He was awoken by pain. His brains throbbed with such a furious, primal intensity that his hands shot to his temple immediately. Eyes wide and wild, his spine rigid and arched, he mouthed a silent scream. He lay motionless among the tall blades of grass, not daring to move but merely wrestling with the piercing agony in his skull.

When at last the fog of agony has dissipated and his mind was his once more he slowly sat up. Jamming his palms into his hollowed eye sockets to rub away the sleep, he realized he was nude. His naked, meager body tingled as the dark grass brushed against his bare skin, swaying like phantoms in the evening wind.

Gathering his wits, he stood and inspected his surroundings. A dark, barren landscape stretched in all directions perceivable and all was quiet. The ground was dry and compacted. Hard skeletal fissures snaked the ground, their patterns random yet almost scalelike. The dark patches of high grass rose from the ground sporadically, dancing in silent revelry at his confusion. In the distance, he could make out what appeared to be trees.

Behind the trees an outcropping of rocks rose from the dry earth, almost blackened against the horizon. The wind was hot in his face, and each time it blew a powerful gust it carried stinging bits of sand. But there was something else...a foul odor rode the wind like an angry rider of old.

He shivered and wrapped his arms around his fragile ribs. Taking a final cursory glance around, he started off towards the trees very much alone.

As he walked he looked to the sky for some sign of direction, but despite the absence of light pollution could see nothing. No moon, no stars, it were though even the heavens eschewed this place. The sky was instead a tumorous collection of dark collosal clouds. They pulsed and snaked like billowing titans, barely visible. In the impossible blackness however, there was an odd red hue that seemed to permiate the entire structure like a network of veins.

Each time he tried to focus on his capillary-like worms of light, they seemed to just barely escape his vision with such effectiveness that he was not sure that they existed at all.

He walked tenderely over the rocky terrain, his feet exposed and brittle. As he neared the trees, his eyes grew wide. They were not trees at all, at least not any he had ever seen. Rather, a series of large fleshy nodes erupted from the earth, leaning and lurching in the feverish winds as though they were seaweed growing on the ocean floor. They were cone-like in appearance, and a dark hideous purple. Tiny fibrous protrusions ran along the entirity of the things almost like fur.

A sound split the sky with such force and ferocity that the man instantly collapsed to the ground, arms wrapped around his head. An bestial cry so loud that no one creature could create it filled the landscape, originating seemingly from both nowhere and everywhere. It was impossibly deep and authoritatize, yet so alien and unnatural that tears filled the man's eyes.

Then at once it was gone.

He scrambled onto all fours, scurrying like a beaten dog past the strange swaying trees and onto towards the outcropping of rocks. Despite the pebbles and briars that embedded themselves into the flesh of his feet he ran on. He scrambled onto the rocks, pulling himself up, further and further towards the blackened sky.

When he stood atop the rocks he examined the landscape once more. All was silent and still, save for the gentle dance of the "trees" and grass. Only his wildly hammering heartbeat spoke. He studied the sky once more.

The clouds became illuminated with a wave of crimson that spilled across the sky like water. On the horizon the sky flared red in silence, like lightning striking too far away for one to hear. He shivered as the wind picked up once more, the hideous odor now more apparent. The stench of rotting flesh and disease overwhelmed his senses to the point that he could taste the repugnant odor.

The scarlet flashes in the distance continued and increased in intensity, each brighter and seemingly closer than the last. The man watched in wonder as the clouds became ever-more translucent like massive gellatenous bodies suspended against the firmament. Then he saw it.

Inside the clouds, massive and sprawling, a silhouette stretching from the horizon to the sky. A blackened figure impossibly large and dense. It was vaguely visible behind the clouds, like a form in a rainstorm, but it was getting closer. At the center of the mass, a great yellow orb gyrated like the eye of an infant, searching the landscape.

The mass lumbered forward, and now with each step he could hear the collosal crash as it impacted the earth. The sound filled the sky once more, that somewhat longful cry.

