The room with oriental furniture

He watched the atoms go "blip blip blip" across the room scattered with oriental furniture. Kneeling on his bed they increased with every page he turned. "Are you going to kill me now?" the other asked. He remembered the neighbors, fated to drive off the cliff at the end of their driveway and tumble headlong into the swirling river below, a swift erosion of flesh, metal, and sandstone.

The stairs were slick with moss, a clinging penumbra wet against the worn stone steps cut into the side of the hill. Campers crawled up and down its steep incline, ants preparing for and recovering from the long hike. The river was at flood stage and the governor had decreed the area off limits until the waters receeded. I was staying at a friend's house and we had obtained a special research permit which would allow us access to the river. We eventually crossed the last line of trees and the warm muddy water crept up our ankles. We saw with our gear for some time, all the while documenting information and taking photographs. After we had exhausted the geography, we began to study the wildlife. Feet dangling with infinte depths beneath us and water up to our necks, the current carried us swiftly along and it became a struggle to remain together. I pulled up a tiny red fish. "Look how it loves for its mouth to be held open between my thumb and forefinger!" The creature was plump and deep red with orange flecks. It dropped back into the water. "Of course you heard what happened last month?" "No I'm afraid not," I said. "It was Jane Goodall herself, and her cronies," he continued, "they found an underwater den of Fluorescent Lascer-Worms!" A hush followed. "They barely made it out alive. One of her research assistants never regained consciousness." We all looked at eachother. "Did you feel that?" Something smoothe and itchy brushed my thigh. Then my shoulder and belly. It rippled over my skin and atop my calf. Our arms flailed madly as we swam against the current towards safety. On the shore my companions examined themselves, amazed to find no stings. Where I had felt the itching I noticed subtle red marks. I kept this to myself. We were back in the apartment making rice krispy treats when the others saw them. I looked down and saw glowing fluorescent lascerations all over my body.

He chased me into the underground church that had been under construction for hundreds of years, and the underground library. I hid in the bells but he found me. In the atrium of glass walls I climbed a rope ladder past the offices which I could see, stacked on top of eachother, on the other side of the glass. I ran down a hallway I had never seen before. A door opened and I was in the neighbors apartment. He had been waiting for me. We watched eather, circling the room like two boxers before a prize fight. I opened the chifarobe and pulled out a book. The atoms, neutrinos, and protons blipped across the room scattered with oriental furniture. Was the sun exploding? Was he about to kill me? I thought about the neighbors driving off the edge of the cliff again, their vehicle tumbling headlong into space. The abyss waited. A twisting blue thread below, the river was at flood stage. Their bodies were disolved. I wondered if they felt any pain or if falling through space was an eternity of euphoria followed by a crash of nothing. There would be no evidence of the body, so why would there be pain? For all I knew the atoms that made up their bodies were now blipping across the room full of oriental furniture. I wondered if he would kill me. He put down his book as his fingers tightened around the knife. A neutrino sailed across the room full of oriental furniture.