Ophidian encounter back up

  Ophidian encounter:

      He rubs the sleep from his eyes, blinking as sunlight bakes his face against a backdrop of tall almost cylindrical large trees whose branches don't start till more than ten feet off the ground and almost too soft of green grass around him. He sits up blinking in disbelief, his drowzy mind thinking he is still dreaming even as he stares down a soft sloping hill to a crystal clear creek only a hop's length across and looking to be no deeper than ankle deep, with a few spots perhaps knee deep. He stands perplexed by his surroundings. The soft green grass is everywhere between the sparsly spaced trees, it reminds him of a city park. The only problem is there is no sign of any sidewalks, parking spaces, portable toilets, playground equipment, or anything else one would expect to find at a park. However having lived in Ohio for twenty years he knows forests certainly don't naturally grow like this. The ground is too even, the grass too short, although it doesn't look cut, and the expected undergrowth of weeds, bushes, and smaller more tightly grown together trees are no where to be found. The air feels warm, low humidity despite the surroundings, and a slow breeze blowing. Behind him away from the creek there are more trees, and it is a little darker, but only in the sense of being shady, in that direction, but the trees are still no closer together, only their canopies are meeting. The other side of the creek sees a more wide open space with trees further apart and large rocks here and there, placed in a clearly artificial manner, or else by glacial deposits.

   As he leaps over the creek his mind begins to clear up but something deep inside him prevents him from speaking aloud the words, "what the hell is going on?" as the clear signs of being awake hit him, the aches in his joints, the taste on his tongue, itching of the eyes, the subtle signs that never show up in dreams that are always clear signs of being awake as the dreaming mind always leaves out the minor discomforts of being awake even when exagerating extreme ones. He sits down on one of the couch sized rocks as his head begins to ache, memories coming back to him; but memories of what seems to be a dream. Memories of being paralyzed on his back, seeing through blurry eyes at what look like grey mantis faces with giant blue parrot plumes of feathers sticking out the back of their heads, yet having big puffy human looking lips. Lights in his eyes, lying back on a cusion, barely able to see around him as he is moved onto a shelf with a window. He thinks for a moment he dreamed of being put in some weird oven, but there was no heat, the lights went out, and a strange song and then he was asleep. He thinks about the sleeping areas in passenger trains he had seen in a few movies, or those Japanese hotel pods for people just needing a place to sleep.

  He gets up and walks through the field, "Where am I?" he whispers barely breaking the silence. Stopping as it dawns on him, aside from the breeze through the leaves and the creek, he hears nothing. No birds, squirrels, or insects. In a park like this, this time of year he should be swatting at gnats, mosquitos, and other flying bugs in his face, especially in any place that looks like this. If this were a park he should be hearing birds, or seeing squirrels running about. But there is nothing. He eyes the stream and walks over to it, looking upstream and downstream, he sees nothing but more field and trees in either direction. He stops and gets a look of cold fear as his hands brush his pockets, he feels inside them, his wallet, cellphone, and keychain are all missing. But these clothes are what he last remembers wearing, "was I robbed and dumped somewhere?," he mutters.

   He tries to remember as he walks alongside the creek, going downstream. Remembering some survival thing he saw before that when lost and finding a creek to follow it. If you are in the mountains to follow it downstream as people tend to build houses, roads, and towns alongside running bodies of water.At least he can be happy he isn't like some guy he saw in a video once on Youtube who was left naked in the woods after being robbed. As he slowly makes his way down the edge of the creek, the eerie silence of all but the water and the occasional rustling of leaves by the breeze causing him to subconciously walk slower and be on full alert of the trees up the other side and all around him moving away from the open space; he tries to recollect more; his last memory before the odd blurry vision and darkness.

   He had just driven to Wal-mart, which had just returned to staying open later, despite medical organizations warning not too as there is still a pandemic going around and its not slowing down as businesses just want to act like its not there. But yeah, he had forgotten his phone, a cheap thing from Wal-mart was going to expire that night so had to run to Wal-mart to get a new phone card for the next month. He had been on his way back through the dark back road when, nothing, the next thing he remembers is the blurry vision, there is something missing there that he just can't recall.

  His attempts at focusing are cut short as ahead of him he sees a stone wall, the first clearly artificial structure he's seen since waking up. The wall however is incredibly tall so he can't see above it. To his left the ground is level, and the trees are closer together than usual. He imagines maybe able to climb the wall by pressing against a tree trunk. Of course, not two feet off the ground and his back and legs hurt and he slips and falls on his ass. He huffs a few times, embarassed to realize just how out of shape he is, in part due to his age, and in another part due to forgetting to do any amount of real exercise while stuck in-doors for a few months during the quarantine period. In the other direction there had been a slope back where he started but it looks like that had been a hill just there. Due to the trees and the distance he can't see where the wall ends. There is however a half circle tunnel for the creek to go through, the tunnel is more than wide enough and tall enough for him to walk through, although the water looks to be a little deeper there. He stops and listens, expecting to hear the sounds of cars and people, certain this wall must signify a road above. Through the tunnel however he can see light no more than thirty feet through, Not far beyond that he sees what look to be stone pillars on either side of the creek some distance beyond the other side of the tunnel, but the angle makes it look like there is a drop off, like a cliff right there, or the top of a hill.

