Other'd

 I open my eyes, I'm in a strange place. Like a hotel lobby that's seen better days on a deserted stretch of highway. There is furniture, shabby but serviceable. I look around, trying to get my bearings only for there to suddenly be no walls or ceiling.. or.. everything has moved so far away that I can't make them out on the horizon. Everything has the pale yellow-orange tint of aged cigarette smoke and the gloss of plastic. Suddenly someone is standing next to me holding a clipboard.. tablet? They write (type?) on it without looking at me.

"First one we've had in a while," I hear them say, but I don't see their mouth move. I try to make out their facial features.. at best they appear feminine, something like a secretary? Waiter? The harder I look the more the features and even their clothing shift. I shut my eyes and rub the bridge of my nose.

"Don't try too hard, you're still adjusting," they continue, the hotel lobby comes back and I feel compelled to take a seat on an ottoman. It still has some spring to it, despite the years of wear and tear.

"Where... am I?" I venture. Looking back at them, I see they are wearing a skirt- no, leggings? A dress now. "What is... any of this?"

"I told you," they write (type??) more things, "don't try too hard. I believe in the past this experience has been referred to as being 'Othered'. We designate you 'Railroad', do you accept?"

I feel my brow furrow in confusion, I rub my eyes thinking maybe this is just a dream.

"Yeah, sure, whatever.." I wave the question away, still trying to wake up.

"Good," they gesture towards me, and I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket. Shocked that my phone would be in my dream I pull it out and see I have a new text:

"Hello and welcome to the Other Subscription Service. You will receive important updates and news about events as they come about and are assigned to you. At any time you may unsubscribe, but as they say, 'Once you've touched the other side, it will always be by your side'!"

Another buzz:

"Designee: RAILROAD, welcome! Please announce yourself to the elder pantheon when you are able. Your first assignment and training will come shortly."

I look up and the endless tobacco tinge world is back. I am sitting on a slab of something now. I'm not sure when the old spring cushion of the ottoman disappeared and hard plastic replaced it, the entire transition was seamless. I stand up and everything shifts again. I am standing in a back alley, it is dark and raining. There are barrel fires lit near me as the cold sting of wind threatens to tear away what little warmth they can provide.

Four figures emerge from shadows, each a bit more grubby looking than the last. I can't get a good look at their faces, but my mind recoils as it tries to define the features it does make out. I remind myself to not try so hard.

"WHAT DID THEY CALL YOU?" one of them booms at me. The force of their voice shakes me to the core and I feel my legs quiver involuntarily.

"R-railroad?" I stammer out. They scoff, they stamp their feet, one of them seems to turn... red? 

Another waves their hand and before I can acknowledge any of this, and I am suddenly standing in a barren forest. Stumps and dead logs lie scattered around me, no birds chirp, no wildlife makes its presence known. If moss could talk, I might at least hear some whispers.

I wandered for some time, out of the dead forest and into the plains. The grass was red and green, but mostly it was just dirt for miles and miles. The hills still rolled and sloped gently along, unimpeded by the death of everything around them. I climbed the hills and soaked in what this land had to offer: dust, strange colors, and a lack of life besides what I carried myself. 

My pocket vibrated. I don't know how long I had been in this place, and when I tried to look at the time on my phone my brain did that thing where it took the information and immediately threw it away. I am convinced that if I had written the time down somewhere, when I tried to reference it again it would be scribbles. I gave up trying to determine the where and when of what was happening, and tried to just exist.

I had received a new text:

"Designee: RAILROAD -

Please proceed to target location and assess reported presence."

I wondered how much more confused I could get before my brain gave up on trying to make sense of anything, and before I knew it I was standing in a crowded place. It was like a hotel lobby in a major city had crashed into a super market. People came and went constantly, luggage and shopping bags and groceries and -things- moved around me at a breakneck pace. 

I wandered again, it seemed to be all I could do anymore. People jostled past me, no one would look me in the eye, but at least I seemed to be back around people again. PEOPLE people, not... whatever I had been dealing with. No one shifted appearances, when they spoke their mouths moved, even if I wasn't listening to what they said.

I stood in a slow moving queue, moving from one atrium to the next, a thin rope barrier separating the two directions we could move in. As I stood, slowly stepping forward with the stream, I saw a woman and her child moving in the line next to us. Moving against their stream I saw a hooded person pushing their way through much to the annoyance of everyone else in the line. As they pressed towards the woman and child, they looked up, startled for a brief moment as we locked eyes. What I saw were two pointed pupils, crushed between a heavy brow and two gaping nostrils where a nose should be. From their face dangled multiple tentacled appendages, some ragged, some torn, some missing. My eyes widened as I realized THIS was the thing I was supposed to be trailing, and it recognized me as someone who could see IT for what it truly was. 

It continued to push through the crowd and as it did the mother turned around and called after them, "MY BABY!" Looking back, her daughter was now clearly missing, though this.. thing was not carrying anything. Had she been taken? Is this what being "Othered" is? 

