Okay, way freaky.
Romulus felt he should somehow be okay with not being in control, seeing as how it happened to him all the freaking time these days. And it was in his own head that he consistently had the least control. Like it had a mind of its own.
Not funny.
But it still bugged him that he wasn't even a driving force in his own dreams. Or he was, but it was like all his fears and phobias (which had sort of rose steadily over the past two years of his life) were the ones in control, conspiring against him to create all manner of pants-wetting, heart-stopping, and grossly inappropriately terrifying situations.
So not fair.
Now he was in the desert. Alone. Absolutely alone. Which sucked enough on its own. But he wasn't entirely alone, either. Faceless, plastic mannequins were his only companions, apparently for miles. It was hot. Really hot. Like, he could smell melting plastic kind of hot. And these weren't even chick mannequins, which might have helped matters: but no, he was surrounded by a bunch of naked, anatomically incorrect dude mannequins.
"Put some pants on," Rome chided, and shoved a mannequin over. It hit the ground face first and its head rolled off. This made him feel slightly better. But only slightly.
A bird screeched above him, and he looked up, hoping the wheeling black shape would at least be something else alive in this wasteland, but he saw nothing. It was like he was on a movie set, and they were going to CG the bird in later.
Rome began walking slowly through the forest of mannequins. He hadn't taken more than five steps, however, before he discovered a mannequin lying on its face, with a missing head. Rome's eyes darted back to where he had left the pushed-over mannequin. It was now standing upright again. Or he was turned around, and this was that original mannequin. One arm splayed up, the other down, head rolled off to the left, looking up at him, faceless.
So Rome picked a direction and walked another ten steps, quicker this time. Where, of course, lay another mannequin, head to the left of the body, face-up, one arm raised.
Rome blinked hard, rubbing his eyes. When he opened them again, all of the mannequins had been knocked over, all in the exact same way, until he was in a field of broken, headless, faceless mannequins: like a battlefield.
Then instead of a bird screech, a mortar blast sounded overhead.
Rome instinctively hit the deck as a shell exploded somewhere nearby, throwing bits of plastic limbs and desert sand over him. Rome covered his head as the screeching and exploding intensified, crescendoed, and then fell silent. The battery was over as quickly as it had begun. Before Rome even opened his eyes, he felt something sticky on his hands. Blood? Had he been injured? He didn't feel any pain. Rome opened his eyes and looked around him.
The mannequins were bleeding.