Betamod

I’m not really sure why, but I was driving somewhere.

I had this feeling that something important had happened, although I can’t remember. I’m driving on long winding roads. Country roads. I drove for awhile, then, nearing a bend, I see trees. There are lots of trees, it’s a forest. Somehow I know that there is a town on the other side of these trees. That town is where I need to go. So, I park my car on the side of the road, next to the trees. I make my way through the forest and arrive in the town.
The town is a very poor place. The buildings and houses are all dilapidated and falling apart. The people look as if they’ve lived hard lives. Their faces show the struggles they’ve faced. Their hands show the cracks of labor. Their eyes show a dim light, flickering hopelessness. Looking around, I can’t help but think these people, and moreover, this town don’t have much reason to exist, yet they are laughing. Laughing and partying. Everyone is having the time of their lives, or so it seems to me.
I walk through the town, making my way past one ramshackle house after another, each one spewing the sounds of music, laughter and careless abandon. After walking a few blocks, I see a house that I’m supposed to go in.
I open the screen door and it falls off the hinges in my hand.
“Bwahahaha!” an old man with a twisted face and a crooked back chortled. “That damn door’ll getcha every time! Now put the thing back up, so it’ll get some more folk like you.”
I do as he says and hang the door precariously back on its rusted hinges. I waste little time once in the house. Something was drawing me to the basement. I descended down the basement stairs and find more people partying. These people were younger than most the others I had come across in town, probably early 20’s, mostly girls. Two girls approach me. They are very smiley to me, friendly. They look very poor, but their eyes are a little brighter than the older folk I met earlier. One girls wants to dance, so we dance. She has her arms around my neck and I have my hands on her waist. She keeps looking me deep in my eyes, but when she does, I get a chill down my spine. The song ends, another starts. She asks me if I have a dime I could spare her. I laugh and say its funny, but I have no change. I hadn’t checked my pockets in a while, but I knew, somehow, I only had about $13. I was afraid to pull even that small amount of money out because the people were so poor, I didn’t want to alienate myself or offend them with my $13.
“Are you sure you don’t have even one dime you could spare?” The girl asked as we were dancing. “You never know what might be in them pockets of yours.”
She begins to rub my back and the side of my face with her hands as we are dancing. She then moves her hands lower to my waist, then lower still. I realize she’s going for my pockets.
“Hey!” I exclaimed, covering my pockets with my hands. “I told you I didn’t have any dimes!”
I push her away and reach in my pocket. I pull out a penny and a strange little dime. It was smaller than a normal dime, it was quite fascinating. I gave her the penny and continued to examine this little coin that somehow had found it’s way into my pocket.
The penny was not enough to satisfy her. I try to make my way to the stairs, but her and her friend are hanging on to me, begging me for a dime. I’m struggling to move, they are so strong! I manage to reach my hand into my other pocket and low and behold there are two dimes inside, brand new, 2011, Roosevelts, shining bright. I toss the dimes and the two girls scurry after them. I make it to the stairs. More girls are chasing me now, but somehow they have gotten smaller, or I’ve gotten larger. They seemed about 3 feet tall, yet mature. One grabs my leg as I’m on the third stair.
“You can’t get away from us!” She growled.
“Yeah, right.” was my response.
With that, I pushed her hard off my leg. She fell the height of three stairs and landed with a thud onto the floor. A cloud of dust enveloped her when she landed, dust from the gravel covering the floor. Funny, I hadn’t noticed that this basement had a gravel floor earlier. I thought I had killed her. But then she started laughing. I run the rest of the way up the stairs, with the miniature girls following me. I’m running hard and fast, faster than I ever had before. I know it’s time to get out of this town, everyone wants this strange little dime that I have. I run through the town and again through the woods. I see my car parked in the distance. I’m reaching in my pockets as I’m running, fumbling for my keys. I notice a strange van parked behind my car. When I approach the two vehicles I notice that all four of my tires have been slashed. I stop running. My hands are still in my pockets, where they had been searching for my keys. I feel like I was searching my pockets and taking a mental inventory of what they contained for a long time. I wasn’t sure what to do and I could here the people from the town coming.
I run into the woods on the other side of the road, heading the opposite direction from the town. Again I’m running so hard and fast, and I’m not getting tired. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to run that fast. I get to another town, I keep running, jumping fences, cutting through back yards, in general I’m doing a fantastic job of escaping the people after that strange little dime.
I see this pizza place, it is huge and strangely modern. I go inside, still running. I’m looking for the back door, something tells me that’s the final exit. The place is even bigger than it looked on the outside, it seems like its taking me forever to get through this damn pizza place. I finally reach the end and there is a man standing by a van with a picture of a slice of pizza on it. The van had a strange lift on the back, similar to a lift for a wheelchair but also different.
“Jump on the lift, and hurry!” The man says.

I do as he says and jump on the lift, and it begins to lift me. As it’s lifting me the top of the van opens up, it appears as if this lift is just going to dump me in the back of his van! I get a little freaked out and jump of the lift.
“What the hell are you doing!?” the man yells, “Do you want my help or not?”
Something in his face is casting doubts in my mind, but I get back on the lift. Again he starts the mechanism and it begins lifting me, slower this time.
I look at the mans face, it’s stoic, yet his brow is covered in sweat. My mind is telling me that this man is very, very nervous and needs to get me into that van. As I’m being lifted I notice a window. I see what could only be the man’s supervisor watching us. His face is also stoic, suspicious.
“Fuck this!” I shouted, jumping off the lift.
I dashed past the man and out the back door, running as fast as ever, back into the woods.

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