Beginnings...

The next couple of paragraphs in the story

He watched the growing chaos outside the window with a kind of resigned detachment. He couldn’t get too upset about his current circumstance as he had brought it on himself. With a regretful smile he thought back to the day he had arrived at Cromwell Industries. It had really seemed like the only logical choice at the time. He had lost his job when the tech bubble burst and he found himself stuck in a rut of attending interview after interview, only to be told too often that he had either not enough or too much experience for the position. He saw the faces of the others in the interviews, and knew he must look exactly the same way. It wasn’t so bad for the first few months. He had the package he had been given when the company bought his position out but that slowly began to wear away. The credit cards slowly became maxed, and the stresses had begun to grow on his relationship with Susan. She had been understanding at first but could not seem to understand why he was having such difficulty in finding work. Eventually she had written him off as being lazy and had subsequently written him out of her life. Next to go was his car, repossessed by the bank for failure to pay, and soon after he lost his home. Nowhere to go, he had tried to stay at the hostel until he found work but on the second night his clothing and his possessions, including his resume disks, were stolen. It was at that point that something inside Thomas simply went away. There was no snap, no dramatic breaking point, just a hole where a piece of him used to be.

He left the hostel that night and found himself walking the busy downtown streets. On the surface, you would say that nothing in his town had changed. The theatres were bustling, and the bars did not look to be hurting for business. Neither were the drug dealers or hookers looking like they were seeing a slowdown. Yet the number of those sleeping in alleys did seem to have increased, and now Thomas was one of their numbers. He passed an all night liquor store and used his last twenty dollars to buy the biggest bottle of malt liquor he could find. He had never in his life tasted malt liquor but it somehow seemed appropriate given his circumstance. He found a small alley and sat down with his bottle.

A loud noise brought him back from his reverie. He tried to find its source but he could not seem to focus on anything in the room, anything except the clock.

5:55

He had been launched into his past memories for more than an hour. The scene outside his window was now one of mass confusion. A heavy rain had begun to fall during his absence, and the clouds that had rolled in had replaced the grey with an ominous black, casting a surreal hue over the land. Cars were sliding form the wet roads and there was no longer any pretense as to obeying traffic laws. People were fleeing from something. the alarm sounded again and again Thomas could not tell if it were coming from inside the building or out beyond the walls. A second loud crash, seeming to come from the room next to his brought his surroundings sharply back into focus.