A hand gripped the side of the truck as I curled like a shrimp. It was all blurry, and then I felt nothing, heard nothing. I could only see the others fall over like dominoes in the periphery of my blurred vision.

“Can you wake up and turn that shit off?” A voice came from across my dreams.

I jerked out of bed to the sound of an alarm blaring over and over. My left hand grasped my head as a sharp pain raced behind my eyes; my right jerked outwards, feeling for the alarm clock.

The sunlight coming through my curtains was bright enough to blind me, and in my haste I knocked the alarm clock off the dresser. It smashed into the ground with a bang and ceased making noise. With any luck it was broken and I’d not have to deal with it again.

“Thank God.” I let out an exasperated sigh while falling back into my pillow. The alarm clock could wait, broken or not. My eyes burned; my head pounded. I’d never felt such unbelievable pain after waking up.

“You’re late!” The voice came again. His name eluded me for a moment—my roommate, and once friend—that was it, Alexander. We got along great as friends, but living together was something else entirely, and we were now strictly roommates.

I forced my eyes open a crack and leaned over, my hand scraping along the floor to find the alarm clock. It was 4:30 in the afternoon. Why didn’t that mean anything to me? I opened my phone to check, and sure enough on my calendar, I was scheduled for a shift at 4. The panic hit me instantly and then subsided like I’d never felt before.

I dialed work and a voice I’d learned to love to hate came through, “Where are you? You’re already thirty minutes late.” Decrepit, uncaring, judging.

“Sorry, someone parked me in and they just left now. I had to call a towing company. I’ll be there as soon as possible.” It was a blatant lie, but it was out there and specific enough that maybe I could slide by this time.

There was a pause on the other side, and I was expecting some scolding, but all I got was “Don’t let it happen again.”

“Got it,” I said while jumping out of bed. My lethargy was quickly gone, but the headache remained, stabbing me behind the eyes. Headaches weren’t uncommon with my lack of proper sleep, but a migraine this bad wasn’t normal.

I moved to the kitchen while half dressed and found the ibuprofen, popped three in my mouth, and then opened the fridge and chugged straight from the container of orange juice. Alexander was eyeing me, and normally I’d have muttered an apology, but honestly, I didn’t care in this moment.

My vest was half on, and I could only shrug one half of my body, and that would have to do. He walked away without a word, typical of our interactions lately. I didn’t remember exactly what started this mess but it was my current life. Every day I expected him to let me know he was moving out and weirdly enough, that feeling didn’t illicit any emotion on my end: a scary thought.

Life was like that these days. I merely existed without much thought. My closest friends were all acquaintances I made online, and Alexander, the one whom wasn’t strictly online, wouldn’t call himself my friend if asked, at least not anymore. Most of my enjoyment came from not living in the real world, and my relationships suffered greatly for it.

Prospects weren’t great, really. My parents tried their best to be supportive, but somehow I found a way to fuck that up, too. I just didn’t try enough with them, which was crazy in comparison to my efforts with video games. With the games you’d think that losing was the end of the world.

A day wouldn’t be enough time to bitch all about my life. Unfortunately, it was me who had fucked it up in the first place. I told myself that made it okay, but obviously it wasn’t. Things were crumbling around me and I still spent most of my time gaming—addiction or coping mechanism, who knew?—or at least that’s what my parents liked to throw at me lately.

The drive to work was a blur. I found myself a bit more excited than usual. Eventually I grasped why: the late shifts were way better than the morning shifts. Less foot traffic, and that let me get my work done in peace. I always got an earful when I clocked out in the afternoon and things weren’t tidied up.

No amount of explaining that I had customers nonstop for the entire shift would get me out of that earful. A slow night tonight, I hoped. Plenty of time to browse my phone and then get the shop ready for the morning. A feeling of happiness crept up without me even realizing it. Why was I so pleased about this?

The scolding I expected to get in person didn’t come either. I figured on the drive over may manager must have had a customer she was dealing with, else I’d have got a good licking over the phone. Things felt… off.

