The ticking of the wall clock was magnified ten-fold. It was as though the silence was a megaphone held to the wall clock, telling Carter that every second that passed without his hands moving was a second he’d wasted. But it wasn’t like he’d never done this before. The blank lined paper was laughing at him, its emptiness taunting his creative motives and sapping the will to stay in the building anymore. He wanted so badly to write, to start that first sentence that would lead on to an excellently fantastical adventure he’d only be able to dream about, but it wouldn’t come to him. Carter knew from experience that it was always the first and last sentences in a story that were the hardest to decide, and today, a Monday, no less, was proving to be especially distracting. Sitting at the farthest round table in the break room, away from anyone else, he held his head and stared unblinkingly at the pencil and paper as though he could will it to spring to life and begin the story he couldn’t.

But that was only possible in his world of fantasy. With a defeated sigh he put his hands down and picked up the pencil, sketching soft shapes onto the paper instead. His status of detective wasn’t enough to keep him interested in life. He wanted to be able to share his creative ideas with the world, like so many other novelists had before him. But he was already thirty two years old, with another birthday just several months away. The books he’d finished he’d never even bothered to show anyone. They were sub-par in his opinion, nothing that would allow him to see his name on the cover of a professionally-finished hardcover book. Just another Monday.

Someone slapped the table. It jarred Carter up and made his hand twitch, pulling the pencil down and creating an ugly line among the fine shaded squares and circles. Glaring through his glasses, Carter saw an older man standing with a mug in one hand. “There’s a meeting in an hour.” He said. “You and a few others.”

“Few others.” Carter sighed. He’d agreed to employ his extreme perceptive abilities here, at the expense of his humanity and dignity in monotonous meetings with journalists, other detectives, police, and office workers who all had the same blank, half-dead stare on their faces, as though they knew they were wasting their lives here but couldn’t do a damn thing about it. “Who else?” He asked flatly.

“Dunno. A journalist from what I heard. Didn’t ask much.”

“Of course not.” Carter sat up straight, working the painful kink from his back. “Would you leave me alone? I’m working.”

“Writer’s block, eh?” The older man snickered. He’d seen Carter struggle with paper and pen before.

“Don’t use that word! Go away, would you?” Carter closed his eyes and put his head down, moving his glasses up his forehead. The departing footsteps signaled his co-worker’s leave. He’d been up half the previous night with ideas flooding his head, yet only able to scratch out garbled sentences in horrible handwriting. An hour until the meeting gave him enough time to catch a quick nap.

As soon as he was asleep, something came to him. Carter fell from the roof of a high building, landing safely on the ground, in the middle of a deserted street that resembled Main Street. In front of him stood a group of men and women, each with a weapon in their hand from a machete to high-powered rifle. Each face he’d seen in the past. He helped catch them all. In fact, he’d caught them all on his own. Their faces were twisted in scowls, anger that he’d seen when he had confronted them. The ones wielding the guns stepped forward, raising them, trained directly at Carter. Before he could move, however, he was jolted awake.

Blinking through the glaring lights above him, Carter repositioned his glasses. “Idea…” He’d been searching for a fantasy-based story in his reservoir of inspiration, but the thought of a mysterious thriller seemed far more captivating. He went to a new page in his notebook and picked up his pencil, but as soon as he wrote ’Sun’, the one he begrudgingly called ‘boss’ entered the room.

“Hall. Weren’t you supposed to be up in the second-floor meeting room?” He asked sternly. His small eyes glared at Carter as though he’d done something wrong. Quickly the younger man glanced at his watch.

“Er, I hadn’t caught the time…”

“You caught it now, get upstairs.” The stumpy little man floundered away, and as he ground his teeth in frustration, Carter slapped his notebook shut and stood. Growling nonsense to himself, he put his book under one arm and stalked from the break room, headed toward the elevator. He didn’t quite feel like dragging himself up the stairs.

The elevator was pretty slow. The building itself was rather old and the lift had slowed over time. As it raised itself to the second floor, he opened his notebook to the last page and scribbled a quick summary of his dream through the rattling floor beneath him that seemed to threaten to drop all the way down the shaft and into the basement. It probably wouldn’t kill him. He sighed when the doors opened, moving out of the elevator alcove and down the hall to the left.

