Diary of the Displaced by Glynn James

the first marker. It was the same wooden pole that I remembered the tramp following, and had the same bright cloth tied neatly at the top.
    As I sit here writing this journal and eating some of what I had already cooked yesterday, shaded from the rain by a massive mushroom (one that is ten feet tall, like I had seen in the dream), and an hour on from finding the first marker, and ten more markers passed, I am hopeful for the future.
    DogThing is sitting barely ten feet away from me, also eating, though his is raw and bitten straight from the mushroom. His presence is a constant reminder of how strange this place is, but also how not everything is against me.
    I think of the lake, and the shack up on the rocks, and I know there is somewhere to go at last. It’s a place not far from here, and though it is no longer inhabited by the living, it is a place that could be lived in, for now. It’s a place where an old tramp who I once met on a bus, when I was a child, once lived.
    One that talks to me in my dreams.
    Day 17
    “So who was he then?”
    “He was a professor, taught art literature I think, but he was quite mad when I met him down here. He was a nice fellow, harmless enough, but he used to gibber on in some strange language, and he talked to himself a lot.”
    “And he just disappeared?”
    “Yes… well… no, not literally. One day he was talking about needing to go and get food. I said that we had enough mushrooms and pods to last us for months, but he didn’t want pods or mushrooms.”
    “Pods?”
    “They grow by the lake. You will see when you get here. They taste like potatoes, but with a sharper taste maybe, and are much bigger. They are slow growing though.”
    “I see. Anyway. About Professor Adler?”
    “Yes… oh… yes. Well he packed up some provisions, got on his bicycle and headed out across the swamps. He used to travel round a lot before, but this was different, somehow more final. I begged him not to go, but he didn’t listen. He never came back.”
    “Swamp?”
    “It’s a few miles past the valley, in towards the ruins. There are some ruins, as well. A city, once, I think. It’s a dangerous place. I’ll tell you all about it when you get here.”
    “What’s your name anyway?”
    “Rudy.”
    It was strange waking up outside again. The rain hadn’t stopped. It still floated down in a barely perceptible sheet, the kind of rain that soaks everything, whilst giving you the impression that it’s just a light shower. I was glad of the huge mushroom that I was sitting under. The ground around the base is almost dry. A few feet away, and the ground is sludge.
    DogThing has found himself a similar nook to hide away in, tucking himself under a smaller mushroom about twenty feet away. He is so well camouflaged in this strange field that I almost didn’t spot him.
    I decided that it was pointless waiting until the rain eases. It hadn’t done since it first started drizzling. I spent a few minutes gathering my things, and pushed off out into the wet, trying to spot the next marker.
    It was a slow trek through the rest of the mushrooms and up onto the rock plateau. I didn’t remember the slope out of the mushroom field being quite so steep in the dream, and it took me about an hour to haul my cart up the few hundred feet of rock.
    When I finally got up there, it was the weirdest sight. Talk about flat. The plateau could have been carved by a machine from the bare rock. There was almost a polished sheen, glimmering in the lantern light, stretching out for the few hundred yards of visibility.
    DogThing seemed reluctant to follow me out onto the flat at first. He perched on a small outcropping of rock at the top of the slope, and watched me, eventually leaving the safety of his camouflage to catch me up. I’m glad he did. Seeing him sitting there, watching me go, gave me an eerie lack of confidence in my choice. If he wasn’t willing to walk there, what was I doing?
    The markers were less