Instinctively, the man moved backwards only to lose his footing on the rocks. A moment of weightlessness and then he was falling, colliding with stone with remarkable brutality. He connected with earth once more and then there was only blackness.

He awoke to the dark. Thoughts and instincts, fleeting and incomplete, pulsed through his dream-addled mind like glimpses of rain before a flashlight. Slowly...timidly...his eyes opened and tried to adjust to the dim light.

A darkened motel room, featureless and silent, stared back at him. He lay on his side on the floor, back against the frame of the room's sole bed. A strain and push and he was upright, his brains burning inside his skull. His tongue was thick and coarse in his mouth and the sharp, curdled smell of vomit clung to his clothes and hair.

An opened bottle of bourbon lay at his feet, all but empty, and when he realized what it was his stomach churned uneasily. But behind that nausea, a longing crept forward. On the far side of the room, the air conditioner churdled to life and then sung it's monotone chant. Yellow lamplight from the motel's parking lot crossed the room in columns and as his eyes adjusted he saw what he had hoped he would not.

The room's few bits of furniture were out of place. The chair was turned on it's side and propped against the side wall. The cheap faux-wood desk had been turned upside down and placed against the far end of the room, the contents of it's drawers removed and placed in odd circular patterns across the floor. Great swaths of wallpaper hung loose, coiled and bowing like some worshipper to a departed god.

It took several minutes for him to finally get to his feet, and when at last he did he shuffled towards the bathroom, stopping only to throw back the final swig of cheap bourbon. In the bathroom, he washed his face and hair in the sink as best he could, then stood peering at the dark figure in the mirror.

The nightmare returned to him now like a blow to the face and from his own reflection he saw that great, lumbering titan once more emerging from the blackness. It's features unfathomable, only it's purpose certain. Finality. The end of times.

He croaked in terror, bending sharply at the waist, his wiry fingers gripping the countertop. His face jerked forward, so close to the mirror that fans of steam appeared from his hot, frantic breath. His eyes were wild and brimming with tears. Slowly he slid to the cold tile floor and lay there. His knees tucked into his chest and he wrapped his arms around them.

"Oh God..." he moaned, "...oh God help me. Oh God help me. Oh God help me. Oh God help me..."

An hour later an ancient yellow pickup barreled down the open highway, it's pilot slick with sweat and hunched tenaciously over the wheel. The cab's interior was a cluttered repository of road literature. Old maps covered in illegible scrawl. Quickly yellowing newspaper articles, torn raggedly from their original publications. Old print-outs of directions, folded, marked, used and forgotten.

The stench of stale cigarettes and spilled coffee permeated the old leathers seats and clung to anyone unfortunate enough to come in contact with them. The radio hissed out white noise, having lost the last detectable signal long ago. Beside the ever growing pile of papers, the man tread that wilderness between wakefulness and sleep. He sat silently forward, peering at the empty illuminated circles of asphalt that passed before the truck. His eyes reflected only a hollow, vague awareness of reality.

The tip of his nose brushed the steering wheel and the contact wrenched the man back into consciousness. He stiffened like an arrow and gasped wildly as though he had been submerged underwater. Sentient once more, he peered out the dingy windows but was met only with impenatrable blackness. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a half-empty pack of Camel Lights, shakily pulled guided one two his lips and thumbed the electric lighter.

[i:9201b68be7]click[/i:9201b68be7]

Five feet back from where he sat, a tarp jerked and danced wildly in the flatbed. Each corner of the tarp was held in place by cracked cinderblocks. In the cab, the driver pressed the accelerator and the old pickup lurched forward just enough to tip one of the cinderblocks from it's resting spot. It's guardian gone, the corner of the tarp took flight, revealing a cold, grey hand beneath.

Back in the cab, the driver lit the cigarette and drove on into the night, towards his goal and towards the end.