He wasn’t halfway down when a young woman came stalking at him, a frustrated glare on her face. Before he could reply to her blunt question, she grabbed and dragged him down the hall toward the meeting room. Usually his random quirks would have warranted a cat-like hiss in her direction, but he stuffed it away and let her be the owner to the misbehaving dog he obviously was. Begrudgingly he took a seat in the empty one on the other side of her and trained his bad eyes on the front of the room. Their boss was there, and called them to attention by standing and taking a place at the front.

“I’ve called all of you here… because you’re the best of the company.” He said hesitantly, leaning on the desk. “And frankly, I’m just about to let you know: We’re running low on stories. We can’t keep this up. Mediocre writing from master journalists, the best of our detectives running around with nothing big to focus on to give the press, it’s… embarrassing, basically. We can’t afford to keep you all here, so…” He ran a hand through his thinning hair. “By the end of the week I’ll have had to get rid of half of you. It’s not permanent, but we can’t keep going like this.” He paused. “Well… I’m sorry. You can go now.” He turned, leaving through the second set of doors.

Carter was silent. No thought crossed his mind for what seemed like a century. Not even the voices around him registered at first. He, and everyone else in the room, was in the frying pan, and it was leaning pretty close to the fire.

Carter kept silent throughout the barrage of voices. He was especially skilled at keeping his emotions hidden, while a war raged on within him. It was an aspect of a good detective, to keep their feelings inside so others wouldn’t see their worry, their anger, their frustration. And he felt all of them in that moment, but his face was calm and placid. Easily, he stood after the young lady who had taken off after yelling at the bearer of bad news, gathered up his notebook, and left the room. From his desk in the office he took a clear plastic bag and put his notebook in, then put it in his beat-up notebook and flung it over his shoulder.

He should have seen it coming. Things had suddenly slowed, for at least a week, the reporters didn’t have ground-breaking stories, detectives were called to look for lost kids or runaway spouses. But to get rid of half the team… A business ploy, more than likely, cutting costs and people alike, the greedy bastards. He growled to himself, avoiding the rickety elevator for the stairs, which he also didn’t quite trust. He’d probably have to sell his ‘87 Buick. No one would want it, the interior was falling apart, the passenger window didn’t even go down. It rattled and shook, always about to fall apart, but managed to shudder into the parking lot of the office building every day, then back to his apartment.

He stepped out as rain started pouring and was thankful that he’d put his notebook in a waterproof bag. Standing for a moment, staring at the road in front of the building, he caught sight of the girl who had ambushed and borderline kidnapped him not even an hour ago. She was staring, deflated, at a phone in her hand, with a look he’d seen before. It was the look of disdain-for-expensive-public-transportation. Carter sighed. He’d never been someone to just leave another person to find their own way when he could do something to help. Raking his hand through his already-soaked hair, he stepped toward her, sure to move to the side to not startle her.

“Hey.” His voice was a bit flat, mainly from lack of sleep and inspiration. “I know how much a cab costs nowadays, how ‘bout I just give you a ride? You and I are both pretty worried about our jobs, so we’ll need every dollar we can keep.”

“Indeed, I’m Carter.” He didn’t mention having kept them waiting for an hour. He’d missed or had been late to plenty of meetings and always caught up with it. Just because his job was on the line didn’t mean they had to wait for him. He simply shrugged when she mentioned their relationship was pretty much nonexistent. But what would he do? He had little interest in human interaction much more than trying to get to the bottom of a murder or disappearance, and certainly didn’t have the energy today to overpower anyone. All he wanted was to get home, add detail to the summary of his dream, and sleep for twelve hours straight. Maybe more.

He was about to turn when Alia, as he’d heard her called inside, accepted the ride and suddenly strode past him into the parking lot. He crossed his arms, watching her pause and look back. All he could do was shake his head at her words, step forward, and point to the black vehicle farther away from the others. A lot like him, his car was rather reclusive and anti-social. “That’s it.” He noted. “Possibly the most pathetic Buick on the streets. The doors stick, so you’ll have to pull a little harder to get it open.” He went past her, taking his glasses off and shaking the water off the lenses. He ignored the embarrassment Alia was obviously feeling. Often he’d been told he needed to show more emotion, rather than act like a robot. But it was better for him, that way. No one could use his emotions against him.

