Walking.

It was a nice day, sky was cloudy. The birds were cawing, even the bus was on time. You weren't doing much really, just scrolling through your preferred social media app while drinking some coffee at a new cafe that opened not to long ago.

You weren't anyone special, people would miss you, but in the grand scheme of things you'd be forgotten long before the last people you met died. But that's ok, not everyone needs to be known, and the things you do are for your friends and family, not some indistinct audience. You never wanted to be known, just loved and cared for.

And really, was there anything better in life? Not to you. So you sat there with a cup of coffee and a new pastry more fad than flavor, you weren't a regular, not to here atleast elsewhere perhaps, but here? It was brand new, opened a week ago.

It wasn't great coffee, wasn't bad either, but well; it sure was coffee. And that was all it needed to be.

You bid farewell to the store, wishing the barista a good day. Not that you particularly cared, you didn't know them at all, after all. You rode the bus home, it was empty aside from you; and the driver. A few dollars in the jar and you were off.

Home was a bit away and it was getting dark by now. But for now you sat on the bus, this wasn't the last bus on the return trip, you were far enough away that the journey needed 2 buses. You had a car, but with the transit being decent enough, sometimes not taking it was nice. After around 15 minutes and another person joining the bus, it was time for you to step off. The bus stop you left into large and vacant.

It's an hour until the bus to take you home comes. And when it does you'll be sitting, however you know you have a while. So you go for a walk.

It's a nice walk, the air is cool, a breeze giving you ample heat exchange. You walk for a while around the bus stop. Doing loops, minutes count by, and something feels wrong. The air has gone still, the few stars in the sky no longer. Every loop around you take the feeling gets stronger.

You have been walking for around an hour. Atleast that's what the phone says, the bus should be arriving any minute now.

With nothing much to do you take a selfie of your situation and caption it with a jab at the fact it looks like you're in a horror movie. You appear to have no signal. Strange. But the bus will be here soon, so you keep walking. You notice you haven't heard any cars, or bugs as of late.

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Normally the overhead lights buzz aswell. But today; everything was silent. You attempt to speak. Then scream, and then yell. All you hear is your own heart pounding. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. And you know you can not to anything but let it all happen as it happens.

So you walk. For a while. It's been about an hour after the bus should've arrived, but you knew it wouldn't. You don't even know if you're in the same bus stop. And no one is around to ask for directions. Sure there is the option of leaving, but doing so means exploring unknowns places and who could say what may be out there. You don't know. And it's not like you want to leave. Still clinging to the hope that at one point or another, the bus comes.

So, while on one of the many dozens of loops around, your legs not getting tired, you stop on the bench. Your phone is dead, it might have been at 70 when you got here, and for a good long while. But now it's blank screen glares your reflection back at you.

So instead you pull out your laptop. Dead aswell, even the watch decidedly isn't set properly.

You sigh, you've seen stories of this before, a place is actually alive, and hungry. Toying with prey as it slowly consumes it.

If this is happening here, you know it isn't going to be fun. But the predator prey dynamic made manifest rarely is. You get up. And decide to walk. But not in the loop, the bus isn't coming after all, you know that. It already came, and you were decidedly not there. There is forest all around the bus stop, it was to dark to see from a distance. But that's not right, the bus stop was in the city, not a big city, but one which has no forests inside it's borders, at most a park.

You walk for a while. You can't say how long but you know you've seen the same tree over and over and over again. And soon after the nth time, you turn around spotting a sewer tunnel, large with the lid to the side. You realize you almost fell into it. The lid is for a place you don't recognize, and using an alphabet you can not rationalize you know it's a trap. All of this is. You don't know how you got here, but what is there to do? You look around. Seeing the world around you, you are in a forest, the bus stop is not to far from you, all of that walking doing nothing. This place feels stagnant, empty like everything here is simply a ruse propped up by your own mind to save you from the truth.

You don't have anything to do. For reasons unbeknownst to you it's clear within your mind that you can't escape. Not in the classic doomeristic sense. You just know there is no hope for you, your fate already sealed by something you are powerless to stop, and incapable of knowing.

There is no point in waiting you think to yourself. You know it to be true like the atoms in your hand. So hesitantly you crawl into the hole. Maybe it will be fast? You can only hope. Despite knowing the uselessness of resisting you don't want to let go. Your feet are dangling above an abyss, you thought there would be something down there. But it's just nothing, at all. In any way.

Eventually you let go, after who knows how long. You know there is no hope in resisting only brief respites before the flame.

You fall. There is nothing around you, and you fall.