There's a man here, off to the side. He is half standing and half leaning against the filthy trash can he's found himself near. He's grizzled, sporting all sorts of beard, and gray all over. He is scratching himself compulsively and he appears to be suffering from a splitting headache. It's clear he's coming down off a drug, and it's just as clear to you what drug that is: It's Eldust, of course. Eldust is a killer.
As you walk by, he notices you with a hungry little start and you unholster your weapon immediately. Just a little 'thrower,' you call it, a little thing you invented a while back while you were getting ideas from the drugs. Naturally, you kicked the Eldust with the help of your Lord and Savior, Santa Claus, but you were one of the lucky ones. There's not a day you don't think about Eldust, but you can go without it. You can go along, keeping your thoughts safely inside your head, where you figure--thanks to the program--that they belong.
This man is a fine example of what happens to people who can't go along without the drug, whose realities have been completely changed to include and require its presence in their bodies. It's not pretty.
"Look, man, you got ...any Eldust?" the man asks. He shakes, sporadically, as though it's some sort of gesture punctuation for his speech. You would swear his bones are creaking. "All I need is some fucking Eldust, just a little Eldust so I can keep-- ahh--"
He screams, horribly and broken, like something is twisting him in knots, and grabs his head. As he buckles over in pain, you can clearly hear him gritting his teeth. Yes, the withdrawals were a bitch, but as long as--
Suddenly, all around you, blackness appears for an instant. Like a negative picture of a camera flash, everything's still there in that instant but everything gets dark, just for a moment, then it's all back to as normal as it gets. Just a drug addict dealing with a killer headache, in front of you, moaning in the worst pain he'll probably ever experience.
But now you have your thrower raised and pointing at the source of the problem. You have it pointed to kill in an instant, because it may well need to. The top of the junkie's skull will catch this shot and make a fairly rocky, eventful, and red journey into his chest cavity in about three seconds, or the instant that happens again. Whichever comes first.
"I don't have any Eldust, friend." you say, almost sadly. "And you have until I count ten to straighten up and look me in the eyes, and what I see had better not scare me or I will reach ten early." You tighten your grip on your weapon and calmly begin to count, inside your head. Not too fast, but then again, none too slow either. One... two...
Suddenly, he straightens, his body uncurling almost violently, and he gives you a maniacal look.
You just as abruptly have the bright idea to take a single large step backward. You adjust your aim in accordance with his adjustment in posture. However, you don't aim at the very top of the head anymore, but roughly at the nose.
Best bet is to blow the brainstem.
Three. He notices his situation.
"What--a gun--shit! Fine, man, forget the Eldust, man," he says, almost babbling, begging you as he raises his hands weakly, "but don't fucking shoot me man, I can contain it, Jesus!" He exhales sharply and, as if he is some kind of human balloon animal that lost all its pressure, this appears to cause him to buckle again. He supports his weight with his palms on his legs, though, and stares at the ground, just trying to relax. To regain control.
You calmly retake your aim. Four... five... ... six...
He takes a long, shuddering, deep breath, and you see a bit of the tension leave him. Unknown to him, a bit of the tension leaves your finger on the trigger of your very useful invention. If he's just gonna scream and puke, he's at least picked a fine and filthy trash can to do it near.
Suddenly he's looking at you, and you didn't see him straighten up, but like a flash there he is, and he's looking at you, and in his eyes wide now you see more than you want to--
Around you it's dark. Of course. And now, amidst some partially ruined buildings, you see Them. You see his own private ghosts. How fucking charming These appear to be fucking covered in blades are they made of scissors? Is he screaming? If they're made of scissors how are they slithering god you don't have enough rounds to kill them all
in the midst of your involuntary participation in his involuntary nightmare you find yourself, hilariously, thinking how very interesting this guy's externalized hallucinations are, i mean really, slithering scissor-men? and that thing They do where they extend one of Their limbs with a whip-snap to a length of ten silvered moonlit feet, shearing off the tops of lampposts now like they're sculptures made of butter or something, but sculptures that nonetheless crash to the pavement in a very real way, that's all very imaginative and yes he's definitely screaming like something got inside him and it's just figuring out how to use his lungs, he's using both fists to beat on his head, his fists bloody, his head bloody, not near bloody enough, Their awful fucking clanging as they come close is perhaps the worst thing on earth
Abruptly, with the last bit of self-control you have, you use your practice you put in while on Eldust (gotta have one good thing come of it, you suppose) to stop participating in this rapidly escalating Escape. It gets darker around you, and the nightmare gets more real, but it's not going to be your nightmare unless you let it. You aren't going to let it.
You look back and forth, see flashes of Them becoming more real, figuring out how to use Their brand-new spindly scissor-legs to move, to run, and the poor junkie in front of you still has bloody hands, but now they're just clamped to the sides of his bloody head like it's going to blow itself into pieces and he can stop it with his palms and his fingers. He's buckled over now, probably for good. And he's screaming, of course.
He is screaming like the worst thing that could ever possibly happen is happening to him, his body, everyone he cares about, and everything he sees. He is screaming like he's just discovered his very worst and most shapeless nightmares were real the whole time, and that he was just a hazy notion that his nightmares had thought up just so they could eat him at their leisure.
"Ten!" you shout, as you pull the trigger on your thrower. You're glad you can't see his eyes.
There's a flash of light, but no noise--you are not without a certain level of skill, after all--and the projectile, made of stuff you're not quite sure of, lances from the thrower and bloodies his head much more thoroughly. His skull, his higher brain functions, and his lower brain functions find themselves cohabiting quite unnaturally. He falls, and the sidewalk and the street get their red.
You holster your weapon, and resume walking down the nearly-abandoned street. Your instinct is that the scissor-men died with the brain that was generating them, but let's face it: Nobody really knows how this shit works.
Eldust, man.
It's a fucking killer.
