Daniel sat down, breathing in, then out. In, then out. He was a little overwhelmed by everything. The creatures, the fact that she could see them, the shifting [i]you need to calm down! No you need to calm down![/i] feeling that kept shifting back and fourth throughout their conversations. But, he was calming down, focusing on a point in the past. A very particular time. Back. Back. Back.

The day he first started seeing them.

"It was about six months ago." he said, focusing hard on it, still calming himself down a bit. "Um... I was, uh... I was working in a grocery store. A corner store. In New York. I was living there because I didnt want to live with my family and I wanted to live by myself. So... I was stocking the shelves, okay? And I had to climb up on this ladder to stock the top of one of the shelves. I was really reaching for it. I was on the top step, on my tiptoes. And then, like, [i]just[/i] as I'm about to put whatever the hell it was up on the shelf, these [i]fucking[/i] kids come running around the corner and they smash into the ladder. And it wobbles, and it falls, and I fall. Right on my head."

Daniel took that as a cue to lift up his hair on the side of his head, revealing a vicious looking scar near his temple.

"And I was rushed to the hospital, right? And I was passed the fuck out, and I was getting stitched up, and... and I remember, waking up, during the operation--or, the stitching or whatever. And I looked up and I just... there was one of them. Just standing across the room. [i]Watching me.[/i] And I passed out again. But I remember it so vividly happening."

He took a moment, pausing, shaking his head a bit.

"And so... yeah. Since then, I've been seeing them. I tried to get people to listen for three months, nobody would, and when my warnings became too much of a [i]burden[/i], they sent me here. And I've been seeing them here for the past three months, too."

He shrugged a bit, his story finished. The same questions he always had still lingered in the air. Where did they come from? What were they? What did they want? He asked himself constantly, and he was never any closer to finding the answers he needed.