“Hurt and praying nothing was broken, I got back up and looked into the eyes of a madman as he approached me. I had to get out of there, all thoughts about finding out what happened to you gone. I was now simply worried about my own survival. He was between me and the door to the hallway outside. I tried to make it around him but he caught me and after a quick two blows to my stomach, threw me again across the room where I crashed through a door and hit the floor.”

“Groaning, I twisted to look at him coming and the shock of what I saw, after all I’ve been through must’ve been too much and I passed out.”

“What did you see?” James asks.

“When I came to, I was lying in a clearing. Standing over me was this little creature, it had a weird hat and some kind of vest or something. It frightened me and I got up and ran away through the trees. I could hear it calling to me but I wasn’t paying any attention to what it was saying. The enormity of what I was experiencing was overwhelming.”

“At first I thought I was hallucinating, and then after awhile thought maybe this was the afterlife, though it sure wasn’t any afterlife I’d ever heard about.” He takes the cup in his hand and takes several more drinks.

James can see he’s looking to him for a response, but he’s not sure what kind to give him. That creature was definitely Igor, of that can be no doubt. But why doesn’t Dave have an understanding of the language like he did? Could it have been because he ran away from Igor? Hard to say for sure.

“I experienced the same thing when I went through the door to the interview,” he tells him. “The creature you met is an agent of a god in this world, he’s really not all that bad.” After taking a drink himself, he asks, “Then what happened?”

“What happened?” parrots Dave. “I ran and ran and ran hoping to find a way home. I eventually came to the edge of the forest and saw several people riding horses, as well as one man leading a team of horses pulling a covered wagon. Running out of the forest, I yelled to them and flagged them down.” A haunted look comes over him as his voice softens, “I thought they would help me. I was wrong.” Tears begin welling up in his eyes and a sob begins to escape him.