Excerpt of Kaleidoscopic Shades by David A. Neuman

Leon was standing at the front door, dressed in a tuxedo and appearing as if he'd just bugged out of the wedding to leave the formalities to proceed without him. His posture was rather odd; but then, what wasn't?

People were either flying about, as if on an entanglement of trapeze wires, or stampeding hither and thither, flapping about as if alight with methanol. So Leon standing at Sammy's front door looking somewhat peculiar was hardly out of order.

He looked as though he was peering into the cavity of the house. But the door was closed.

Joshua dismounted his board rather clumsily. He wasn't in the mood for fancy moves. The Astra-Links tootled away, to come to rest amongst some bushes off to the side.

“Leon?” he gasped breathlessly, the last washes of his tears subsiding.

No answer. Leon remained staring at the door in that odd fashion. A finger was poised at his lips as if he were attempting to figure out how best to press the button on the doorbell.

“Leon?” Joshua asked again, coming up to his side. “You rang mom and asked me to meet you here?”

Leon never turned from the door. “No,” he said, his voice that same hollow tone as his mom's.

Joshua gazed at the doorbell with the name tag inside it. His tears beginning to dry on his face. The name had been changed from DEBNAR to DREAM SORCERER.

He pushed against the door. It opened in a whisper, as he'd known it would.

The sound immediately drifted out from the interior. He'd known that this would be the case as well.

Moving into the pitch darkness of the hallway, he left the cacophony of madness and his friend, who continued peering into the house, wearing his tuxedo, finger at his lips in a 'golly-gosh' manner.

Assaulting his ears. Passively demanding. Needing his attention.

But Joshua wasn't here to pay the man in black a visit. Not yet, anyway. His friend's safety and whereabouts were the prime objective, and he suspected he knew where he could be found.

He walked further along the hallway's near-impenetrable darkness. The brassy sunlight once more struggled to establish its presence before being entirely consumed.

Joshua knew Sammy's house well, so even though he couldn't see, he knew the alternative route to the stairwell was coming up. Taking the other route through the sofa room, where the man sat, was not the plan unless his friend could not be found. His heart rammed against the inside of his skull. Any second now, his chest would explode as it slammed into his ribcage. Every vein in his body pulsated with painful intensity, his breathing coming in hot geysers.

He slowly made his way through the darkness. God, if he fell and hurt himself the man in black would surely set upon him with those bottomless eyes wherever he came to grief.

Feeling his way up the staircase with one hand on the handrail, the other groping blindly in the darkness, and his feet testing each tread, one emitted a loud creak. He stopped cold and proceeded on only when sure nothing had joined him for closer inspection. It was said that when rock-climbing freehand, you should always have three points attached to ground. He maintained such a grip, lest he fall and become a bait-ball of a different sort.

He reached the top of the stairwell by the way the tread flattened into a wide expanse.

Again, that feeling of vulnerability. Always in t-shirt and shorts. He really should start taking to wearing jeans and long-sleeved shirts. Maybe a suit of armor and nuclear weapons would be of some use amongst the fray that was as dark as it was silent.

Nothing seemed to exist here except for that

And even that was fading, getting smaller, as if the man in black was rapidly moving away from him.

Well, at least there was something positive coming out of this.

Through this silence came a squeak.

Joshua's bladder let go.