He pulled his keys from his pocket and unlocked the front doors. Leaning halfway in over the driver seat, he tossed his bag into the back and looked around for Aria. “C’mon, the rain’s probably only about to get worse.” He called over his shoulder. Without waiting for a response or looking to see where she was, he planted himself behind the wheel and closed the door. It screeched and clicked, sounding as though it were about to fall off.

Carter knew he’d been lied to. He’d been told it would be easy, to climb the ladder in the art of the detective, because it was slowly becoming extinct as police grew in number. A private eye was something reserved for movies in the fifties, sixties. A profession dying, conformed to a certain mold, something Carter wanted to change, and use to his advantage in his stories. But he didn’t know how to make something real into something... fictional. So many ideas bounced about in his head, yet he focused more on fantasy, sci-fi, things that didn’t relate to the job he would have loved to base an entire series on. He sighed, jamming the key into the ignition and working for what seemed like an hour to get the engine to turn over.

“Probably not for much longer.” Carter sighed. The engine turned over at last and he gave a low sigh of thanks. He glanced over at the one beside him. She probably thought the car would rattle apart as it shuddered to life. He switched the windshield wipers on and they left streaks when they squeaked by, and cautiously he pulled the car out of its spot and to the road. He tended to avoid the blinking streetlight, people acted like idiots as though they didn’t know to treat it like a stop sign.

He glanced over. It was odd having someone talking to him, especially on his way home. Usually he stared out the window and thought his storylines through. “Er, about... twelve years I’ve been a detective.” He admitted. “In one city and another. Always had to start over when I moved, usually from dangers of the job. Oddly enough I choose... bad cities. Eventually word gets out that I’m a pretty big threat, so I leave and don’t bring my past with me. That way I start at the bottom again.”

He didn’t look at her as he spoke. He didn’t usually make eye-contact, at the very least look at someone, unless he had to. Being in such a confined area, it was obvious who he was talking to. “Er, where do you live? Anywhere near South Avenue?” He glanced at her, shaking a strand of wet hair from his glasses.

Carter wrinkled his nose. He’d been asked the same question countless times. “No, it’s not much like the books or movies.” He said definitely. “Though I wish it were, maybe it’d pay a bit better. It’s sleepless, staying up late into the night chasing leads, calling and writing and talking constantly. Usually when you hit the home stretch, though, it’ll start picking up. I’ve been shot at a lot, stabbed a couple times but nothing more drastic. Those situations aren’t exceptionally numerous.”

He glanced sideways as she stared around the street. This was his street as well, since he lived in the three-story apartment building at the end of the road. “I know my way around here.” He said. “I live just down there.” Nodding to the right side of the road, he glanced around. Things weren’t quite right. Everyone seemed to be watching them from their windows, from the shadows, their eyes more noticeable than their faces. As though light shone from within their heads and made itself noticed only through the eyes.

“How strange.” Carter almost didn’t watch the road. The houses seemed so much more dilapidated than he remembered, having only been gone for ten hours. He pulled to the side of the road, where the vehicle shuddered as though annoyed at being stopped after taking so long to warm up. “This doesn’t make much sense. You see what I’m seeing, right?” He looked to the road. Something ran across, which had the form of a dog but was very long. As soon as it vanished something bashed into his side of the car, knocking it about. “What the hell...”

Carter looked out the window, to the soaked street. For an instant someone else with extremely large, yellow eyes stared up in turn, then seemed to roll underneath the car. “Something’s out there.” He muttered.

Carter had to look past Alia’s head to see the stranger. He didn’t recognize him, though. His heart leapt into his throat, however, when something, possibly the shadowy dog-like thing that had crept by in front of the car, smashed into the man. He couldn’t react as Alia forced him forward, and luckily, the engine stalled at the sudden burst of energy it would have had to induce to lurch onto the road again. Carter pushed Alia back into her seat and eased as quickly as he could back onto the road as something grabbed onto his back bumper and forced a screech from his vehicle.

It didn’t quite have a good grip, though, and he managed to squeal away, leaving his bumper to smash to the road. “Damn, woman, don’t ever do that!” He scolded, showing genuine anger for the first time. For an instant he caught his reflection in the rearview mirror. His brows were knitted in his scowl, his eyes narrowed sharply. It was strange to him, and he shook it away, spinning onto the street beside his apartment and flying into the parking lot. There, however, the vehicle sputtered, shuddered, and died.

