flew me to places I've never been
The voice booms from nowhere. Not from a person, not from a direction, but from the architecture, and Everest drops the glass. It doesn’t shatter—it lands on a rug, which Isla placed specifically for traction during rainy seasons—but the water sloshes across his shoes, and the sudden wetness nearly undoes him more than the voice.
He jerks back, every muscle locking. “BOOLIEVE IN YOURSELF” echoes in his skull like a glitching radio frequency, not quite threatening, but wrong in the way a smile on a corpse might be. The goodbye feels like a final rite, not encouragement. The notebook is dropped. The duck remains covered. None of this makes sense.
He paces once in a tight, spiralling arc—too fast, shoes squeaking faintly against the floor—and then makes the correct decision: flee.
Jacket. Keys. Bag. No hesitation.
He doesn’t even stop to close the window, and the note he scrawls and leaves behind (taped to the counter at an exact 90-degree angle) reads only: UNEXPLAINED EVENT. FLEEING TO VALIDATE WITH WITNESS. IF FOUND DEAD, BLAME DUCK.
And then he’s gone—out the door with precision footfalls, his route toward Isla’s clinic calculated down to the most efficient sequence of turns. Not running. But not not running either.
Just a man on a mission, eyes wide, breath fast, and heart absolutely convinced that either he’s losing his mind—
—or the ducks are planning something.
~FIN
He jerks back, every muscle locking. “BOOLIEVE IN YOURSELF” echoes in his skull like a glitching radio frequency, not quite threatening, but wrong in the way a smile on a corpse might be. The goodbye feels like a final rite, not encouragement. The notebook is dropped. The duck remains covered. None of this makes sense.
He paces once in a tight, spiralling arc—too fast, shoes squeaking faintly against the floor—and then makes the correct decision: flee.
Jacket. Keys. Bag. No hesitation.
He doesn’t even stop to close the window, and the note he scrawls and leaves behind (taped to the counter at an exact 90-degree angle) reads only: UNEXPLAINED EVENT. FLEEING TO VALIDATE WITH WITNESS. IF FOUND DEAD, BLAME DUCK.
And then he’s gone—out the door with precision footfalls, his route toward Isla’s clinic calculated down to the most efficient sequence of turns. Not running. But not not running either.
Just a man on a mission, eyes wide, breath fast, and heart absolutely convinced that either he’s losing his mind—
—or the ducks are planning something.
~FIN
but now I'm laying on the cold hard ground
