Ab Intus

Ezekiel awoke to the darkness of the room. It was the room on the fifth floor of the southwest corner of an apartment building that he had been sleeping in for the last week. He had chosen it in the hopes that it would be high enough up that no one would come up this high looking for supplies.  Everything up here was probably rotten by now anyways. After laying there for a few minutes, he got up and stretched before swinging his legs over the edge and standing up. After getting dressed and getting all of his gear on, he pushed the dresser out from behind the door and walked through the living room and out the door into the hallway. Today his goal was to find more sleeping pills and find some new buckets to fill with water and bring back to the apartment. 

After walking down the fire escape, Ezekiel paused by the door to the lobby to check if anything was out there. The glass front doors had been broken long ago, and he knew that there was a body behind the front desk, but there was nothing new in the lobby itself. He opened the fire escape door and walked out through the lobby, broken glass crunching under his shoes with every step.

Outside, the day was slowly getting brighter. Ezekiel had checked the area to the right yesterday for more medicine, but had no luck finding any. So today, he would check the area to his right, and the streets in front of him tomorrow. After swiping his hair back, he began walking down the street, silently praying to whatever God or gods out there that he could find some more medicine.

 

Falter was at one moment trying to make sense of all the new feelings that were bowling over him. It was as if he couldn't move, couldn't breathe, couldn't think... And then, in an instant, he was falling. His stomach dropped to his toes, he had no sense of ground, no sense of time... And in another gut-wrenching moment, he slapped a body of water on his back. The surface tension made his whole back sting mercilessly, causing his wind to be blown. There was a huge splash, and he was sinking down into the body of water, unsure of what kind it was at the time. Try as he may, he couldn't think about anything else but the pain, trying not to breathe in water if he could help it.

However, his lungs started screaming for air. Scrambling, he clawed his way up through the water, desperately trying not to drown if he could. Suddenly, he broke the surface, and like a newborn child, he gasped for his first breath in this unfamiliar place. Instinct had him waving his limbs so that he stayed afloat, and he began to shake his head to get the water away from his eyes. The water was cold, and his jacket was weighing him down. He was shivering and looking around in the place. He seemed to be in a large open pool of water, very rectangular and expansive. He couldn't see anyone else in or around the rippling pool, which he found odd.

He looked around the pool, trying to see if anyone else was swimming with him. "Hello?! Is there anyone here?" His voice echoed around the empty place as he tried to see if there was anyone else around.