“Damn it!” He turned the key, but the engine growled dimly. If it had a voice it would have been scowling its last breaths at Carter. “It’s dead.” He sighed. “Dead! At this point... What the hell was that thing?” He glanced to his side, but knew Alia didn’t have an answer. “Looked like... a dog or something, but it was stretched out. I saw it cross the road before it attacked that guy.” He tried the car one more time, but in the end overheated the engine. “Bah.” He looked at Aria. “I live on the top floor. Up there we’ll be able to keep a watch for whatever attacked that guy and see any threat coming, especially if there’s another, or even more, of those things out and about. You trust me?” He leaned back to grab his bag. Usually he kept a switchblade packed, and that was better than nothing.

Carter hardly waited for Alia to reply before forcing his car’s old door open and followed Alia to the entrance of the building. Before going in, Carter paused, staring around the back lot. He avoided looking at the sad excuse of a car sitting in the middle, hardly parked as much as thrown into the general area. A quick sweep of the road showed something else, similar to the dog-like shadow that attacked the man a moment ago, creeping along. With a quick huff, he went inside and used a few balled-up papers to stuff under the door, halting its movement.

There was no elevator, one of the many things he hated about his apartment building. But this time he didn’t mind the climb, and took the several flights three steps at a time. Passing a few other doors, their paint peeling and whose wood was etched with graffiti and stained with spray paint. His door was marked with a number written in thick permanent marker, 18, which he unlocked and let Alia in. Before he entered, however, he glanced around one more time. Nothing was around, and he didn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. Stepping inside, he locked the door.

His apartment was nothing to be proud of. In fact, it was rather shabby. The wall space that could be seen was covered in clippings of old newspapers he’d brought with him during every one of his moves. Bookshelves covered the rest of the walls, with bargain-shop and yard-sale-bought novels ranging from mystery to fantasy and poetry. A desk was pushed up against the wall to the right, piled with papers mostly of his writing, a couple bills he’d convinced himself to pay later, and an old couch was covered with a heavy blanket since he’d slept there the night before. There was no television, since he didn’t even have room, and to the right a tiny kitchen could be looked upon. Two doors stood farther along the left wall, leading to a bathroom and a bedroom. Directly across, a window looked upon the road and front parking lot.

He set his bag on the end of the couch and pushed his glasses up. “I have a couple guns.” He said. “From what’s outside, we’ll probably need them. Can you use one?” He looked toward Alia as he passed her, going to the window to look outside. “From here, we’ll be able to see anything coming from the front.”

Carter wrinkled his nose as he got onto his knees, feeling under the couch for a box he’d stored there. But he didn’t say anything at Alia’s feeble attempt at humor. He was glad to have even offered her a ride. At least in this situation, whatever it was, neither of them were alone. “Action movies don’t let you feel recoil.” He muttered, pulling a flat metal box from the den of dust bunnies and setting it on the couch cushion. “Guns aren’t terribly different than a bow and arrow, either.” With a small key on his keychain, he unlocked the box and opened it. Two Beretta 92s sat in their foam molds, and under the foam, a stash of clips sat easily and shined in the light of his floor lamp. Both were loaded and the safeties were off.

Alia startled him with the suddenness of her exclamation, but he grabbed one gun and ran across the wooden floor. Joining her at the window, his heart dropped at the sight. Indeed, they were attacking his car, ripping its fragile body apart and getting into the interior, under the hood, popping the trunk. He opened the window just as one turned its formless face toward her, and with an instant’s movement, aimed and fired the gun.

The noise exploded forth in the general quiet, but it made contact with the thing and sent it backward, into the door it had been working on. While the rest of the shadowy things scurried off in various directions, the one he’d hit slid down the side of the car to the ground, where it seemed to wash away in the rain, losing substance and melting away.

Carter slammed the window shut. “Damn it. Can never have nice... things.” He sighed, setting the gun on the window by Alia and going to get the other. “This is ridiculous.” He went on after a moment. “This is more like a fantasy book come to life. I mean this... this can’t be really happen...” He paused. “Bah, but what do I know?” He threw himself onto the couch and set the metal box on the coffee table in front of him. After a moment, he glanced back to Alia. “Do you really believe what we’re seeing?” He asked.

