[center][h3]Barney Rynsburger[/h3]
[b][i]4:15 PM[/i][/b][/center]

When Barney seated himself he scarcely felt the bench beneath him. Although it wasn’t especially cold out today, he still felt numb. It was hard to think straight. A buzz occupied his mind, not too unlike the sensation that followed a casual drink or two, but this numbness held no comfort. Rather than oblivious he felt painfully aware, but even though Barney knew that he ought to be getting himself together in order to think up a solution for this mess, like a rational adult, his every attempt got crowded out by that cruel, nagging buzz. “Calm down,” he whispered aloud. “Calm down. It’s not over. It’s…” He trailed off. The words rang laughably hollow. How wretched could he get, trying to console himself like this? That wasn’t something a strong person would do. Nobody could ever respect someone who needed to tell himself everything was okay. Barney looked around, although even as he checked for other people, he didn’t know what he wanted to see. Did he want to make sure nobody saw him being a loser? Did he want someone to see him and feel compelled to extend compassion? Why was he fixated on such stupid things to begin with!? Seething quietly, the young man shook his head to try and chance away his runaway thoughts. He needed to quit throwing himself a pity party and think about the future, already!

The future. [i]His[/i] future. Idiot that he was, he thought he might be able to control it. In the end, all he’d managed to do was sink himself further into hell. The existence that lay before him could scarcely be called a life. How many years, how many decades would it take to repay everyone he owed? How could he last all that time without family, friends, or love? [i]Where do I go from here?[/i]

Barney expected no answer, and received none. But in the end, he did know what came next. Just rotting here sounded pretty good, but it was never really an option. Tonight’s shift at the deli, Best Wurst, began at six. Less than two hours from now. He needed to do some homework, clean up, get dressed, eat something, and go. Of course he didn’t want to, but there was no good reason not to. No actual sickness ailed him and no emergency matters occupied him. In fact, he needed money now more than ever. To slack off now would be tantamount to giving up on his life. And even if he didn’t go, sooner or later hunger or thirst or something would force him back to reality. It was just a matter of time.

Better, he thought, not to let himself get into such a sorry state. Things were hard enough without him gimping himself like this. ”All in my head,” he murmured. Everyone had their troubles, just like everyone had their responsibilities. He wasn’t special. In fact, the only difference was how much of a baby he was being. [i]It’s not a big deal.[/i] As long as he could still do what he needed to, he could make it through. Come what may, he would survive. [i]I can handle it. Just buck up and get it done.[/i] Barney took deep breaths, working the brisk November air through his system. With each heave of his chest the muscles knotted by nerves and exercise could release a little of their tension. He sagged limply down across his bench until he lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling as the cracks’ heat warmed him from below. The knots in the wood above stared back down at him, taking in his listless expression as he considered the other matter at hand. No matter how he teased his brain trying to explain the cracks away, he could arrive at only one conclusion. “I’m losing my doggone mind,” he moaned. “Ugh. It’s all in my head. All in my…?”

Someone was here. Barney looked over, startled from his reverie for the second time that day. Did someone follow him from the student center after he made a scene? He studied his visitor’s appearance, noting the long black hair with orange dyed strips. Mostly black clothes too. [i]A goth?[/i] After just a moment he felt sure that he didn’t recognize this guy, either from the student center or from the university at large. That didn’t exactly surprise him, with BWU being a big school and all. What did surprise him was that Dakota seemed to be recording, not the bearded layabout, but the cracks in the floor. The realization jerked Barney fully awake. “Wait a second,” he blurted out, swinging his legs onto the floor as he rose into a sitting position on his bench. “You can see those too?! I thought I was seein’ things!”

The two didn’t get long to ponder the revelation. Barney’s eyes drifted to another incoming person, and this one he did recognize. [i]That girl again![/i] How bizarre that he would run into her outside of class twice in one day. Then again, judging by the way the redhead stared at the cracks, maybe this wasn’t coincidence. She hung back from the two dudes already inside the gazebo, indecisive, but as Mila considered her options yet another student showed up. His tailored appearance and severe bearing gave Barney the instant impression of someone from a totally different walk of life, but here he was, all the same. It took just a moment for Caelum to arrive at the same conclusion that Barney did a few moments ago, and the rich boy made a beeline for Dakota to make sure that he was, in fact, recording the cracks. With his head spinning, Barney only half-listened to the exchange that followed. Other people could see the impossible cracks. A bunch of them! They could feel their heat, too. He wasn’t crazy after all!

That, of course, begged a different question. If these cracks weren’t figments of his imagination...what were they?

For now he couldn’t fathom. He could only watch as a girl with long black hair arrived exhausted from running, small and skinny enough that Barney mistook her for a middle schooler. When she felt a few sets of eyes on her she looked like she wanted to melt through the floor, a true shrinking violet. Not even a minute later another stranger appeared behind her, albeit one a lot more attention-grabbing. Tall, scrappy-looking, and recently wounded, he cut a bizarre figure in undersized athletic wear. He ended up seeming more filthy than fearsome, however, and even if he opted to stagger toward a bench rather than start punching people, his odor hit Barney like a haymaker. He sat, released an nigh-unintelligible whine, and went limp.

