Prologue

Silver static skittered across the televisions screen as I stood at my living room window watching the headlights of automobiles crawl across the dark backdrop of New York Cities streets. I had already tuned out the noise that my television was making. The red and yellow lights on the street began to streak together as my eyes began to defocus. My thoughts began to turn inward now that the noise and lights of the city died to my senses.

*****

And there I stood, breeze wafting through my hair, in the middle of a vibrant green forest. I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. The air here was nothing like that of the city. Not nearly as stifling and completely free of the heat and smog that's held in the shadows of the city. I only opened my eyes as the warm rays of the sun struck my upturned face. My eyes opened to see a clear blue expanse hanging high above, and there lay the sun. The object of worship by many a great civilization. The Greeks gave the god in charge of the sun the name of Apollo, the Egyptians named him Ra. Why would such wise people worship and admire the sun? Some say that it's because the sun is the 'Bringer of Life.' Others say it's because the sun is the brightest of celestial bodies in the ancient sky, and thusly an important part of astrology. But we will probably know what their true purpose for worshiping the sun really was.
When I lowered my face from the sky my eyes caught site of an object beneath the bows of the trees. I strained my eyes to attempt and make out what it was, but to no avail. So, I began walking towards it. Slowly at first; looking at the leaves of the trees as they shimmered in the sunlight, and enjoying the music of the birds. But as I walked closer to the object I began to feel compelled to get to it faster.
Only a few hundred meters from the object I still couldn't see what it was. Almost as if it was veiled from my vision. By now I was in a dead run, and I would be on top of the veiled figure in a few moments. I was stopped dead in my tracks when I was two or three meters from the objects base. A sudden fear had stopped my feet cold, and then I realized... The birds... they had stopped singing a few minutes previous, and the sun had hidden itself behind a cloud darkening the forest that surrounded me. At that moment a frigged breeze struck up in the bows of the trees and I began to shiver.
I turned my attention back to the object ahead of me, and realized that it was still veiled in a strange fog. Staring at the wall of fog I suddenly found myself stepping through it. As soon as my feet carried me through the ominous mist the fear I had felt before overwhelmed me and I dropped to my knees. I used all my strength to lift my head to look towards the object, but all I could see was a small stone fountain run dry. As my legs regained their strength I walk towards the fountain. When my toes hit up against the fountains base I put my hands on it's walls and peered into it.
What I saw was a reflection in the water leftover from the summers most recent rain shower. As expected the reflection was mine. A few leaves were floating in the basin. At this moment I realized that I was quite thirsty from my short run. I formed my hands into a bowl and scooped some water out disturbing the once mirror like surface. I quickly drank the water, and looked back into the eyes of the rippled semblance of myself.
"That's an ugly face isn't it?" I said to myself with a little bit of a chuckle. At that very moment the ripples disappeared.
My soul filled with fear and I tried to scream emulating the face that now stared back at me from the basin of still water.

*****

A loud noise jolted me from my slumber, and I found myself laying on the floor directly below the window I had been standing at. Looking around the room I saw what had made the noise. On my travel to the floor I had knocked over the tray table that'd been sitting next to my recliner in front of the television, and a glass had fallen to the ground and shattered on the hardwood of the floor. It as at that moment that I realized more than one of these shards had found there way into the palm of my hand.
"Damn it, not again."