XVII
Tver, Russia, December 16th, 2002. I was in an abandoned city. It appeared to have outgrown itself. Garbage littered the streets, any semblance of metal was rusty. Foliage crept up the sides of buildings, consuming them in a way I can’t describe. I walked around, water dripping from the sky. I started crying over such a gloomy place. My tears flooded the streets.
After a minute of crying, my legs were drenched in tears. The city had flooded at the hands of my sorrow. This was the city I was born in. It was booming with life just moments before. All gone in a flash. A metaphorical flash.
Paranoid of stragglers, I hurried my walking towards the exit of the city. As I approached the middle of the city, I witnessed a fallen angel. It had landed in the exact center of the city and turned to stone. It was now a statue, representing the death of the city. I took a while to finish glancing at the new statue. Afterward, I hurried up to the exit.
Out of nowhere, I large sea serpent swam to the surface of the water. Lightning roaring, thunder booming, the rain flooding the city even more. I watched as the sea serpent grew closer to me. On the side, I saw the words “Kraken of the Sea” carved. I thought it was strange to call a sea serpent a Kraken.
At the exit, I found a bowl of what looked to be pumpkin soup. As I drank the soup, it warmed my stomach. Finally, something that felt pleasurable. A small critter then came up to me. It was a bundle of grass with its face hidden in the shadows. Without a moment’s notice, it crawled up on top of my head and its face engulfed my body.
In my vision, I bore witness to the words “Browsing History Land”. The text had then disappeared from my eyesight. There were giant 0s and 1s scattered amongst the plains. The sky being bright blue and the ground being green and polygonal. Daring to find more information about this new land, I started walking. “Finding my way around here is my only option”, I thought.
After walking for an eternity, I found a brick house. Inside that house were three rooms. I looked through the windows, finding that all of them had free weights in them. However, the middle room was also a theatre. I decided to enter the middle room because it seemed like the best place to get information.
The moment I walked through the middle room’s door; people magically appeared. The room was overpopulated. Many different faces filled the room. They all looked at me as if I had done something wrong. I’m sure I did. I stared back at them blankly. I didn’t know what to do.
“You came here to visit Browsing History Land, right?” Asked one person.
“The water here tastes like lead!” Yelled one person.
I was told to go to Walmart if I wanted to leave this land. Now that I knew where to go, I apologized for being a disturbance and left promptly. After leaving the middle room, I decided to go to the room on the right. I sat in there pondering my escape. After a bit I placed some weights on the Olympic bars and started exercising.
Eventually I got tired, and I went to enter the room on the left. It appeared to be another weight room was well, but with a door in the back. I proceeded to enter the room and sat down, resting for a bit. Regaining some of my strength, I stood back up, then walking to the door.
After entering the door, I noticed that I was in Walmart. Just the place the people in the theatre had told me to find. I made my way down to the Walmart and I started in the foliage section. The plants were disgusting and old. The smell burned my nostrils. “These plants are dead”, I thought.
I continued walking through Walmart. There was not a single sign of life. I remembered the chemical smell the place reeked of. Most of what I was smelling was plastic and cleaning supplies. I then got hungry. I couldn’t find a restaurant in the Walmart. My hunger grew.
After twenty minutes of getting lost in the Walmart, I found a food section. I sneakily opened a bag of cashews and started chowing down. A security camera focused on me, and I made a beeline. Suddenly a group of Walmart staff holding toy rifles came out of the staff lounge. They all pointed their toy rifles at me.
“What did I do!” I exclaimed.
“You stole from us, now vomit your food back out so we can eat it!” Said one of the staff members.
I then stuck my finger down my throat several times to vomit my food. The Walmart staff took to the floor and started eating my vomit.
“What is the meaning of this!” I yelled.
While still chewing, one of the Walmart staff members replied:
“We put people in this scenario so we can eat their vomit. It’s not your fault. The exit is to your left.”
I then looked to my left and there it was, the exit. As I walked through the aisles, I grabbed some food for the trip back. I grabbed some more cashews, a bag of chips, two pieces of chocolate, and some sour candies. I also wanted a blue raspberry soda, so I grabbed one of those as well. I walked to the exit and left.
Outside, there was a void and nothing else except for the Walmart. Feeling unsure, I jumped into the void. My body melted atop the black surface. I then fell back down into my city. The people I had seen from earlier came to greet me. They told me they fixed and cleaned the city for me. I was thankful that my city had been revived. I saw countless people blissfully walking through the streets.
Published Nov. 9th, 2021