CityLove Chapter 1

I had been on the road two months, maybe two and a half and tonight we were in San Antonio Texas. We were gonna be here for three days and I hadn't been there before so I was looking forward to some time to wander around.

I got up to my room around 10:30 pm and I was happy to discover I had been given a corner room. I was exhausted so I threw my bags on to a chair in the corner of the room, closed the curtains, shut off the lights, and dove on to the bed towards the am/fm radio. Sometimes if you get the dial right in between two good stations you can make your own new music. I found a good mix and laid back to pass out for a while before getting dinner.

I started winding down the familiar corkscrew in my mind towards subconsciousness, but right before I got in to dreamland, I heard a thud in the parking lot. It wasn't a crash or a car accident, it sounded too big, too dense, it sounded just plain huge.

I get up and open the curtains on the side of the room facing the river. I see all the trees huddled over the river and I notice a flashing light to the far right, so I open the curtains that were facing south. There in the hotel parkng lot is a gigantic spiked metal ball that was at least three stories tall. The pavement of the parking lot looked like a gray, wrinkled old grandma for at least 50-75 feet around the area where it had crash landed. The spikes started telescopically extending and within four seconds the end of each spike started glowing bright white; it grew so bright that I fell to the floor and had to cover my eyes. As I hit the floor I know something's wrong because I'm unable to put my hands out to stop my fall, face-down on to the hotel carpet.

I wake up and the first feeling I remember is the smell. Hot metal, sweat, burning, charred. I hear screams and moans, but they fade in and out with my consciousness. It comes in waves; I can see the robot arm darting and weaving above my face and I almost have time enough to get a thought together and then I fade to black again.

At times I feel like I've been there for only a few minutes and other times it feels like I've been here for days, I can't tell anymore. I know now that I am not alone, I can hear people writhing while strapped on to metal tables, just like me. My head is clamped forward in a way that makes it impossible to turn away...I can either watch or close my eyes, but I can't stop the smell and the sound, I can't stop the sound.