Tampa Bay Area
Clearwater Beach
April 13, 2010
I got into Clearwater Beach today, which has little of interest to a non-beach
person like myself, but I'll be over working all week, so am more concerned about a
quiet hotel room and good food.
A mysterious dark cloud covered the sky as Brent & I were transported into another dimension
April 17, 2010
My brother, Brent got to Clearwater Beach today and talked about how all the people
down on the beach were crazy, but I haven't made it to the beach all week so just
sort of nodded in agreement.
He continued on for a few minutes about all the crazy “beach performers” and how
their sanity was in question as was the sanity of most of the spectators.
Although he described these performers as odd, I simply viewed them as street performers,
a strange sub-race of humans who tend to do any stupid, odd, desperate, and seemingly
abnormal act for the little change you may have in your pocket. I know this since I'm a
professional street performer, but so is Brent, so these people must have been incredibly odd.
Clearwater Beach
April 18, 2010
After working a couple hours this morning, Brent and I headed through the rain to downtown St.
Petersburg, then Tampa before I had to go to the airport for my flight home. Our drive to St.
Petersburg consisted of us leisurely driving while furiously eating the Peanut Butter Patty Girl Scout cookies.
In St. Petersburg we went to the Salvador Dali museum, whose paintings are known as psychedelic,
insane, mesmerizing, and odd. Later I would discover this art to be the most normal part of our
day, but for the time I still found his work “slightly off.”
Having little interest in over-analyzing paintings, we headed to the Hard Rock Café to get one of
our other brothers a Hard Rock Café t-shirt. Once we got there though we discovered there was no
Hard Rock Café, only a Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, so we bought the shirt and decided to throw some money away.
After we each lost a dollar on the quarter slots, we found the slots in our price range, the nickel
slots. It was the Deal or No Deal slots and I thought that sounded like fun so put in a dollar.
I didn't really know what I was doing, so looked at the person next to me and pressed the same button
she pushed. Then I got to chose cases, which I literally did by covering my eyes and reaching my hand
out towards the touch screen. Then after randomly touching the screen five times I got a bank offer
just like on the TV show. I didn't know why the slot machine was giving me money since I thought I
was supposed to lose all my money, so accepted and cashed out. My nickel bet turned into $90.55. I was
beginning to think Brent was on to something about this area's other-wordly atmosphere.
We still had time to kill and were done gambling so decided to go downtown Tampa to see the city.
Reaching downtown was a simply process and we found a parking spot on an empty street.
As we exited our car we were welcomed by an eerie silence. We looked down the street in every direction
and there was no one, no cars, nothing. We could see, when viewed from the correct angle, six or seven
intersections marked by a row of don't walk signs, but these signs were all we could see.
We soon found a map of downtown and looked at it. Despite our doubts we were in the middle of downtown
Tampa, yet felt completely alone. As we were trying to figure out where we were, what there was to
see, or what was going on, a strange man walked up to us and without saying a word just began to stare
at us from about three feet. I made eye contact and felt his eyes touch my soul, but he felt empty and
his glazed-over eyes stared at me as if I was either intruding or insane for being there.
Where the rest of the people were will remain a mystery to me until the day I die. The feeling we had
was that of confusion and fear, as if a horrible epidemic spread through the city killing everyone.
People weren't here, yet some of the deceased left their cars behind to garnish the city's streets.
Brent said the atmosphere was best described as if the city had become a nuclear bomb testing region
and everyone left but us.
As we began to doubt our sanity we started calling people we knew to find out if the world had ended.
It took some time, but we confirmed our existence as we know it. No sooner had we gotten off the phone
did we see a young couple standing, twirling, and kissing in a cloud of fog besides the river. This
would usually be a promising sign of reality, but their actions in the dense fog were unusual and they
only left us looking over our shoulders in a state of paranoia.
