Blackie - a dream
Blackie
A dream.
Sharpfang'98.
Thanks for help going to Dogg and Lupus.
Blackie =======
I was one of few survivors in the post-nuclear world. It was a long time after the war. The nature has recovered and was taking over the remains of the civilisation. There was very few people, and they were mostly hostile to each other and the city I lived in wasn't destroyed by the bomb. There was no people on the streets, most of them died from radiation and all the houses covered with plants. The city was turning into a jungle. If you entered any house, everything was covered with plants... growing among the furniture, covering the floors. The roads surface was often broken by grass and young trees peeking from under the concrete and tar.
I was walking down a street. It was the middle area between the center and the suburbs - 2-3-floor high buildings... Big old houses, and smaller ones...
A man walked up the street the other side. We ignored each other. Then I turned into another street, along a long, 1-floor barn-like looking building (whole covered with plants.) A part of the building was 2-floor high. It was old - Maybe an old workshop. In the higher part there was a big, black iron gate. It wasn't covered with plants and seemed it's sometimes used - the building (and whole complex of buildings joined to it from backside) seemed inhabited.
Someone was coming from the opposite direction... I wanted to ignore him but just as I passed by I felt he grabbed me from behind and pulled inside the gate. I was fighting but he was much stronger.
Behind the gate there was a wide corridor (like for trucks) to the backyard, then he pulled me into another, very narrow corridor in a wall, pulled a few stairs up - I've heard the voices of other people there - then he opened a door in a side wall and pushed me into a room behind them and locked the door.
The room was small. No window, just a bulb (? - Maybe they had a generator), a chair, a hard bed with no sheets. I thought they were some kind of sect or something, wanting me for a sacrifice...
I looked at the bed - found a loose metal part, pulled it off the bed and started scratching the door near the lock.
After a few hours of patient scratching (time boost - I knew it took me some hours but I didn't feel it) - I made a hole big enough to break the lock. I opened the door, peeked on the corridor, quietly went outside - and saw the man who caught me in open room at the end of the corridor! He saw me too. "He escapes! Get him!" - he shouted and ran towards me. I've heard other steps from the hallway by the gate so without much thinking I opened the only door in front of me.
There were two men in there - apparently they had been talking, sitting on two sides of a low table. There was also a big (closed) window in front of me.
They were a bit confused but I was pretty sure they will grab me really fast, especially that the man who caught me and the one from the entrance hallway were coming. Without hesitation I jumped onto the table, ran along it and through the window, breaking through the glass outside. It wasn't high.
I landed on the backyard only with minor scratches (it was whole covered with wine and ivy) and immediately started to run towards the gate, but while being at the entrance to the hallway I saw the man who caught me and the others running from the side corridor.
I turned in place. I saw an exit from the backyard surrounded with the buildings. It was a low passage, a bow leading to other backyard. I ran there.
The buildings there were all 2 floors high but it wasn't really a backyard as the square of concrete between the buildings, with plants peeking from holes was covered with the roof, a metal construction of square windows. Many of them were broken, plants hanging from there.
Another exit. Another similar backyard. More exits. Real labyrinth of 2-floor buildings with locked doors and passages between their backyards, some covered with glass, some with free sky.
I was slowly losing the ones who were after me. I knew they have split up. Another backyard. but I went in through the only exit. The pretty white old houses, covered with plants around, stairs with a high white concrete barrier to the first floor. The stairs were covered with old, broken furniture, to the top of the barrier... but that was the only way.
I started climbing it. A doorway on the top... Walking on top of the furniture was difficult. The one who got me for the first time - A young, fit man with evil look in his eyes, in black leather clothes - the damned one - just ran into the backyard!
I want to enter the doorway but it's filled with the ruined furniture to the roof. He will have me in a moment! he starts climbing the stairs with difficulty. The broken furniture is a dangerous ground.
What to do?
He's just to grab my leg when suddenly from a totally blocked with broken furniture hole in the wall, just at his side, a fountain of pieces of it explodes, the parts of old TV sets, chairs etc hit him. He falls down the stairs rolling down the ruin, falls to the floor of the backyard and stands up a bit stunned but knows what happened...
A head of a big black stallion appears in the hole. "Follow me!" - the stallion says to me and vanishes in the darkness. I crawl into the hole. The man curses and shouts to the others: "That damned horse took him away!"
I crawl the low hole wondering, how such a big beast like that horse fit in there. The tunnel ends at the level of first floor, over a two-floor high room in the house. Damn, quite high down there... and strangest - pieces of furniture are floating freely in air in front of me. There's another hole at the same level on the other side of the room. The horse looks from there at me - "Come here through the furniture, and then continue forward, we will meet at the end!" - and vanishes in the darkness. I crawl from one armchair to another bed, jump over the holes between them, they aren't firmly holding in air, but move as if they were floating on the water...
I reach the hole, crawl to another room similar to the previous, and another, then the next tunnel ends over the next room, but no flying furniture there, only a high, wide bookcase full of books at the opposite wall. The horse looks at me from the other side through the next hole - "ok, this is the end. Jump down and climb up here."
I jump down successfully, but see through a long row of open doorways, at the end, the man hunting for me. He runs to get me. I climb the bookcase, carefully not to pull it onto myself. I reach the top when he runs into the room. The horse waits for me. I enter the hole and push the bookcase with my foot - it falls down smashing the man.
The horse goes along the dark tunnel to a small (narrow door size) wall of light and walks through it. I follow him. I find myself in my room - on my bed! The horse at my side, some planks from the wall opened like a door, the light wall behind them...
The horse smiles to me and closes the 'secret door'. Then he hands me a tiny yellow triangle of some material... It's the key. I try it on the wall - just touch it with the corner, turn and it opens.
The horse says "Bye, time for me. Step in sometime!" and vanishes in the light wall... The door close. I wake up.
The next morning I've checked the place. I had a role-playing game involving cards. one of the cards was "The Horse" - I had it with the others, but in that place, at the wall, I've found the second one, I hadn't before! Same as the previous one, with a picture of a horse.
I have it still and hope some day i will find the key!
Maybe you have a thingy that looks like a tiny lemon-yellow triangle, a 1cm wider side, thin, looks like made of plastic, two corners blunt, one sharp...? If so, please, let me know!!!
. . . . By Sharpfang