The Mystery, or The Continual Death of Yr

It must have been midnight. He could not be sure because everything had been so
bizarre that day. But midnight sounded right.
He awoke to the strange, creepy feeling that All was Silent. He twisted his head from
one side to the other quickly, nervously, and his breathing became ragged and loud as The
Silence clung to everything like a hot, sticky substance. He felt sheer panic as he opened
his eyes and found himself leaning against an edge... There had been no edge before.
Maybe he was still dreaming... maybe the way his feet were dangling from a mattress that
was supposed to be fixed on the floor was a distortion of his senses that came with the
Silence. But his feet were dangling and he was leaning against the cold edge of a bar on a
high bed.
He slowly climbed down, careful not to disturb the Silence, and peered at the dark
corners of the room, which seemed different. He walked with silent footfalls to the window
near the hall, hoping to discern a sound, any one of the tiny million sounds of a city night.
But the window was not there, or at least he could not find it, and as he moved his hands
along the wall a feeling of terror grew inside him because there was nothing... no window,
no light switch, no posters, no calendar, no mirror. . . He tripped over a thing.
Something happened to him.
Now it was a different time and everything looked funny. There was a dim light coming
from somewhere, shapes seemed longer, shadows deeper. Where was he? Maybe it was
his eyes. No. There was something wrong. He was covered in a clinging, slippery cloth.
Cloth should not feel like this. He heard the unmistakable growls of a wild animal. How did
a wild animal get into his apartment?
He realized he was not in his apartment. He had awakened in some other room, then
he had blacked out, fallen. What had happened next? His sight was hazy and his head was
groggy. It took him some time to discover that he was lying on a bare floor with his hands
tied behind his back. There was nobody else there with him in the dimly lit room. He
began to whimper slightly, like a dog.
A door opened, and a figure stepped in. It was gnarled and twisted in a funny way. It
smiled at him when he screamed. He screamed again, louder. His own voice sounded
different.
Oh, they will never save me now! he said. The words stumbled from his mouth
without going through his mind. What is happening? What had he said? Who were
they? What did he mean? Everything was odd and uneven, nothing was the way it
should be.

1
 The figure was looking at him with a lopsided grin. More figures stepped through the
door. These were supposed to be men, that is how it seemed to him: they were supposed
to be men. He still could not see well and the room was too shadowy. And the men just
did not feel right. Something about their lines, their movement, they...
That's right, one of the men said. He was dressed in very colorful clothes. His voice
was shrill and squeaky. His head was too big; it reminded him of a balloon. His smile was
drawn all the way across his face.
Drawn...
Another man went to a corner of the room and brought out a gun. It was too big. It
was too shiny and slick. A third man held a glass box on his hands with bullets inside it.
They were long, thin cylinders, completely unlike normal bullets. So how did he know they
were bullets? The two men started loading the weapon.
If I could wiggle out of this Rithyllin cloth, I could reach it, his own voice said in a
raspy whisper. He was terrified. Why did he keep saying these things that made no sense
whatsoever? What the hell was a Rythill. . . ithin cloth? Why did he insist on saying
anything? And why did it seem as if he knew something and kept it from himself?
The men with the weapon pointed it at him and he felt a tingling sensation crossing
his spine. Was he shrinking, or had his pajamas been this loose all along? Start the
motor, the colorful one said with that awful smile all over his face. He didn't seem able to
stop smiling. He spoke right through the stupid grin that revealed bright yellow, crooked
teeth.
The room shook as an engine started somewhere. At first he thought it was a car, but it
could be a truck, or a chain saw, or a spaceship. The motor made no recognizable noise, it
just went Vrrrrr. He assumed the room he was in was some sort of vehicle, a trailer, a
mobile home, a van. The motor had stopped making noise, but the room still shook in a
haphazard way. The men and the gnarled, twisted thing stepped out of the room through
the same door they'd come in, looking at him as if he shared their terrible little secret.
The gnawing feeling that something was awfully, terribly wrong kept growing. It was
dangerous where he was. The wild animal felt close. He could almost smell its warm, fetid
breath. Actually, he was smelling just that, right in front of his face.
A different man spoke. He reached out and pulled the animal by the collar. Here it
is, he said, as he pulled it away. Don't worry, Ryu, you'll get your dessert for finding the
bastard.
He was alone again. The dimness disappeared. Everything was all over the place. And
everything was impossibly huge. The vehicle seemed to be climbing a hill because the
room was erratically tilted sideways, like in a cartoon...

2
 A comic book he was reading when he fell asleep, The Death of Yr. Hed liked it a lot,
because the hero had been captured and killed by the bad guys in the end, captured and
killed.
He began to tremble. He wished he was back at his room, never having leaned against
the edge, never having awakened to the Silence, never having walked to the window that
had not been there. But he remembered now. His body would soon be lying on a table.
Placed under his back there would be a sharp instrument, a needle, a colorful needle like
Thyrill's clothes. He knew.
He moved his hands to where the needle was, trying to cut the rope and the Rithyllin
cloth that still held him, making him weak. But the needle stuck into his body, wrenching
the muscles loose, jarring the nerves. He had to stop moving, because of the blood that
made it hard to see...
Yr closed the comic. He was glad he had been rescued by that guy.
He knew the guy was undergoing a terrifying experience.