His mind grasped himself again, bringing him back into the conscious world that surrounded him. The fog had cleared away, and now the Sun was lower in the sky than it was before. His body still felt slightly weak, but he thought it would be best for him to start his travels again. Now he could see around him; yet, to his heart's dismay, he could only see the rolling hills and plains of stone. He thought that he would be able to see the acidic plains that he traversed through not too long ago but he could not. Isaack knew what direction he had to travel in: to the right of the Sun, or that is what he could remember. He knew he was in some direction that was adjacent to the star, either to the left or the right.

Isaack’s head was still spinning, but after he took a few more steps in the direction that he was supposed to go he felt better. The sound of his feet upon the rocky ground was still echoing. Though he felt like there was no true end goal that he had in sight he stepped across the barren landscape.

To Isaack, three hours had seemed to pass by—or, was it four? Time had no meaning at this point. There was no definite way for him to measure it other than the position of the Sun, though he could not remember where the Sun was positioned last. His footsteps and breath echoed.

After walking for a long time Isaack saw something come over the horizon; he was excited to see what it was because he had not seen anything but barren, cold, and dry rocky terrain for the past few hours. It was not large, and when it came over the horizon initially it was only a shadow, similar to a pile of dirt. As he approached it he started to notice defining features of it—it was yellow, or it seemed to be yellow. When he came in a fifty foot distance from it he noticed that it had a rubbery or plastic-like texture to it and that the light from the Sun barely reflected off of it. He hastened his speed and after a few seconds he was next to it; it lay at his feet and now he could clearly see what it was. It was a body.

The body was on its stomach with its back facing the sky. It was wearing a yellow, rubbery full body suit; when he turned it over he saw that it was adorned with a clear mask—either made from glass or plastic, but it would make a lot more sense if it was made of plastic, for it would be easier to mass produce—and underneath the said clear mask was a gas mask. Isaack was frightened—the person that was wearing the mask and the rubber suit was dead, and they were not just dead but also an entire skeleton. Not one part of their skeletal structure had any piece of flesh on it, nor skin nor muscle nor anything. He jumped back at this realization and almost fell onto his backside. Isaack scuttled backwards, disgusted and horrified by the body that lay in front of him as his cape fell down to the ground and dragged along with him. He sat on his bottom for a moment before nervously returning to the dead body; his skin felt dirty—he had not seen a real skeleton in a long time. Though he was repelled by it, he knew that he needed to take the things that it had. He shivered at the sight of any sort of bone or skull. Not only did the dead body have a gas mask and a yellow suit—the yellow suit, as one would assume, was what people of our time call a “hazmat suit”— the body also had a leather backpack.

Gingerly, Isaack flipped the skeleton over onto its stomach and took off the two straps that were on its shoulders; he shuddered when he heard the sound of the bones rattling in the suit. After taking it off he opened it up a small distance away from the body, and he found a flashlight—though when he took it up into his hands he did not know what it was until he tapped the button that sat on its handle, sending out a beam of light from its front—and an empty glass bottle. He took both of the things, putting the bottle into the backpack and a flashlight in his hand. Isaack knew that he needed the gas mask on the skeleton’s body—the things that he was inhaling from the steam that had been around him for a while could be highly dangerous toxins and the mask could filter out some of those things, if not all.

He unzipped the zipper on the back of the body, and a pungent odor hit his face; the carcass that had been in the suit had degraded and a small amount of the gas from the decomposing process had been let out, leaving a horrible smell inside of the body. Isaack turned his face so that he did not have to smell it, but he continued to unzip the suit—he then took the suit off of the body, and again he heard the subtle sound of the bones rattling as he did so, sending another shiver down his spine. He quickly flipped the body over, and now he was staring at the skull, adorned with the gas mask that he believed he so desperately needed. His hand carefully went towards the mask, still strapped to the skull; his fingers gripped the front of the mask, and with one pull Isaack ripped off the gas mask from the skeleton. The skeleton’s mouth still had a small amount of dry, dead skin that now waved around in the faint wind, free from the mask that held it in place. Isaack still held the mask in his right hand, but he stared into the cold and dead eyes of the skeleton. The dark pits seemed to grow darker and darker. It sounded like a voice called out to him, but the voice did not say his name. He knew that the voice was coming from the skeleton; no, he knew that the voice was coming from his mind.

Isaack pushed the skeleton away, hearing the bones smack up against each other, making a hollow sound that echoed throughout the stone desert around him. Once again, he shivered. In his hands he held the gas mask that he had just stripped from the skeleton; he spit on it, cleaning out the dust or dirt that was inside of it. He fit it on his face—a musty smell filled his nostrils. Isaack coughed because of the scent, his cough echoing all around him, just like the sound of the rattling bones. He could breathe, and it felt like he could almost breathe better than he could before.

Isaack gripped his cape, bringing it back over his shoulder—he pressed the mask back up against his face, making sure that it was tightly set on his mouth. He tightly squeezed the staff in his hand, taking a deep breath before he started walking along the stone again. Now, instead of the acrid scent that used to come to his nose, a clear scent came, though he could easily tell that the smell was “rubbery” and fabricated. It did not smell like air but it was bearable.

As mentioned earlier, the fog that once shrouded the Sun from him had gone, meaning that Isaack could see off into the far distance; but, even though he could see far away, there was nothing but rock to behold. Isaack heard a noise that rumbled and echoed over the landscape. He shuddered. Most of the things that Isaack had seen until that skeleton did not disturb him; however, that skeleton left a dark stain in his mind. He had seen the dead body of that girl, and though it did make his heart ache, it did not conjure up any fear inside of him. That skeleton—whoever’s skeleton it was—made him have dark nightmares each night he rested along that dry, stoney terrain.

In his sleep, the skeleton would come to him; sometimes it would still have its rubber suit on while other times it would be barren, or naked, if one could even call it that. Every time it came into his dreams it made his mind fill with darkness; he would see visions in his dreams—macabre visages appeared, with dances of evil and devilish things. Grim creatures visited him at night; even though the idea of demons and monsters had been lost in the society he used to live in—the society that sat in the stars—Isaack still saw demonic things in his mind. Phantoms haunted his mind, bringing with them Mephistophelian beings, devoid of anything good. When those creatures would come to Isaack he would yell and shout, attempting to ward them away; when we woke up in the middle of the night there would be nothing around him. This constant harassment during his venture over the desert made him almost go mad; insanity began to grasp his mind.