Barney offered him a look of empathy. “Poor guy. The homeless really have it rough.” As a result of the spectacle he nearly missed another arrival, another shortie, but this one in janitorial attire. The slouching stranger seemed oddly familiar, like someone Barney had seen before but not committed to memory. Either way, he couldn’t get much of a read, and his attention quickly shifted. Next to wander into the impromptu pier-bound pow-wow was none other than Harriette, seemingly by accident, but at this point Barney was having his doubts. “This is too weird,” he muttered, thinking aloud. When his acquaintance’s russet eyes turned his way he shot her a look saying he was just as confused as she was, shrugging as he did so. “Did we all follow the cracks…?”

Another guy, a fairly normal-looking fellow with a youthful bent to him, but as he gave vent to a fragment of his pent-up stress Barney found himself otherwise engaged. Since he first arrived the cracks had remained totally static, bafflingly anomalous but otherwise not that concerning. Out of nowhere there came a loud snapping sound, so sudden that Barney jumped a third time, as the entire web of cracks [i]widened[/i]. With his annoyance at getting scared again buried by acute alarm Barney jumped to his feet, only to sway dangerously. The ground felt unstable beneath his feet, as if the pier were about to collapse, but it wasn’t just that. Where before the narrow cracks held only darkness, now there seemed to be some kind of light, a fiery orange glow. In that dull light he could see movement, like clouds of tumbling smoke. Barney noticed black particles drifting upward from the cracks, and as he reached out dumbly to touch one he realized his vision was swimming. He felt dizzy...woozy...he fought to steady himself. But in the end, he fell.

[hr]

[center][h3]Chapter Two - Intolerable Cruelty[/h3][/center]

When Barney hit the ground it knocked both the wind and the wooziness right out of him. “Huuhh!” he gasped, curling up as he rolled onto his back. “Oww, jeez…” he held himself still for a few moments until the diaphragm spasm cleared. Only then did he finally open his eyes, but the clear sight of a dark, cloudy sky brought him confusion rather than relief. “It’s...night?” After all those cracks he could believe that the gazebo fell apart, and attribute the rest to stress, but he didn’t feel like he lost consciousness for even a moment, let alone a few hours. Yet that shadowy sky extended as far as the eye could see, a tumultuous black-gray swirl whose underbelly shone a smoldering orange. A storm must have rolled in, he decided after a moment. With brows furrowed in bafflement he rose, first into a sitting position, then to hit feet. At that point it took him about a picosecond to realize that the sky was the least of his concerns.

He wasn’t at Barclay Waterfront University anymore. Hell, after looking around for a minute, he might not even be on earth. He stood not on Stoutland Pier but on what appeared to be a heavy-duty dock, and when he looked down to where the ocean should be he found only a bubbling, shifting, oil-dark mass that extended from the shore all the way to the horizon. Though at first glance pitch black, it shimmered with all the colors of the rainbow, like motor oil on a highway after a rain, as its surface constantly changed. As he watched Barney thought he caught glimpses of limbs and faces, human and inhuman, forming and unforming, a limitless and amorphous expanse that boggled the imagination. Afraid, not of drowning but of what might lurk in that sea of souls, Barney backed away from the edge. When he turned in the direction that the college should be, however, he found a sight still more fantastic.

It was like something out of the movie. The dock connected directly to what looked like a gargantuan jail, shaped like an angular magnet against the waterfront. Immense citadel walls, topped with coils of barbed wire the size of subway tunnels, boxed in a prison compound at least as big as the university itself, if Barney had to guess. Octagonally roofed guard towers interspersed the walls at relative citadels, shining down two harsh spotlights apiece across the entire complex, no doubt searching for escapees and intruders. The jailhouse itself shared the walls’ magnet shape, a single curved building with at least five stories. Even from here Barney could see the light eking out from the cells’ barred windows. Also like the walls the jailhouse bore a needlessly brutal, almost demonic appearance, with rows of spikes and even what looked like gargoyles. Closer toward the middle stood a similarly arrayed curve of smaller buildings throughout what could only be the prison yard, and though things moved through those yards Barney could not tell what, and he shuddered. There were a couple other more miscellaneous structures tucked into corners here and there, and Barney’s eyes lingered on what looked like a cathedral for a few moments. In the center of it all, however, stood a courthouse of immaculate beauty. Its pristine white pillars and domed roof stood tall above its frightful surroundings, but beneath the dome of its central tower the glassless windows revealed the biggest, brightest searchlight of them all. Like a giant, lemon-yellow eye it roved around the jail, nothing escaping its gaze.

And if that prison wasn’t terrifying and awesome by itself, a glance beyond the prison’s walls would provide the barest, smoke-veiled peek at a smoky metropolitan cityscape ravaged by war. Into the sky rose the hazy suggestions of streams of wreckage and debris, dreamlike in their surrealism, before they dove back to the earth in unfathomably huge loops of constant motion.

[center][img]https://i.imgur.com/5d4sXre.jpg[/img][/center]

Barney staggered, mouth agape, barely standing. When he took a step his footfall created a pinkish splash on the ground, as if he’d stepped in a phantom puddle, but the stain disappeared just as quickly. In disbelief he looked between the others scattered around the dock, clinging to the only stuff that made any sense. “What [i]is[/i] this?!” he breathed, his panic only kept at bay by his certainty that this couldn’t possibly, under any circumstance, be real. “Some kind of nightmare?” He stamped his foot a couple times, watching the splashes appear and disappear, and only barely managed to suppress a crazed giggle. “Ohhh, man. I better not be stuck here. I’ve gotta get to work...I’ve gotta be there on time, or the boss is gonna freak…” Shaking his head, he looked again, trying to find a way out.