  He wades into the creek, making his way through the tunnel; the water ankle deep, slowly turning knee deep and then, letting out a scream and getting a mouth full of water as there is suddenly no footing, the depth just dropping higher than him. He thrashes a moment before grabbing the stone side of the tunnel, doing a climb and float as he slowly makes his way to the other side, finding the depth becomes shallow again near the entrance. He is now completly soaked as he comes out the other side. To his left and right, much to his dismay the ground is still flat and well below the height of the wall. No where to get up high enough to see what is above it. As he walks towards the two stone pillars, each about six feet tall and positioned on either side of the creek he can make out odd designs on them. They put him in mind of the snake women aliens he knows are from a game series called "Xcom", although he's never played it himself, well aware of it thanks to friends on the internet and memes; although their faces are more canine or dragon like but not really long muzzles; and their eyes larger, with fins on the ends of their tails. The pillars seem to mark a sudden slope. A hill, the creek is only a few inches deep there and goes down a series of shallow pools and waterfalls, clearly artificial. However more alarming he sees now a vast forested area, sparse areas of open fields, a sandy spot near a larger pond, one of those beaches that signify a swimming area near ponds, and in the distance what looks to be a village of some sort, there are brown structures there, rounded with roofs looking like wooden mushrooms. As he walks forward however he smacks into an invisible wall and falls backwards. Perplexed he stands up again and feels the space, there is a wall, not like glass or even plexiglass as it makes no sound when he tries to tap on it, its like some thick air-gel, more a force than a structure. He feels around it, the pillars are halfway on his side and half on the other, and he can feel the barrier is just above the water's surface, able to stick his fingers under it, but a little diggin with his finger tips in the dirt discovers its below the surface as well, just an inch below the bottom of the creek. Just enough space for the water to go through, although he imagines if there was a surge the side he's on would be flooded while it just trickles down that series of water falls. He does wander if this barrier is down in that valley also, that he just can't see it.

 "Maybe where the trees don't meet." he ponders aloud but can't tell given the odd spacing of the trees. It also occurs to him he can't make out roads, dirt paths, or even powerlines, despite the possible presence of people. As that village is down and to the left he decides to feel along the invisible wall going left, hoping to find a turn in it, or hopefully a way up the wall or see up there at least if nothing else. Traveling as best he can along this invisible barrier he sees more of the hill going down, the forest, but can't make out any signs of life. No birds flying, traffic, everything just looks to be plants, water, him, and that town with nothing moving in it. His heart sinks as the invisible barrier among trees comes to another invisible wall, corner forcing him to turn left again. He opts to follow the new barrier, even though he can see the forest, which oddly grows thicker with more underbrush than what he has seen in the areas he's been in so far; fearful he knows where this will lead, and before long through the trees he sees it, the first wall. However something else is visible, something that makes him scream, "FUCK!" at the top of his lungs. Before him, through the brush there is a dirt hill not six feet in front of him on the otherside of the invisible barrier that leads right to the top of the wall, but is still too high up for him to make out what is up there. Following back along the wall he just gets back to the stream, and continuing along the wall finds a mirror image of the opposite direction, complete with another hill going up just beyond his reach, and a very thick forest past the invisible barrier on this side. He estimates in total this area is maybe the size of a football field, contained on this side of the wall; however he knows he walked through an open space and hill and along the stream on the other side that was much wider than this. He just has to brave the dark, deeper than he knows water underthe bridge to go back over there.

   With tentative gulps and far more careful steps he makes his way through the water under the bridge, crawling along the edges, feeling for when the drop off occurs, although it nearly puts his head underwater he can feel with the tips of his toes a bottom by the edge of the wall, the drop is only a few feet across, and was only just a slight slope; however in the shadows beneath the bridge it might as well be an abyss and as the uncertainty of his situation creeps further into his mind he hastly exits the other side of the tunnel. Back to the side he started on he follows along the wall, having turned to his right upon exiting, walking parallel to the side of this bridge where he had found the slope just beyond his reach that had met the top of the bridge. However he finds a curiosity, not walking too far he realizes on this side of the wall he has passed where that inivisble barrier would have been; however the wall is still more than twenty feet tall and there is still no where he can find to climb. He continues in this direction, through the park like landscape of thick tree trunks kept at a distance with meeting canopies and short soft grass. This area is clearly much larger than where he had found himself and after what feels like an hour of walking along the wall must stop to rest fearing there is no boarder on this side. A thought that startles him, he wasn't hoping for barrier, trying to map out the parameter of this weird place, he was looking for signs of people, an exit, a way up to what he assumed was a road, especially with how high it is. But for all he knows this wall could go on for miles, he had found some enclosed area, enclosed by what means he doesn't know, but he has no reason to believe this side is enclosed. With a sense of determination he turns back, back to his orginal idea, following the stream, instead this time to follow it in the opposite direction.