It seemed like only a moment later that the waitress returned. She expertly slid two glasses down to the other two, and then sat my drink down in front of me and vanished before I could say anything.
I examined my 'water.' It was...red. Vibrantly so, like too much artificial coloring had gone into it. It looked like it should be cherry rather than apple. I looked at it doubtfully, and stirred it a little with the straw. It was made like a slushie or something, with crushed ice.
I took an experimental sip, and it surprised me. It tasted...well, like apples. Really damn good freshly-picked juice-runs-down-your-chin-when-you-take-a-bite apples. Take everything apple-y, and that drink embodied it. Well, except for the color, but I glanced over at whatever the two of them were drinking and it wasn't any better. Mr. Talkative's drink was neon orange, and Mr. Shady's was dark, dark blue, so dark it was almost black. The drinks clashed against the muted reds, creams and browns of the décor.
The two of them were busy talking to each other in hushed voices, so I turned my attention out of the booth. The man in the booth next to ours was engaged in whatever he was doing; to my relief at seeing something normal, he was working on a laptop with various papers spread out around him. There were a couple of empty glasses on the table; it seemed the waitress didn't want to disturb him.
He wasn't all that interesting, and neither was the older, portly man sitting next to the counter apparently asleep--his chin tucked, his eyes so deep-set that I assumed they were closed. I turned my head in the other direction, to the two...things...in one of the booths there. They looked like something straight out of some B-rated horror movie, or maybe just Star Wars. One of them looked vaguely monkey-ish, with light brown fur. Its face was smooth, with beady black eyes a rounded snout with two slits for a nose. Its companion was more reptilian, with oily-looking skin and horns on his head and shoulders. They were, I noted, talking in perfect English and about the guy on the laptop, it seemed.
"They say you can only kill him if he's not concentrating on something."
"That's a little backwards. He looks oblivious to me."
"It's just a front. When he's concentrating on something, he's aware of everything."
"How do you tell he's actually concentrating and not just staring at the screen daydreaming or something?"
"You try to kill him, duh. Watch."
I watched, but I didn't know if what happened was supposed to happen or what the monkey dude was trying to do. The sky outside--there were windows on the wall with the counter, behind the man with the laptop--started to lighten enough that I could see a dull, grey landscape punctuated with the occasional square building or oddly-shaped tree. The sky started to pulse neon--violet, then orange, then blue then red. On the ground, a black blur resolved itself--something small, traveling this way at high speed. I watched it. It looked like it was going to smash through the window--but it reached it, and there was no sound. No breaking glass. It went through.
My head turned back to the two things, drawn by a muffled curse. The thing was clamped down on his snout. The reptilian dude was giggling. The thing, for all appearances, looked like a hammerhead shark, with the distinction of being covered in brown fur with darker brown stripes and swimming through air instead of water.
"Down."
I turned; the command had been said by the man who I'd thought had just been asleep. The land-shark let go of the monkey dude's snout and retreated past me, back to its owner's side.
"Get out, the both of you. I won't tolerate such behavior in my establishment."
The monkey dude, who had been about to say something, blanched. Without a word, the two of them got up and left. The land-shark, not receiving any attention from its owner, went and lightly butted the shoulder of the man with the laptop. Absently he reached up to pet it, and then he looked around like he was just now becoming aware of his surroundings. Had he really not noticed the entire thing? I glanced back at Mr. Talkative and Mr. Shady--they were still discussing whatever, completely oblivious as well. I wondered if it would be all right to get up and see if the guy with the laptop was any better company than those two.
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