Chapter X2 - 2013: Dimension 2

The unseen man's visit to the grocery store proved fruitful. Walking down the first aisle, he picked up some lemonade, and before moving onto the next aisle, he took a moment to ponder: "Did I need to bring home some dish cleaner?"

Afterwards, nothing of note happened. The unseen man got on his unicycle, and peddled down the lane towards his home. He waved to his neighbours, in an attempt to keep up courtesy. Walking up the steps to his home, he knocked on the door once, then twice. He kicked it with his shoe, and when that didn't work, he started banging on it with a hammer.

During this, he began to notice the sun had started to go down in the south. Looking up at the northern lights, it dawned on him that he couldn't really tell what time it was. Pulling his watch from the grocery bag, only then did he realize he was two minutes late.

The unseen man's neighbours looked out their window - they weren't surprised not to notice anything suspicious outside their house. All the neighbours turned away, and sat down at the dinner table. As the first neighbour started cutting some steak, the third neighbour started talking with the seventh neighbour. The fourth neighbour was slightly appalled by this; in 47 years the two had never spoken to each other.

"How much longer do you think until we really start to feel its effects, James?"

"Hmm? Well, Jane, I would guess only two weeks. That's being slightly optimistic, of course; the first time I went through this it only took nine days."

"Wait. Quiet," whispered the second neighbour. "I felt a shift in the air."

The group ceased talking, stuck out their eyes, and attempted to get a feeling on the shift themselves. The eighth neighbour slowly began to turn his head, and the ninth neighbour could only mangle his face into a look of disgust.

"What does all this mean?" you thought.

"Don't ask me, I have no idea," whispered the unseen man in your ear. He had slipped into the room through the chimney and began tapping everyone on the head.

"Duck. Duck. Duck. ...Duck. Goose!"

He was nearly done his runaround, when the seventeenth neighbour stood up from the table.

"I know what you're doing. I know everything about you. I felt beyond the shift in the air, and can see your face. You must realize that you're not the only unseen man anymore, you know?"

The unseen man took a step back. And then to the right. He grabbed a candlestick from the side table, and started to juggle it elaborately.

"No one was unseen before I. There is no one more compelling than me. No one can evoke mystery like I can. Any other unseen man is a shadow of me."

"Shadows are more black and less defined than the object that casts them," bizarrely retorted the seventeenth neighbour, who began to whistle in a higher and higher tone.

The unseen man's torso began to burn... he was not comfortable becoming the central pivot to any sort of sequence of events. Looking back through the document, he realized someone had placed a space into the page. What were they trying to hide?

The seventeenth neighbour's whistling became a high-pitched whine, and that was when the unseen man took one final look at his watch, laying in the fireplace he had snuck through. He was now eleven minutes late. He continued juggling but quickened his pace while the neighbour stepped toward him.

The fourth neighbour suddenly shook, like he had awoken from a trance. "Wah... what? Why is no one else talking?" He then realized what was happening in front of him and leapt out the escape funnel.

The seventeenth neighbour reached toward the unseen man, but at this point the unseen man's juggling was a blur of red, yellow, and pale green. He was stalling for time. It would only take one more second until...

A bridge structure dropped down the chimney, crushing the unseen man's watch.

"Unfortunate - now I will never know the time."

The seventeenth neighbour started to sweat noticeably. She became distraught, realizing they had no way to tell the time now. The unseen man leapt on this advantage, and surfed it across the room. With rapid kicks to the ribcage, the seventeenth neighbour fell to the ground. Her arm melted into a pool of snakes, and her left ear became a hornet. Skin transformed into taffy, and then her brain exploded into the air, zooming away as fast as a brain could travel.

The unseen man picked up the brain, which hadn't moved an inch from where it had landed. He then remembered the appearance of the bridge structure, and turned around. But the bridge structure was no longer there, as if it was incongruent from the moment it was conceived into the room.

"No more of this. I'm settling down to some TV and lemonade." And with that, the unseen man snaked back up the chimney and back to his home.

The fifth neighbour began to breathe again. "I don't think he suspects anything. He even forgot to put down the brain."

The other seventy-eight neighbours nodded in agreement. Their greatest work was now set in motion.