Carter didn’t quite listen to Alia for the first bit. He was rubbing feeling back into his numb feet, setting his gun on the table. He knew he wasn’t crazy. He’d been told he was, many times, but because he acted odd, or on spur of the moment ideas or thoughts. But both he and Alia had seen the shadows. Whatever they were, they’d attacked someone, probably killed him. His detective side hated him for leaving a possibly critically-injured man, but his survival instinct had sent him forward, regardless of Alia’s sudden and intense reaction to the event. For all he knew, the man was still there, torn half to pieces and dead or dragging himself along the road, looking for help. He shook the idea from his head to hear Alia mentioning a reinforced vehicle obviously of her own creation.

“Sounds like you’d rather head out for a zombie apocalypse than a hoard of living shadows.” He commented, bending in various positions to work pops and cracks out of his joints. “We’d need something more airtight.” He paused. Indeed, something airtight to keep the shadows from seeping inside, which he assumed they would be able to do. But no one nearby, or within the radius of fifty miles, would have a fast or well-off car. And with night setting in, Alia was right. It was best to stay indoors. However, Carter’s sleepiness had been chased away with adrenaline. He was wide awake.

“Er, it’d be better to barricade the door to the bedroom.” He noted. “It’s nearer to the center of the building and doesn’t have a window. It’s easy to plug the only entrance, and keep watch on it.” He stood, though his legs and back became agitated. “Hopefully there aren’t any unexpected surprises...” He muttered to himself, taking up his gun before even nearing the closed door. With his breath held, Carter carefully turned the handle and pushed it forward. Darkness reigned, and his heart leapt for a second, until he turned the light on and saw only the obvious: A plain bed, box springs and mattress, lying on the floor. A dresser to the right, an old mirror to the left. Up against the wall to the right of the door stood a couple battered suitcases, which stored a number of notebooks and old papers, which he’d collected during the year and a half he’d spent here. Otherwise, nothing was odd or out of place. He stepped inside.

Carter didn’t feel it necessary to reply to Alia’s words. Evacuation? He doubted it. They hadn’t seen police, military, heard a single word of it in any form. The man that stopped them before being attacked hadn’t said to do anything other than go home. Either something was following them or no one felt it necessary to move anyone else at the time. Or the creatures had already multiplied outside town, and there was nowhere near they could safely go to. But he pushed the thoughts away as he stepped up to the foot of the bed. Something wasn’t quite right to Carter, he felt it. With his shoe, he moved aside the clump of thin blue sheet from the floor, shaking it a bit before kicking it over. Nothing was there, anyway, and he was glad for that.

Next he approached the dresser. It wasn’t exactly full, in fact, two of the four drawers were completely empty. Cautiously, he kicked it, the drawers rattling in their fame and almost bouncing off their tracks. But nothing else moved, no sentient being retaliating at the sudden movement. With his free hand he opened the drawers one by one, finding nothing but some clothes, a couple notebooks and pens and pencils.

Carter turned as Alia switched on his old radio. He didn’t like bothering with it, electronics in general disliked him, the feeling shared mutually. His closet door was closed all the way. His paranoia hated slightly ajar doors, especially at night. Music came drifting into the room as he stepped toward the door and put his hand on the knob. “That’s good.” He called behind his back, tugging on the door. “I’d given up on IYAAAAH!” He flew back, stumbling over a nonexistent hill in the floor, clawing at a massive thing that had attached to his face. It resembled a giant roach, shelled with dark brown, whose wiry legs had wrapped around Carter’s head in a tight hug.

He rolled over and sent his head forward into the floor, knocking the thing loose. Scrambling, he grabbed his fallen gun and pulled the trigger, unloading the rest of the rounds into whatever the thing was.

Lying on the floor, it looked more like a huge water beetle, which he hated. The belly was black, twitching legs pointed to the ceiling. Carter felt sick; ever since his childhood he’d hated bugs of any shape and size, and being so massive, it was as though his worst nightmare had come to life. He couldn’t stand for a long time, so instead, he stayed on his knees, hands shivering out of control and eyes wide. He didn’t dare blink.