The Paul Disconnection, cont'd

He stepped out the door and onto an extremely busy street corner. Lights flashed around and around. People's faces popped in and out of view. He was having a hard time concentrating on what he was doing. He walked straight down the street. Finally, the chaos seemed to die down a bit. The street was narrower, with less cars. There were some trees casting sinister looking shadows on the ground. Paul was lost, but at least he was safe. Going outside had been a bad idea. There were too many things trying to go on at once. As the world around him began to settle back into place, he even had the feeling that he was completely normal again, that he had reattached somehow to the time train. But the moment he got up, everything swirled again and he was once again free to move around a little within his five second time frame. He could make himself begin to do something, but then force himself to stop before he had even begun to think about it again. Time was a five-second-long banner he could whip around this way and that. As he was practicing trying to make himself scratch his crotch and then changing his mind before he knew what he had changed his mind from, however, Paul began to realize that he was completely lost now. The city lights were all but gone now. There wasn't even a paved road anymore. The cars and streets had all disappeared. He had walked into a forest so dense that there weren't even footpaths in the dirt. He heard a deep, resonating roar in the distance...

To be continued...