Serializer. Muahahaha.

The field below me opened up, a giant mouth of hot soil and fiery crimson petals. The breath it took first blew me upward, buffeting me against walls of wind and swirls of red. Then it was as if gravity and another force took hold of me, first wrapping its tendrils around my left ankle and right hand and then pulling me down, the reverse in direction so sudden that my eyes clenched shut and both of my ears popped. Rose petals whipped against my face, slicing my skin. When I opened my eyes again, the darkness lay below me like a giant bed of nothing. I could feel the blood being sucked out of my ears, and my stomach opened up, spilling itself through my screaming mouth.

“Mr. Crim! Open up, I’ve got to talk to you!”

No, something had changed. The wounding petals had voices, and they screamed at me. Crim! Crim! Crim! And I fell faster, a magnet for the bottom of the void.

“Mr Crim? Is anyone in there? It’s your landlord!”

The swallowing black then became a little brighter, and I picked up speed, hurtling end over end to the center of the world. It grew bright then, a slow red grade of light that seemed to bend around me, and a warmth akin to sunlight danced on my skin. The rushing air whistled through my busted eardrums, and then it ended. I was falling, racing with gravity and the demon force that yanked me down, and then I was sitting in a chair. Sitting at a desk, my hands driving a pencil across a field of white. Behind me,a series of muffled explosions sounded, and I recognized the sound of fists against wood. Turn around, I thought, there’s someone at the door. But my hands wrote on, and with a fluid ease that brought me a feeling of pure joy.

“Mrs. Crim, you in there? Either one of you works, I ain’t picky. Just gotta talk about the rent. You can’t hide from me forever, and I know you’re in there because I see all the traffic around here and you haven’t been out lately! Open the door!”

It wasn’t right; not the thing that was supposed to happen. The man behind the door behind me was not going away. And already the joy of writing was fading. I frowned; I wasn’t supposed to be interrupted. So I put down the

The old man opened his eyes. He stared at his hand, the one gripping the ballpoint pen. He watched as the tip, pressed into the paper so hard that it was heavily dented, snapped off and set the metallic black goo loose. His mind was empty, the only thing happening behind his eyes the process that inverted the images he saw. Finally a synapse fired, dropping a thought into his head with such violence that he sat forward, head swivelling as he tried to focus on everything at once, tried to find the source of the thought that had ejected him from his vegetation. It had been a picture, a mental image. A tall rectangle, dark and with a shiny…a shiny thing that stuck out. The old man was panicked in his confusion, but how could he know it? It was an unnameable distress, an incomprehensible feeling. His eyes filled with wetness at the corners, dropping tears down the wrinkled planes of his cheeks, and he continued his frantic and fruitless search for the thing that would make that feeling go away.

A sharp noise sounded at his shoulder, and he turned, finally seeing the thing from his thought. A thought snapped through his head, door, then another one, man behind door, these two followed by a hundred-million other little pieces of unconnected information that ultimately made up the man whose name was Jordan Crim.

It felt like his sanity was being returned lazily, a tiny piece at a time, and it was more painful, more mentally agonizing, than anything he’d ever gone through in his life. Which is why, when the process completed itself, his mind discarded every memory of it.

“I’ll stand here as long as I need to, it won’t help to pretend you’re not there. Mr. and Mrs. Crim, I need you to open the door!” More banging.

Of course, Crim thought idly, someone at the door. He rose from his chair, only faintly aware of the soreness in his hand and the neat little pool of ink flooding the pad of paper before him. He stepped across the gathered piles of similar pads, all full of the same dark, looping script (that much, already? Huh.), and came easily to the door. Pushing a few stray pads out of the way with his foot, he pulled the knob and stuck his head out the opening.

And found, looking up at him, the little man that managed the housing circle. Squinting red-faced through a pair of greasy glasses that made his eyes even beadier, the man Crim recognized as Hen Marshall was finally rewarded with the leathery visage of his current quarry. He was breathing hard, and gave Crim a half-satisfied look.

“…Ah, Mr. Crim. I’m here to collect the rent. You’re late by a week, and I’m going to have to get it sometime soon or…well, you’ve been here a long time but if you’re going to have trouble paying the rent, you might have to be put out. I don’t want that to happen…”

His steam running short, the little man looked up into Crim’s face, seeking help. What he found was a disconcerting blank stare, a stare of recognition and acceptance but not much more. There was none of the hurry-up condescension his other tenants had down to a science. Hen knew that, could stand against that. But this, what the man in front of him was doing, gave him the creeps. Crim was looking at him, recognizing him, and at the same time looking through him.

Hen momentarily shook off the vibe and his nostrils flared, catching the hot stink of rot. Meat?

“Oh, Christ. What is that smell?"

He pushed his head into the narrow crack that seperated Crim and the door, taking in as much information as his eyes could process. Notebooks scattered everywhere, ground littered with clothes and bags.

A change came over Crim then, so suddenly that Hen felt it in the goosebumps that broke out over his skin.

The old man’s head jerked back, and his eyes became lucid. He turned away from the door, closing it in the same motion; forcing Hen’s head back out. The little man’s mouth hung open for a moment, and then he closed it and began to speak again, all former timidness gone in an instant.

“I’ll need the rent by the end of the week, Mr. Crim! And if you’re doing drugs in there or something, that’s not allowed and I’ll have to come back later and make a report.” With a small “hmmph,” Hen Marshall turned and waddled back across the street, to the house he shared with no one.

Crim’s sudden change in demeanor was due to something that might seem insignificant to anyone else. It was a wetting of the mouth, saliva glands pumping as if in response to the smell of food. A craving, but not for food. As he had stood looking down at the little man whose purpose had seemed so unimportant, Crim’s hand twitched, and his mouth flooded with saliva. There’s something I need to be doing. In the same breath he’d started turning, and the door he closed behind him was then utterly forgotten. Marshall’s voice fell on deaf ears.