Mar was leaning against the wall, smoke curling up from his cigarette. He pressed it against his lips, inhaled, and blew plumes of white out through his nose. The smoking area seemed to reflect the general state of the town; empty. It was something that Mar still couldn't get his head around, he'd been living here a good few weeks now and had so far found no reason why anyone would want to leave. It was such a nice place, with leafy green avenues, even there in the administrative, office-filled area of town, and the crime rate was low, practically non-existent, because all the criminals had left too.
"Mind if I join you?" A round face poked out through the door.
Mar threw the butt onto the floor, crushing out the embers with the heel of his boot as Sophie perched herself on the railings opposite him, and patted down her pockets.
"Damn. Hey, you don't have a light do you?"
"Don't you ever bring your own?" Mar shook his head, tossing it over. Sophie cast him a withering glare in reply, cupping her hands around her cigarette, letting out a satisfied sigh once she's managed to light it.
"So, what do you think?"
"About that office? It's okay, I guess. I mean the manager is a lot nicer than the guy at my old place, but-"
"No, no, no," Sophie frowned, "I wasn't talking about work," she reached up an arm and pointed at the sky, "I was talking about that."
Streaking across the sky, as far as he could see, was a tear, glistening silver where it met the softly curled cloud. The edges of the tear hung down, frayed like cloth, swaying gently in the wind, and behind them, the sky seemed to bulge as if it were under some great weight. Directly underneath the tear was a huge crane-like device with large pointed needles, a thick translucent thread weaved through its machinery.
"I don't know," Mar shrugged, "what is it?"
"It's the Tear!" Sophie exclaimed, sounding genuinely shocked that he didn't know.
"Okay, and what does it do?"
"It doesn't do anything.” She paused and looked at her feet. "Have you ever seen anything around here that looks familiar, but you can't quite place your finger on the reason why?"
"No, why would I?"
"I guess you haven't been here long enough," Sophie sighed and shook her head, "you've seen the spinner working through, haven't you?"
Mar nodded his head. He'd seen the crane pinch the two edges of the tear, and stitch them back together, binding the sky back into one piece with its silvery threads. It had left an ugly scar behind though, a thick white criss-cross pattern that was visible day and night.
"It's strange," he said slowly, looking up at the gaping wound in the blue above him, "I noticed it was there, but never really thought about it until you pointed it out."
"I did the same thing when I first came here," Sophie said, and hoped off the railings and onto her feet, "I saw the tear, but never dwelt on the otherplace it until someone mentioned it."
She joined him over by the wall, and linked her arm in with his. They stood in silence for a while; smoke still drifting from Sophie's cigarette, Mar was just about to suggest that they go back inside and get their things so that they could go home, when a shrill siren echoed through the empty streets.
"We didn't check the forecast." She said.
"I had a look earlier; it said that there was a slight change of shower later to-"
"No," she cut in, "that's not the type of forecast I meant."
Lining the lip of the tear were tiny shapes, masses of them crawling and wriggling over each other, and when he squinted his eyes and focused, Mar was sure that they were faces, not human ones, but faces all the same, black, with huge round white eyes. Something began to move from the beyond the tear, pushed by the tiny squirming figures. Sophie seemed unphased, but Mar could feel fear knotting up in his chest as a dark shape grew larger as it neared the lip.
And from the otherplace fell a tarnished metal dream.
It crashed into the floor, shrapnel spinning off, some impaling walls into walls, trees, whatever lay in its path, other shards shattering through glass, the road littered with the tiny fragments.
Mar looked back up at the tear, and at the faces, their round plaid eyes focused upon him with great intensity. He launched himself over the railing and ran over to where the lump of metal had landed.
"What are you doing?" Sophie screeched. "There'll be something else, you idiot, get back under here." She was unsure if he had heard her or not, but realising that he would have ignored her regardless, she stamped her feet in fury and ran over to join him.
"I should know what this is," He said quietly, "when I was a kid I was all into Cosmic Spaghetti and Toroidal engines, all that engineering crap.
"And this is what?" She grabbed hold of his arm and tried to pull him away before something else could fall from the tear.
"I don't know. I don't know, but I should." Mar fell silent, and Sophie hauled him back over the building.
"I swear," she hissed, "you owe me a fag after this."
He sat on the floor with his back propped against the wall, as something else was pushed from the otherplace. Another mechanical device of some sorts, when it fell, it crashed into the spinner, becoming tangled up in the complex workings of steel, and tore down one of the delicate needled as it careered onto the ground. The thick threads began to spool into puddles on the floor, the once tight stitching of the sky above slackening and coming undone.
"This? Is this why everyone leaves?" Mar asked, watching as the tiny figures began to move some otherplace artifact over to the lip of the tear.
"Of course it is," Sophie replied quietly, "well, who would want to be hit by a forgotten dream?"
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I think it seems to trail off towards the end, but I'm not sure what I should really do about it.
*stabs*
I'm also not too sure about putting it here in science-fiction, so if a mod sees fit to move it elsewhere, please do so.
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