Eventually I realized the road began to climb. I looked ahead past the buildings and saw looming under the speeding clouds some kind of veiled essence that suggested life and change. I ran to it. As I approached closer the buildings began to fade, blinking in and out, sometimes into a bluish/purplish fuzz. The humming sound began to distinguish itself more. It was like a human voice, a Buddhist monk looking for enlightment, or someone I loved whispering in my ear - 'wake up'. For the first time my mind began to swirl. I kept running. The buildings had completely vanished. I looked all around me but everything had turned dark and damp and cool. I still heard the sound but I could also make out other seperate noises: splashing water, shreiking insects, wind breezing through branches. My bare feet were caked in fresh mud and wet brown leaves. I began to climb up a slippy hill, sometimes on all fours. The trees began distancing themselves making me feel more vulnerable. The sounds of water and wind faded away. I yearned for the comfort that nature had given me, but I was driven forward by some unknown power. Something inside of me that I didn't know existed or couldn't understand and maybe never even wanted stopped me from turning back. I was shuffling out of control through the grass that had begun sprouting under my feet, when I was thrown to the ground just short of the sky, the clouds, a cliff. A whistling wind rushed through my hair, chilling my body. I crawled on my stomach and tried to peer over the deep drop. I could barely open my eyes because of the wind that was in no way similar to the wind back in the forest that had had a somewhat peaceful effect on my. This wind was threatening. I stretched my neck out fearing I would topple over and dared to open my eyes. I couldn't see anything. It was pitch black. Had I fallen? I could hear voices screaming, shouting, arguing. I realized that these voices had been the humming. Thousands and thousands of voices. Not just screaming, shouting and arguing and singing and laughing and crying. Also, I realized I could hear them all inside my mind, no one was talking out loud. I tried to move and fell. I screamed. A light flashed on or something because all of the sudden I could see. I could tell now that I had been lying on some sort of bed and that I was in a room that reminded me of childhood, sunlight pouring in through the window, I heard young children laughing, shouting in fun. I felt a smile on my face. I got up from the floor confidently. I opened the door to my room and walked out into a kitchen. I sat down at the table and looked out the window. I saw the yard from my first home. I remembered playing out there with my sister, running in the dirt and resting in the grass. I heard a sound and was startled. Someone was coming up from downstairs. The footsteps echoed in my mind filling the house. A door creaked and two figures rounded the corner and approached me. They were humans but not like any I had ever seen. They filled me with anxiety. It was their faces that was the most upsetting. Their expressions never changed. They seemed to be filled with constant energy. Their teeth were bared, not exactly in a smile. Their eyes gleamed and shone. They resembled death so closely that I knew that they were more alive than anything I had ever witnessed. They moved effortlessly so that I couldn't tell if all of their muscles were tensed or relaxed. They brushed by me and walked outside. I began to relax, feeling the worst was over but then I realized, rather slowly, that one of them had made me a proposition. The question lingered in the air after they had whished past like ghosts. Did I want to join them? was what the one had asked me. He hadn't spoken, but he had asked me. I stood up to walk outside and to see where that would lead me.