"DAMMIT SOMEONE STOP HIM!" I heard from behind me. A young man with a shock of dirty blonde hair came following in -it's- wake. No one else looked up or seemed to care, as though the thing hadn't just been pushing past them. It reminded me of trying to look at the time earlier..

The young man saw me following his eyes, tucked an arm under mine, and pulled me through the line. "C'mon! We can catch him!" This being the first normal person to acknowledge me, I went along with them. We ran through more crowds and a mall food court that desperately needed more overhead lighting. Everything seemed to be dark no matter where we went.. 

The blonde and I approached a long line of register check-outs, people were lined up like it was the holiday shopping season, maybe it was? Time didn't matter anymore. "There! There!! Do you see him?!" he was shouting at me, excited, but I couldn't see where he was pointing. I tried to remember the clothing I had seen, the face stood out the most, the eyes stabbing into my soul, and as I skimmed I couldn't anything where the blonde pointed. 

He dragged me down to the front of the registers, past 2, 4, 8 of the lanes, a fire in his eyes, purpose in his step. "There! I.. swear he was just here! DAMMIT." He stamped his foot, suddenly angry.

"I.. don't see the hooded guy anymore? You said you saw him in the line? Why.. why wouldn't he just go for the doors..?" I was trying to be helpful, I looked around and realized there was no door, no ingress and egress for the store we were supposedly standing in. Just more windows and a wall of sales.

"Well, no sense looking anymore. He'll be back, c'mon," blondie motioned for me to follow, and I caught up to his side quickly. "So, what'd they call you?" he asked, as we pressed back the way we had came.

"Uh, you mean the secretary.. person?" 

He nodded, "Mine was a school teacher, yeah."

"Railroad?"

"HA!" he laughed, "Really!? They haven't called anyone that in forever, that's some history book shit right there. First on the list, literally -the first-, that's interesting," he shook his head, bemused. "Well, they called me Ergot, welcome to being Othered." 

"What the hell does that mean? Where are we? The hell is going on even??" I couldn't help the questions spilling from me, they'd been building up for a while and this was the first person (thing) to actually speak to me like I wasn't just another checkbox.

"For starters," Ergot was scanning the crowds, "if you're looking for answers, I don't have any. They don't explain and this shit hasn't made much of any sense from the start. Accept that you will not get an explanation and that will make it a lot easier to digest. Press for answers and they'll just make sure you're even more confused."

My pocket buzzed, a fresh message had arrived. I reached for my phone and thought to ask Ergot, "So... do the messages help then? Like.. what's the point if they're going to guide us but not explain anything?"

He shrugged, "Dunno, I unsubscribed a long time ago. I'm free-roaming out here," he made the hang-ten gesture with his hand. "You learn to spot stuff without their pointing you around, and they'll whisk you away whether you want to or not. You kinda learn to control that over time though."

"Control what..?" We approached an elevator as the doors were closing. He walked up to the frame, a gleaming metal amongst all the dreary surroundings and pressed his forehead to it. "What are you..?" I started to ask as he grabbed my arm again, with a turn of his head we were suddenly inside the elevator, the elderly occupant made no remark or showed any sign that we had suddenly appeared, just continued staring straight ahead. "Are.. are we even here?" I had to ask, it seemed like we were just existing next to everyone. To my surprise the old man turned around and shook his head at us, muttering something under his breath.

We left the elevator at it's next stop and made our way down a hallway much more cramped than the megafloor we had just left. In a corner was a small hovel of a home, blankets draped over top boxes stacked on top of tarps. It looked like a homeless person had setup shop in this one corner, and surprisingly people gave it a wide berth and respected area, like they knew it was there but didn't want to get too close to acknowledge it... much like a real homeless person.

"We're back!" he announced to no one before he began looking under sheets and flattened boxes, progressively getting more panicked as his search was turning up empty.

"What are you looking for?"

"My daughter she... she was here when I left to chase that One," he said, the hint of worry evident in his voice. "She.. she was here! I left her here!" he began pressing his forehead on the wall of his little home. 

"I.. what if that thing got her?"

"No, it didn't, it only had the one we saw get snatched, it was an entire distance, we didn't see them coming back.. it.. no," he was breaking down more, his leg was fidgeting.

"Have.. you considered that there are more than one of them?"

"I.." he stopped moving and his eyes transfixed into the distance, the idea seemed to be new to him.

"I mean.. it would seem odd to me that only one of those would exist.."

Ergot stood up straight, his fist clenched and unclenched, "I've been very caught up on tracking that One in particular.. I.. guess I thought this spot was safe enough," he sighed deeply. "This isn't the first time she's been taken at least. She knows how to handle herself for a little while," he shook off his stress and clapped his hands together. The sharp sound snapped me out of my own worry for a moment.

"Right! We just need to keep looking then. They aren't too hard to find once you know how."

"So.. how do you find them then? It seems like I wasn't supposed to see him the first time and I definitely didn't see him when we got to the registers."

"Ahh, that's the problem," Ergot said, smiling a knowing smile, "you're looking too hard!"