As I entered the shop, a fake lemon scent struck me like a hammer and the aching behind my eyes grew so strong I almost keeled over. “Don’t try and pretend sick, boy,” my manager said. She? Why couldn’t I even remember her name?

“Sorry, I’m not. I just need a moment,” I groaned while racing to the bathroom. The pain became so extreme I felt nauseous. The thought of throwing up hadn’t even hit me before I was emptying the contents of my stomach. The burning sensation in my throat and mouth was the only other thing I could feel besides the stabbing behind my eyes.

I turned on the faucet and splashed my face, pushing my fingers hard into the crevice of my eyes as if trying to pry them out, as if that pressure might relieve this pounding. Somehow or another it did—it helped for a moment. I stood in front of the mirror massaging and rubbing my eyes

“Mike, let’s go!” A knock came abruptly and the headache that I had alleviated spiked back up for a moment.

“Coming.” I flushed the toilet as a cover and then wiped my face hard before drying my hands and face and walking out. The hammering that made it hard to function abated slowly and the nausea dissipated.

“Just do your best. It will be a slow night.” She said. Words of encouragement? This wasn’t normal. Everything felt off. I fumbled behind the counter and locked the door behind me. It was almost 5 PM, the time everyone was getting off work, and yet it was slow.

It was as though her words held some weight here, that they morphed reality. Nothing felt right. A ding at the entrance pulled my attention outward. A regular, his name traced the tip of my tongue. “Hey Mike, I’ll take the usual.”

His voice put a name to his face, “Hey Rick, how’s it been?” I asked as if it had been the thousandth time. My hand searched beneath the register for the scratch offs. I pulled out the ones with the ladies on em. “Two?” I asked.

“Two,” he said back. I placed them on the counter and his face looked off, “You know I get the ones with the cowboys on ‘em.” And it was like a bomb had gone off in my head. This isn’t real—nothing that’s happening is real.

My head started to pound like nothing before. I could only barely hear Rick in the background, “I didn’t mean to upset you Mike. I’ll take the ladies.” He spoke as if he was trying to appease me, to keep me trapped here.

This isn’t real. The images in front of my face started to wave like a blur, and for a moment I hesitated. Lightheadedness—I was going to black out. This isn’t real.

I opened my eyes. The pain was gone, but my thoughts… they moved like dried clay—slow, lethargic—I was confused. Where am I? The ground beneath me dug in sharp. A hand traced the floor. It was concrete, dirty and old like a country road.

I sat up as best as I could, my thoughts grasping at anything that would fix me to a particular place. A truck was there to lean on and supported me. Wait, a truck? I scurried up and things started to come back to me. “Jessica!” I yelled.

My feet moved and before I could finish that first step I stumbled into something. It was impossible to see a damned thing, even the bottom of my feet. I knew what it was and my heart stopped instantly. A body.

I leaned down low, it was Alan. My hands raced up to his face—felt his cold cheek. My heart was in my throat. I leaned in close and put my cheek so I was nearly touching his lips. Felt a warm exhalation. He’s Breathing!

Alarm bells started ringing in my head. The others were all here around the truck, hidden by the fog. Alan was alive, they were all hopefully alive. His breathing was so shallow though, and checking the party window I could see his HP was slowly draining.

They were all there in the party window—alive and barely hanging on. I didn’t know how long I was out, or why I was even awake at this moment. It felt like the illusion—or whatever that was—was trying to appease me, to let me live my old life. My old life though… it wasn’t great.

I buried that thought as I leaned down and grabbed hold of Alan. It was a struggle to get him up. Moving someone that was as lifeless as a doll and weighed over one-hundred-eighty pounds was not easy at all. I was huffing by the time I had him pinned up against the truck. I couldn’t carry everyone, and so I’d have to find a way. I’d also proven to myself that I couldn’t wake Alan by slapping or shaking him.

The truck bed came down and I forced him inside, dragging him in like a bag of grain. There was no time to stop or catch my breath. My sweat was clinging to my body and there wasn’t the slightest movement of air to provide any cooling sensation. I was sweltering.

