Cigar Smoke version 9.1 (part 2)

"If you don't listen to the spider, the world, or rather what's left of it is doomed." The old woman said, and then pulled a battered metal cigarette case from her shawl, the silver tarnished from years of use. She pulled out two cigarettes and offered me one. Remembering my smoke free days pre-war, I took the cigarette, pulled out my scuffed Zippo lighter and lit the gypsy's cigarette and mine.

I took a drag and stared the woman in her dark probing eyes.

"So what you are saying is that I need to listen to some hallucination dream of a spider, some dream that somehow was a message. A message I have no idea about. That's what you are saying? Because that to me would lead me to think that you are probably just a bit delusional? You think?"

The woman just smiled eerily towards me and said;

"Mock if you will but if I were you, I'd get my doubting Thomas ass out of my head and figure out that dream you keep talking about, because if you don't the world, as I SAID, is doomed."

The gypsy then turned away and walked off into the smoky distance, leaving scuffled footprints in the street.; the street that was once a famous square that is now sullied with dirt, trash and a layer of grime. The absent society, the lack of street cleaning, the spoilt remainders of human activity show on every street and corner.

I stood there, hands in my pockets, watching the woman become smaller and smaller and finally disappear into the black night. So, somehow the end of the world is upon us and the irony? The fate rests on my shoulders?! For sure God was good and stoned when he rolled those dice this turn around. Ok, so wondering how my half-assed, mediocre effort that I managed before the world lost 4.5 billion people would help me figure this insanity out. Was I actually considering listening to a silent spider hallucination?

I returned to my leaking dungeon I called home and sat on my tan Lazy Boy recliner, looted after the bombing stopped and turned my lone treasure on, a battered iPod, sparingly used as electricity, needed for charging was fickle, very fickle. I closed my eyes and tried to think of what this could mean? Am I losing my mind? I decided to pretend this to be real and at least try, what harm could this do? The whiskey must have soured, maybe because these insane illusions, so alive one moment, gone like a wisp of my cigar smoke the next.

I opened my eyes and realized it was dark out, I must have fallen asleep, I reach over and grab my cigarettes, lighting one I notice a shadow move over in the corner. Squinting to adjust my eyes in the dark, I hear a voice, ever so quiet creep from the back corner of the room.

"You must find all the keys, find them all and the world will not fall to it's knees and beg to be ended, a mercy compared to what it will suffer."

Taking a long drag, my heart racing I edge closer, the chair on two legs, I see nothing! I shake my head, hoping maybe it is just my insomnia catching up.

"I know you think this can't be real, but I am and you must remember to find all the keys, there are 9, you mustn't just stand there, you don't have much time."

"Keys?? What keys? What do you mean? I don't understand." I started rambling, questions and doubts flowing out of my mouth.

"Just remember, trust yourself, only you have the answers. Find the 9 keys, you will know them, you have but days."

And with that the shadows in the back of the room were still, I knew the voice had gone. What do I do, what keys?

….To Be Continued