The heavy machinery is grinding; the walls are coming closer together; Clark is trapped. His tan, muscular arms, fully extended, do not quite reach wall-to-wall, but that fact will be rendered untrue all-too-quickly. "Great," he thinks out loud, "another dream down the drain." Clark knows the hopelessness of his situation, and yet, he cannot stop pushing against the inevitable. The walls groan again as his elbows start to bend disgustingly inward; the pressure mounts and muscle is excruciatingly torn from bone, little piece by piece. He stops screaming. Bones shatter like fallen light bulbs. The smell of blood overwhelm; the impending darkness ushers Clark into its bosom.
Red and blue lights rotate on the top of detective Jane McNally's car. It looks like a missing hiker has just been found; with any luck, McNally will have a chance for a brief chat with the oddly relocated person before he's whirled away in an ambulance. She spots the emergency crew long before she can safely drive across the median. The forest which lines the highway has no chance at hiding the fire truck, ambulance, and three police cars which have already arrived on the scene. McNally's squad car comes to a screaming halt as she bounds from the car. She scans the horizon, quickly spotting two EMTs with a stretcher between them.
She rushes the paramedics, only faintly noticing the soft moans of pan coming from the stretcher. One of them quickly recites the facts for McNally: "25 year-old white male found face-down about a hundred yards north of here. Conscious but non-responsive. His ID matches that of the missing hiker." After a brief moment of bewilderment--it was 2:43 AM after all--she turns her attention to the stretcher. Lying there, pupils dilated, was a figure whiter than any ghost McNally had ever imagined. She could almost see his soul sitting on the stretcher, separated from his body. She shivered. Her mother had always nagged her to wear a coat, so she always conveniently forgot one, even when she needed it most. But this was different. Nothing could have insulated her from the cold, empty feeling she picked up from the near-lifeless shell looking through her from the stretcher.
Red and blue lights rotate on the top of detective Jane McNally's car. It looks like a missing hiker has just been found; with any luck, McNally will have a chance for a brief chat with the oddly relocated person before he's whirled away in an ambulance. She spots the emergency crew long before she can safely drive across the median. The forest which lines the highway has no chance at hiding the fire truck, ambulance, and three police cars which have already arrived on the scene. McNally's squad car comes to a screaming halt as she bounds from the car. She scans the horizon, quickly spotting two EMTs with a stretcher between them.
She rushes the paramedics, only faintly noticing the soft moans of pan coming from the stretcher. One of them quickly recites the facts for McNally: "25 year-old white male found face-down about a hundred yards north of here. Conscious but non-responsive. His ID matches that of the missing hiker." After a brief moment of bewilderment--it was 2:43 AM after all--she turns her attention to the stretcher. Lying there, pupils dilated, was a figure whiter than any ghost McNally had ever imagined. She could almost see his soul sitting on the stretcher, separated from his body. She shivered. Her mother had always nagged her to wear a coat, so she always conveniently forgot one, even when she needed it most. But this was different. Nothing could have insulated her from the cold, empty feeling she picked up from the near-lifeless shell looking through her from the stretcher.