I found them all one by one, each as unconscious as Alan, each as cold as Alan was, lips purple and skin slightly dark. Their life force was being slowly drained away by whatever visions they were seeing.

It took me dozens of minutes to load them into the truck, and by then I was so exhausted I could barely move. The only thing I knew for certain was this fog was the cause. Judging by how their life was being drained, I had a few hours max to get them out.

Panic started to set in, and then inner calm fought that panic back. The vehicle wouldn’t move on its own, and so I opted for the next best thing. I put the vehicle in neutral and then cast Shallow Grave. I needed to repopulate my skeletons. There were no reincarnations available so basic skeletons would have to do.

There was a road beneath us and I could at least follow this wherever it went. I instructed my minions to push, and the lot of them moved behind the vehicle and started pushing. It wasn’t fast, but it was better than nothing.

The murmuring of my friends from inside the truck scared me. I could hear a mixture of sounds of pleasure and excitement and the occasional laugh: it seemed most of them weren’t exactly unhappy with their previous life. They were enjoying whatever they were being visually fed.

Richard had said the farm was a few hours on foot, but would this hellscape end before then? Before anyone died and I could have them out safely? That was now my goal, and the best-case scenario was that the cursed fog would end soon. I didn’t want to think about the alternative.

I watched the party window like a hawk and counted in my head. They were losing around one-percent of their HP every three minutes, and, as far as I could tell, the effect didn’t harm any one person more than another. Currently, they were all somewhere around forty-percent HP, which gave me roughly two hours of time.

My HP wasn’t going down at all anymore, which helped calm my rattled nerves slightly. If they woke up on their own as I did, they would be safe, albeit a little out of it. For now though I needed to get the vehicle moving.

I could hear my minion’s bones quivering and clacking as they pushed into the truck. It was no easy feat to keep the wheels rolling, especially when we went up an incline. My minions’ skinless feet didn’t have the best traction on solid ground and they toppled over constantly.

The two abominations I had previously would have made easy work of this, and even the reanimated Children of Sobek could have helped tremendously. I had no choice but to buck up and join them at the back.

I was already at the end of my rope on stamina, and the lack of airflow made me wonder if I would get heat stroke if I kept overexerting myself. It took over a minute of breaking my back before the vehicle started cresting a rise and began to move forward.

The truck built up momentum slowly, and only after thirty seconds of steady rolling did I dare stop putting all my weight into it. The skeletons had an easier time of it now too that it was already moving, and they kept it going.

This was the kind of pace we would make if we took our time walking at a leisurely pace, and it made me nervous to no end, but instructing my skeletons to push harder didn’t do anything but make them tumble and fall over.

The wheels of the vehicle clearly hadn’t been aligned anytime recently, as the truck constantly tried to veer off course and take a right turn directly into a barbed wired fence—one that I couldn’t see but assumed was there. I had to sit in the driver’s seat and fight the vehicle’s urge to turn, which made it even harder to see the path. Crashing into a fence or pit would mean the death of my comrades, most if not all of them.

That dark thought raced through my head, and somehow or another I found myself picking who I would save if the time came to abandon the truck and move faster on foot. Jessica was a given, and if necessary I’d carry her on my back no matter what. It was the others that left me conflicted. I could maybe take one to two more people with my minions bearing their weight.

It was hard to shake that scenario from my head. Without the high beams guiding the way, I really couldn’t see where I was going or if we were leaving the road. Fortunately, there was a different feeling when the tires touched grass, and I used that to stop from losing the road.

I could feel the bubbling anxiety inside my gut. Inner Calm was the only thing keeping me together, and no doubt the only thing keeping me from losing the little food I did have inside my stomach. It was a building tension though, one that I feared would burst forth.

Every minute that passed without exiting this miasma made the anxiety worse. Even Inner Calm only worked so well and I started to feel a growing dizziness: a feeling of impending doom weighing me down.