maze.

the light flickered above his head. it did so every now and again when the u-bahn trains would cross the tracks near his apartment. he sat there at the beige four legged table he had gotten from a friend. he sat there the apartment dark as a cave with that one light swaying over his head. he sat there with his bowl full of chicken broth. the apartment was silent again as the train sped away. the one bedroom apartment was bare. no furnishings in any of the rooms. just the mattress on the bedroom floor and the table.
the building remained still. the deafening silence sent him into euphoria. he leaned back and stared at the ceiling. everything was still, except for the bus that had just dropped people and was pulling off. he looked at his watch, it was 1.30 and there was a chill in the morning air.
he stood up and walked into his bathroom and washed his face. looking in the mirror something caught his eye. he turned around with a jump but he saw nothing. he felt as if he were being watched, he felt someone was in a corner somewhere in his dark apartment staring at him. "that's crazy" he thought to himself. he walked back out and put the bowl into the sink. he thought he left it full but it was too late to check because he had turned the water on already.
the water was turned off. he looked at the wall and sighed. he was thinking of what his life had become. he took out a pill and swallowed it. someone coughed in the hallway. he went to the door and looked out the peep-hole, it was the old man who lived above him. he was catching a flight that morning. one of the evacuation flights to america he had managed to save the money and get out. the building's front door made a loud sound as it closed. he was the last person in the building. the war was supposed to start in three days, and everyone with enough money were leaving. he didn't.
throwing his jacket onto the table he walked into his small empty room. he laid on the bare mattress and listened to the silence. the light in the living room shut off. berlin city officials turned off electricity to all buildings every morning at three. he looked at his watch and turned the green lcd on... it was only 1.45.
placing his head back on his pillow he heard the train screeching by, he thought it was odd since the last train every night was at 1.30. the piercing sound didn't stop. it didn't slow down to pull into the station, neither did it brush past and continue off into the city. it was a constant stream of screaming metal. it wouldn't stop. it was driving him mad.
he threw his fists onto the mattress and in that instant the sound stopped.. the silence resumed the building seemed lifeless, the street seemed lifeless, the city seemed lifeless. he saw on the news while riding the train home from work that 73% of the city had evacuated to britain and america. the threat from russia was even worse than he suspected. and all of this fighting was over ownership of land on the moon settlements. he then realized it was already 2034, where did his life go? he was already 45.
something fell in the apartment above him, smashing on the floor above his head. no one else was in the building. they had all left. the old man was sitting in a cab now to tegel transit center to catch a flight out, maybe it was something he left on a counter. but then it happened again. like someone was throwing glass in the apartment upstairs. he started to sweat and he felt the adrenaline rush through his body. there was nothing he could do except lay there. the silence recovered and everything remained dead.
he laid there and couldn't get to sleep. the murmur of the city wasn't there and the silence was piercing his ears. it was unbearable. he saw something rush across his doorway and jumped up again. but it was too dark to get up and look, he would fall or something. that eerie sense of being watched struck him again. he stared at a corner in his room.
something started to slide down the side of the wall. a dark like broke the flow of the dull white. it slid down over a larger area against one wall. he was staring at his wall. he stood up to look at it and walk over to the wall. he wiped a finger across the wall and walked back to the window on the other side of the room. the streetlight glowed on his hand. it was red, his wall was leaking blood. he turned to look at it but it was gone. the dull white reemerged and the blood was gone, he looked out of the doorway and sensed something was staring at him. a dark figure stood in his small apartment staring at him. his body began to tingle and the goose bumps covered his body.
"what do you want?!" he screamed loudly. and the figure was gone.
he stood there for the next twenty minutes. before he decided to lay back down. his head was playing tricks on him. he laid back down and stayed awake. hours later he looked at his watch and it was 4.01. his eyes had become heavy and he was losing the battle with sleep. he nodded of.
something grabbed him and pressed down on his throat. he struggled to get free but failed he was being choked and punched in the head. the struggle ended.
he woke up in his old apartment, with his wife and kids. before they moved to britain. he felt strange because the night before his life was different. he thought it was a dream and walked into the kitchen to see the back of his wife as she stood at the stove getting ready to make breakfast.
"honey can you get the eggs? i can't see a thing." she asked him. he quietly walked to the refrigerator and got the eggs. he stood up to face her and he gasped. her eyes were gone and filled with worms. the kids turned to face him and he saw they suffered the same condition.
his nightmare continued again and again. they stared at him from a glass window. he was strapped to the bed and was shaking. "it's been three weeks and he's still suffering from brain damaging stress" one of the doctors said. the alarms sounded as bombs were dropped in the distance. he screamed in agony.
he was trapped in his mind.