Woolgathering

YOU'VENEVERHEARDOFIT, Germany
The sound of nothing was loud at first.
Then bearable as he coped.
It was pitch-quiet now, in the room.
The Germans love their quiet, he thinks in the middle of the night.
It's always so lonely here, in this Nowheresville. The German country side. Where the loudest thing is the street lights, if that makes sense. Their sharp, pale-blueish light alien in this place. So out of place that they scream at you in the middle of the night.
He looks outside and away again. Isolated. Working. Mind wandering.
He twirls a pen around his fingers and then sticks it in his mouth, pretending for a moment that it is a cigarette and he is taking a drag. For a second he really does see the haze of smoke as it spirals from his lips and fogs the white glare of the computer screen.
It's late and he's playing make-believe.
The room is completely dark, the only light coming from the laptop screen on the desk in front of him. The glare gives everything in the room a weird outline, he thinks, the kind of sharp outline you see in comics. He never really read comics, he thinks, but the picture-panel stories were always something that interested him. So he sits and pretends to smoke his cigarette and the panels of his comic flip by and he has a thought bubble over his head with lyrics playing.
The room in quiet. Everyone in the house is asleep. The whole fucking country is asleep. But he can't help but put a song he heard earlier in the day on repeat in his head, full volume, bass pumping. In the darkness he can almost see the faint outline of a DJ in the corner, mixing albums, sweaty-skinned bodies dancing the zombie around him, hands high.
Maybe he's just tired, he thinks, because when he looks again there is no DJ. But the song is still there. He hums the tune as he works.
"Searching." That's what the screen says.
Outside it is cold and the wind is blowing hard.
He thinks about Germany and how ancient this place really is. The savages that forged this land. The gods that built this nation. The wind blows harder, cooler outside and he thinks what it would have been like to be one of those savages, pawn of those gods. A picture takes the place of the lyrics in his head. A large man on a larger horse, both of them all muscle, shadows drawn in to give a sinister appearance. This place can be sinister. The man is a product. Interesting specimen. Long red hair and a red beard. Or blond? One strand is braided. Dark eyes. Sharp features. He doesn't smile. His shoulders are wide, his head hung low, hair everywhere. He wears a bear skin. Sheepskin boots. Brown. His sword is tucked under the fur, glinting in a pale-blue moonlight that seems to make his appearance sceam out.
The wind blows through the fur, his wavy hair. He doesn't feel cold.
Then the figure is pushed out of the bubble by the lyrics and the band strikes up in the corner of the room. A guitar, this time. Drums and a bass behind him.
It's dark. There's a candle burning. He lights another cigarette with it, in the back of the bar.
He smokes and thinks of visions of her- as he is woolgathering- then sees her.
She's not really here.
He thinks he might be losing his mind as he's searching on the screen, working.
It's dark Somewhere in Germany and he's alone. Isolated, it seems, save for his dreams.
He blows smoke in the middle of the bar with the band playing in the opposite corner from where his table is and there are people all around, their bodies high-lighted in the pale-blueish light, all zombies to the rhythmic sound.
He searches.
The smoke from his lips spirals, lingers, fades and through its curtain his eyes stop.
The screen posts the search results.
The room is dark.