The department store was filled with shoppers, even though Christmas 2008 had passed only today’s before. James was there like everyone else, searching the aisles and racks for hidden bargains.
He stepped onto the escalator, ascending towards the second floor when he felt a peculiar and sudden shift in the atmosphere. James looked around and while he could see other shoppers, he could no longer hear the sounds of people talking or the sounds of the store itself.
Abruptly the escalator jerked and James found himself standing on the bottom step, moving upward once again. With this came a blurring of the buildings surroundings, as if it were fading out of existence.
He screamed, but no one paid James any mind.
Once again, James topped the escalator and once again came that nauseating jerkiness that flashed him, inside of a second, to the base of the moving stairway. Looking around he saw that even more of the store’s walls, floor, ceilings and fixtures had disappeared.
James held his hand up. He could see through it all: skin, vessels, muscle and bone.
He screamed again. This time his voice seemed to be further away in sound as it left his evaporating body.
James tried to turn away from, to avoid the top step, to rundown the moving escalator, but to no avail. Again the jerk, again the flash and again he began his upward ride.
Twice more this happened and as he began his sixth journey skyward, all of the building had vanished about him. And beneath him, where the step should have been, was nothing but a blank space — a blank space, which now included James.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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