The instant Adam felt tiny particles forming beneath his fingers on the steering wheel and sliding over its rubbery surface onto his lap, he realized the events of the early morning had not been some flu=induced hallucination and promptly pulled over. With no rest stop, convenience store, gas station, or other such luxury in sight, he was forced to stop his vehicle on the side of the highway, accompanied an irate beep sounding from another motorist who had been obliged to slow down as Adam did the same before pulling over. Luckily this particular stretch of road was rather remote, with only short stretches of grass and a bulwark of trees on either side. Now thoroughly at a halt, parking break engaged and all, Adam examined his hands again and found more irritating grains of sand. The same flowing chill from earlier crept over the hairs on Adam's neck. This was absolutely not right. Should he see a doctor? This seemed more like a job for a priest than a physician. His mind couldn't help but jump to conclusions, some ranging from decently plausible to downright science fiction. Was somebody playing a practical joke on him? Had he taken some sort of psychoactive drug? Was he going crazy, or had scientists somewhere, somehow, created some sort of serum that altered his body...to make sand? Was this God's doing?

As these questions plagued him, he initially failed to notice a slight but steady rise in the amount of sand falling from his hands. It wasn't until he shifted his legs and felt a swath of powder slide off him onto the floor that he realized that he had a problem. After carefully checking to make sure no oncoming traffic would callously flatten him, Adam shoved open the driver's-side door and stiffly, awkwardly made his exit. Over thirty years of driving and he still hadn't mastered getting out of a car...but there were more pressing concerns. Still dribbling sand, he meandered a short distance away from the road. The sand was now falling quickly enough to make a definite trail, with little mounds where he tried to stop. Adam's old nerves were beginning to tremble; he was nothing if not freaked out. He held his hands aloft in an almost reverential manner, trying to determine the source of the problem but still not sure if this was all some sort of dream. It certainly seemed real.

Suddenly, a huge blast of sound from the direction of the road startled him, and he whirled just in time to see an eighteen-wheeler thunder past. Neither Adam or his car were posing any sort of complication to the highway just now; maybe the truck driver just wanted to impress him. Dimly Adam remembered from his childhood a biker that lived in his neighborhood who would boisterously rev his engine whenever he passed a pedestrian. Worse still, it seemed that the egregious noise had given him a headache. He raised a hand (which was, mercifully, finally free of sand) to his forehead for a good rub, meant to mitigate the rising pain there in accordance with the gate-control theory of pain--the one thing he remembered from college psychology classes. While doing this, he noticed a rather large pile of sand at his feet, but that wasn't what caused him to freeze in utter disbelief; a little motorcycle made of sand rested on the pile. Adam recoiled and aimed a kick at the tiny bike, which -to his further shock- rolled backward of its own accord to avoid the strike. Suddenly fearful some sort of dark design was at play, Adam lashed out again, and this time the sand construct burped to life and raced away across the grass toward the highway, where it sped into the road and was promptly obliterated by a forest-green minivan. As the dust settled, Adam's lips moved up and down, but no sound came out. Then, with a speed bordering on hysteric, he jumped back into his own car and made his way onto the highway once more. He needed a doctor...or perhaps a priest. Whichever he found first would do.