Marcus felt like he was lying on a bed of nails. If he had known a little more about the past few hours he may have even realized that this was not far from the truth. His eyes opened to blue velvet skies above him, stretching out as far as the horizon in all directions. He blinked once, twice and then he shook himself awake. Where the hell was he anyway? The last thing he could remember he was taking the train to work. That's right he was on his way and the train was different. Everything seemed a little fuzzy and he was struggling to remember what exactly had happened. It was dark and the train was taking too long. Memories slowly coiled back into his cloudy mind as he concentrated as hard as he could. Like dust motes collecting in scant rays of light cutting abstract wounds into his memory things began to come together. The last thing he could actually remember were the teeth.<br/><br/>The teeth and those dancing lights.<br/><br/>It wasn't until all these many minutes of recollecting himself passed before Marcus realized exactly what surrounded him besides the infinite expanse of starless sky above him. He was lying on his back on some sort of shore. Faintly, as if many miles away, he could hear the gentle lapping of waves breaking on the shoreline but when he sat up, the pitch black sea that produced the noises was no more than a few metres away from where he lay. The beach he lay on, from a distance, would have looked like a great white paint stroke of pristine white sand and at first, Marcus thought the whiteness, which stood as a stark contrast to the rest of his surroundings, was sand himself. It was only the texture that gave away what he lay upon was anything but sand. It felt like pebbles or maybe small polished stones or sanded wooden bits. It felt smooth to the touch but the small shapes left lots of jagged edges between each little pebble.<br/><br/>Marcus stood and surveyed the peculiar space which he alone seemed to inhabit. There was no wind and only the sound of the tide to keep his ears company. He was completely naked, which was really something he felt he should have noticed earlier but right now it didn't really seem to matter. He was completely alone and as such made no attempt to cover himself. In fact, he felt strangely calm about the whole thing now and as time went on he only felt more and more relaxed. All the buzzards in his head squawking shrill questions at his psyche were dying off and leaving him with something not unlike tranquillity. It was peaceful here. Lonely, but peaceful.<br/><br/>Hours passed and Marcus wandered around on the shore. The stones (wood?) that nestled under his feet were uncomfortable at first but he quickly became accustomed to them. He lost perspective on how far he had walked before long and it just became aimless wandering. Always forward though. He had chosen a direction parallel to the tide and stuck to his guns. He wasn't overly concerned with finding anything out here but something inside his belly drove him to seek and discover more of this alien place. Eventually the sound of something slapping against water broke his trance and he snapped his gaze out to sea. On the cusp of the horizon a light was peaking its head over the blackness, eerie and pale the light bobbed hypnotically in the water and drew closer as he watched it. Rhythmic pounding against water added to the systematic sway of the light atop the black ocean and after minutes Marcus could have sworn that there was a faint song playing somewhere beneath the folds of the windless beach. It was something like a violin but far slower than he had ever heard one played before. It just hummed from all around quieter than a whisper.<br/><br/>The shape that emerged into his sight was, at first, silhouetted by the swaying light source. It appeared to be a large lump of black flesh in the water with something like a man standing atop it. The figure took his berth on the shoreline and Marcus wandered closer. The closer that the ex-button pusher got the calmer he felt and the louder the music reverberating in the back of his thoughts became. He could make out details of the thing now. It was a man, or at least something like a man but with arms far too long and thin, wrapped in a long dark cloak, the folds of which seemed to hold many lights almost too dim for Marcus to make out and he was riding on a large fish. A cross between an inky black manta-ray and an angler fish with a tail that arched gracefully out of the ocean and held on its crook a perfect sphere which emitted the pale light. Its head was hidden beneath the surface but there was no doubt in Marcus' mind that this fish was the monster he had seen on the subway. Oddly, that didn't bother him one bit.<br/><br/><span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #0080FF">"</span></span>I'm dead aren't I?<span style="font-weight: bold"><span style="color: #0080FF">"</span></span>Marcus spoke softly, his eyes dropping to his feet.<br/><br/>-----------------<br/><br/>There wasn't much to be seen in Amersham station close to midnight. The place looked much the same as ever lit by the pallid bulbs of the platform. Most of the kiosks were closed and the station performers had gone home hours ago. There were maybe two dozen people there at this time catching the last trains home. Drunks mostly and a peppering of businessmen and women who had been working late. The only truly peculiar sight was the lack of law enforcement or investigative personnel or yellow tape. For a suspected terrorist attack site there was little to be seen in the way of anyone taking any of this terrorism business seriously.<br/><br/>The main light source of the entrance to the station, down that long flight of stairs, was the moon. Many of the lights that lined the corners of the ceiling had gone out months ago. Every few minutes the moon would vanish behind thick dark clouds and the station would take a notably dark turn for a matter of seconds, even up to a minute or two, before reappearing for a similar amount of time. It wasn't until after almost twenty minutes that the moonlight vanished for longer than before and didn't seem to be returning.<br/><br/>The hiss of metal on metal filled the surroundings and a bright light tore  the veil of the dark tunnel to the far left of the platform. The gearous whine of the breaks cut into the grim silence roughly and abruptly as a train pulled into Amersham. The eleven fifty five, the cross-town train of the night. The train looked to be no different to its brothers in arms, a dirty chrome colossus tugging tons upon tons of metal cars each lit no better than the station that surrounded it. The sides of the car were covered in grime and paint, the odd tag visible on its armour.<br/><br/>Slowly but surely, the patrons catching the last train home shambled towards its doors. Of the slightly over two dozen waiting for the thing, the only thing that seemed off were random strangers who would wander towards the cars and slowly, subtly walk away from their initial destination and converge on one car in particular. The car third from the front attracted no less than six of the people catching the train. The most obvious of them was a suited man, perhaps in his late fifties who almost reached the door of the front most car before veering off his path and taking twenty long strides to enter the other car. By any normal stretch it wouldn't look like anything odd. Perhaps the other cars had a smell to them or were filled with homeless who would be woken and kicked off once the train reached its last stop.<br/><br/>Whatever the reason, the third car seemed to be attractive to these few.<br/><br/>To those among the station with an astute sense for the supernal might feel the air grow denser with the arrival of the train. Something lingered here. It smelled old and sweet like pomegranate which was just a bit too ripe. There was one criteria which some in the station may recognize instantly. It was the scent of death. Anybody among the bystanders who had spent time close to death, or perhaps even in death, would probably pick up on this particular aroma quicker than others.<br/><br/>Two minutes until the last train left, all but seven had boarded the train.<br/><br/>The cat among them perked up, ears twitching. She cocked her head to the right and slinked away from her position behind Deus, wandering absentmindedly towards the third car.