Chapter 1

Daniel awoke as if from a dream. He opened his crusty eyelids with much effort, only to shut them again when piercing grey light flooded his retinas. He slowly opened his eyes to let them adjust to the light, and when they had done so Daniel moved his hands to his face to try and soothe them; only for them to be blocked by something bulky. Letting his eyes focus, Daniel saw that two circular pieces of glass were right in front of them, and surrounding these holes was a dull grey fabric that made up a hood that covered his entire head. Taking a deep long breath, he then noticed that whenever he inhaled or exhaled a heavy raspy sound would reverberate around the enclosed hood. Daniel realized he was breathing through a respirator, and connecting this, the hood, and the two glass eyeholes, he concluded he was wearing some kind of gas mask.

Pain flared through his joints as Daniel pulled himself up off the ground, and he looked around slowly to soak up his surroundings. A thin light fog covered the land, sticking close to the ground so that he could see the landscape around him for miles, and the skies above were choked with dark grey clouds that looked like they would burst with rain at any moment. The ground itself was coated with a thin layer of ash that revealed moist black dirt when he kicked his boots around. What was left of the trees he saw resembled little else but charred skeletons that dotted the landscape in several clumps. Off in the distance Daniel spotted what appeared to be a row of buildings.  Seeing nothing but a barren wasteland in all other directions, he decided he might as well walk over there to see what he could find.

Daniel didn’t know how he came to arrive in this dreary desert that was not only devoid of vegetation, water, or wildlife, but also of colour; except for grey of course. Daniel noticed that though the ragged breathing noises he was making in the gas mask sounded very dire, he had no real problem with breathing. The pain that had flooded his joints beforehand was now gone, and when he picked up his pace he did not tire; indeed, he felt like he could walk at this pace for miles and miles. As the row of structures got nearer, Daniel could see they were of wooden construction, and that there were people there too, scurrying about like little worker ants. Daniel was not certain as to how anyone could survive in a place with no wildlife, water, vegetation, or even insects, which left him wondering as to how the people off in the distance could survive out here.

When Daniel finally approached the buildings he was surprised by the sight that greeted him. It was as if someone had taken a part of an average America middle class neighborhood and decided to drop it off in the wilderness, letting the houses slowly fall apart with nobody to care for them. Almost every house in the ‘neighborhood’ had all of their windows broken, the paint was cracked and peeling and every house was of the same boring and modern design. To Daniel the people all looked the same too. Like Daniel they all wore the same clothing, gray jackets, gray gloves, black boots, gray cargo pants, and gray gas masks. Daniel walked down the middle of the cracked ash coated road in shock at what he was seeing all around him. Two little children wearing smaller versions of his clothing were silently playing on a jungle gym; no laughter, no breathing, not one sound from them. A man wearing a sun hat was busy planting dead flowers into the ground, treating them as tenderly and lovingly as you would expect someone to if they were still alive. Moving on, Daniel saw a gas mask clad woman with a dirty apron carefully placing a charred burning pastry on a windowsill, along with a group of men sitting around a porch doing nothing but watch his every move. Biting down his uneasiness, Daniel cautiously approached the sitting men and asked them what the hell had happened to this place. He received no reply from the men, who seemed more content with staring at him silently through the dark glass lenses of their masks. After asking them another question, this time a query as to his exact whereabouts, Daniel turned and walked away from the group as they continued to hold their silence. Daniel went from gas mask to gas mask asking his questions, and nobody in the whole neighborhood had answered them, they would not speak, not even to each other. It was as if everyone here lived in their own world, one he was not a part of. All they would do was stare at him quietly, or if they were busy they would simply ignore him. Looking back at the group of men that were sitting on the porch, he could see that all of the men were now standing up, the lenses of their masks still fixed on him.

Fearful now, Daniel wondered if he was dead and this was some kind of hell that he was doomed to wander through forever in a wasteland with nobody but himself for company. Pushing away that thought, he turned to another idea; that this was some paranoid xenophobic post apocalyptic community and that he couldn’t remember any apocalyptic event because he somehow had amnesia. Both ideas seemed ridiculous, and in a bid to push away the unexplainable as well as to comfort himself, Daniel made the simple conclusion that this whole wasteland was simply a dream that he would wake up from and soon forget.
“That’s the most reasonable explanation.” He thought to himself. “There’s no food or water here, the people here are clearly insane, yet still alive, and I don’t feel thirsty, hungry, or even tired. Besides, who the !&^% plants dead flowers in the *#^!ing ground after an apocalypse? This is definitely some messed up nightmare.”
Trotting away from the macabre neighborhood back into the wasteland, Daniel rolled up his dirty sleeves and began pinching himself; hoping pain would somehow wake him up. He later began to ‘tell’ his mind to wake up, hoping that by somehow concentrating hard enough he could force himself to wake up. All efforts failed. As he headed deeper out into the wasteland he became even more infuriated by his failure to awake. He rammed himself into large boulders or threw himself to the ground, he screamed and yelled at the sky, and after a few minutes of this he finally ripped the gas mask off his face and stamped on it, an action which he would come to regret.

So far ash had been billowing to and fro about the air, falling gently to the ground like snowflakes. As soon as the gas mask left his face ash and dust clogged his mouth, eyes, and nostrils, clinging to as much moisture they could find. Daniel did not wake up, even as he fell choking and coughing to the ground. Realizing his foolishness, Daniel clumsily pulled the mask back on, securing it to his jacket again and taking a deep lungful of air. Somehow the ash and dust had disappeared from his throat and lungs, as he was breathing just fine; just as if the mask had never left his mouth.

‘Definitely a dream,’ He said to himself. ‘But still, how am I going to wake up?’

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Based off a dream. Please critique as I wish to make it as good as possible.

updated Sep 30 '11 by Malus