Unreal Serial: a new series of short stories in serial form.

Wicked Web, Part 2/6:

Dan felt a fizz at his temples after smoking the web-glazed cigarette. It was slight at first – an almost imperceptible simmer under the surface of his skin on either side of his head. Then the sensations grew – fizzes became buzzes; buzzes became vibrations.

Those vibrations spread across Dan’s brow, drawing closer and closer to one another, nearer and nearer until they converged right between Dan’s eyes, two coalescing into one. 

FLASH! 

A fist-sized bulb of blue light erupted from Dan’s forehead into the sky – an incandescent sapphire hovering amidst pitch-black. Dan felt his face for an exit wound, but there was none. No gaping hole, no shattered skull or blood. Just his skin and a few zits.

The glowing blue bulb began rotating above the valley, and with each revolution it pulsated bright and brighter, spun faster and faster, gaining so much speed that it’s rounded edges blurred and broke, unfurling prismatic threads from the bulb’s center into the air.

The fluorescent tendrils wafted around Dan. They encircled and enrobed him, enveloping him in a luminous cocoon. But Dan didn’t panic. He felt no fear or claustrophobia. The radiant, neon interior reminded Dan of being under his grandmother’s old crochet. It made him euphoric and buoyant. Literally: Dan giggled as the bundle lifted him into the air. 

The cocoon ballooned away as it ascended, growing larger and larger until its walls disappeared into the distance, leaving Dan suspended in a glittering space. Now it was like being in a diamond; each angle refracted a new, amazing, glimmering hue.

Suddenly an invisible force tugged at the spot where the bulb erupted from Dan’s forehead. It was gentle at first; then with a bit more pull – as if something were testing its strength against Dan’s weight. The third time Dan was yanked headfirst into a tunnel of kaleidoscopic chaos: colors swiveled and pinwheeled and funneled Dan toward an unknown destination.

After what could have been a split-second or an eternity, the polychromatic helter-skelter organized: multicolor ropes detangled into monochromatic ribbons. Those in turn thinned into gossamer threads that converged at a perfect, symmetrical center: The Web of Life.

Hovering there, above the Web of Life, Dan saw dew drops dangling from each luminous strand. He saw too that each dew drop teemed with gorgeous souls. And in each soul Dan saw himself – his glimmering, shimmering essence. Dan knew now he was of something bigger and better than he could have imagined. It all made sense. Everything was related. All was one. And all went black.

_{To Be Continued…}

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