august 2004

i was at my friend keith's house in south bar. he has one of those yards that is just a large lawn surrounded by trees. we were in his backyard and there were lots of us, all of our friends, but the mood was very sombre. i knew something was about to happen, but i couldn't say what. then, just at a certain time, we all went out into the yard and looked up. the sun was out, but it didn't hurt our eyes to look straight at it. as we watched, black spots appeared on its surface. they grew and grew, and eventually covered the whole sun. the world was in twilight. we went back inside, to wait.

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there were these guys who kept stealing cars and putting them into my driveway, thinking it was all a great joke, and i wouldn't have the guts to stand up to them. i started threatening them with the cops, and i wrote down all the license plates.

i kept having these flash-forwards, into an alternate earth, where everything was dark, and there was water on the ground. built up on the surface of the place where i was, there were pillars of wood, with a trellis horizontally laid across them, covered in plants, vines. it was dark and creepy.

i was back in the present tense, talking to some people, marvelling at how quickly the tendrils of this one plant were growing around an old tin can.

then i was in the alternate world again, at the very end of things,. i heard a voice. it was coming from the plant. well, it was coming from the one bit of plant that wasn't rotten or dead. the water was a murky purplish brown, with debris floating in it. an eerie female voice was saying "i didn't understand. it's my nature to do this. why did it kill me? i didn't know i would bring ruin on everything. i'm sorry". and i saw a clump of the plants flying through the air really slowly, and finally it went into the water to drown itself.

i realized that the plant had taken over the world, shut out all the light, and tried to do what it was naturally inclined to do - that is, order all things for its optimum growing conditions, and force the extinction of all other species. something went wrong, and the effects of the changes were irreversible, and all life on earth would end soon.

we (the remaining humans) wandered off in a random direction, to try and find something that would keep us going a little longer, to postpone the inevitable.