We found a seat under a large overhanging balcony as we tried to describe the feeling the city gave
us. Brent eloquently stated the feeling as something that makes a person second guess reality to the
point that they run off screaming only to find themselves in an insane asylum. He was right, we were
a step away from insanity… or a step away from this science fiction novel from becoming a science
non-fiction novel as our lives were robbed from us by whatever or whoever it was that created this
isolationism that we had found ourselves in the middle of.
We turned to cross the river and found the same couple from the fog passing by us: walking in the
same direction, but in the wrong location. They had come from the north, but only moments earlier
they had walked the same path, in the same direction, yet here they were, as if they were teleported
or we had traveled back in time a couple minutes to see them on their journey just before entering
the fog. I began doubting what I had seen as my mind raced when Brent said, “Wasn't that the couple
that was just walking that way?” as he pointed south and his complexion turned white. “Yes… what, how
did they… what's going on?” Brent was as confused as I was and their seemingly physically impossible
warp from one location to another only confirmed our feelings of confusion.
The bridge crossing the river was littered with graffiti, but empty. After crossing the narrow river
we came upon a set of train tracks, which I jumped across. Typically if there are no trains on the
tracks I cross without a rush, but if time travel was possible with that couple and in Back to the
Future Part III, then it's possible in this land of confusion we now found ourselves in. I somehow
expected a train from the past or future to suddenly appear on the tracks and end whatever dream or
life I was in the middle of at the moment. What I would typically consider impossible or highly
improbably I now expected to become real.
The smell here, on the campus of the University of Tampa shifted from sewage to play dough, but what
didn't change was the emptiness of the city. We caught a few glimpses of people here, but I still
doubted their existence as we began searching for some sort of paper or document which could give us
the date or give us details of the parallel universe we had found ourselves in.
The campus is dominated by what we had first believed to be a giant mosque, due to the minarets adorned
by crescent moons. As we approached this building’s main entrance we hesitated, but entered what was
once a hotel and currently claims to be a university building. The bathroom’s entrance led down a series
of steps, and the one wing was dominated by a museum of sorts.
We escaped this building and soon found ourselves on another bridge to re-cross the river. As we
crossed this draw bridge a biker approached us from behind so I stepped to the side, as Brent sped
up and moved to the other side to let him pass. As this very moment, the draw bridge began to rise
and we found ourselves on opposite sides of the crack. I fell to the ground due to the rain falling
on the metal flooring and clung to the crated sidewalk. I looked in both directions, but there were
no boats demanding the bridge rise. I let go of the crated sidewalk and slid down the rising bridge
only to notice that the guard rail and lights weren’t moving.
I shouted to Brent and he screamed back, but the rising bridge didn't allow us to see each other.
The streets were still empty, but now we were each alone. I told him to go to the first bridge we
crossed, but as I finished talking we saw that bridge rising as well. Brent thought about jumping
in the river and swimming across, but as we questioned the plan a loud screeching sound made a reflex
within me to scream and become consumed by a pain in my ears as I fell to the ground, curling into a
ball, closing my eye, clinching my jaw, and desperately coving my ears.
When the sound ended I was surrounded by people who had cornered me against the raising drawn bridge.
They all wore the same expression that the bum earlier had worn: emotionless and soulless; none said
a word and I was consumed with a fear that prevented me from screaming out to Brent. I heard nothing
but silence.
I awoke somewhere else and at peace with the situation although I'm not sure where. I was on the
stage of a semi-circled tiered theater. I wasn’t a professor, nor an experiment or showcase. I was
the center of this room, but those in attendance looked at me with eyes of the intrigued and curious.
They were kind, gentle, and treated me as their honored guest, yet the room remained silent and I
seemed to be a treasured piece of art for analysis and thought provocation rather than an equal
worthy of conversation.
The next thing I remember was walking down the empty streets with Brent as we spotted a car parked
in the middle of the abondoned street. A block later we saw a closed Quiznos subs despite the fact
that it was the middle of the day.
I don't know how I got back to Brent, what those people wanted from me, why
they let me go, or anything else about today. Brent remembers nothing of the blackout, not even the
bridge’s rising or loud screeching noises. His memory must have been erased, while with each passing
day my visions of that day become more vivid.