In a quaint village nestled between rolling hills and winding rivers, there lived a man who spent his days perched upon a weathered wooden chair on the front porch of his modest cottage. His eyes, a mirror to the vast expanse of his thoughts, gazed blankly into the distance as if searching for something just beyond the edge of his consciousness.

The man's mind was a void, a vast emptiness that seemed to swallow up any stray thought or fleeting emotion that dared to cross its threshold. He sat there, unmoving, a solitary figure against the backdrop of the bustling village around him.

Neighbors passing by would stop and exchange fleeting greetings with the man, but he hardly registered their presence. His mind was elsewhere, lost in the labyrinth of his own thoughts and memories.

Some said he was a dreamer, a man who had wandered too far into the recesses of his own mind and had lost his way back to reality. Others whispered that he was haunted by ghosts from his past, memories that clung to him like shadows in the fading light of day.

But the man paid them no mind. He remained on his chair, a silent sentinel guarding the threshold between the known and the unknown, his gaze fixed on a horizon only he could see. And there he sat, lost in the vast emptiness of his mind, a solitary figure in a world that seemed to have forgotten him.

They will never accept you. He clenched his fists, and tried his best to focus on the sound of the chair as it rocked.

Creak. Creak. Creak.

They all hate you, the voice said again, that feminine voice like an ill-tuned violin in his mind, and once you turn your back, they will kill you.

He knew no one else could hear it, this horrific sound in his head. It spoke to him at all times- in his sleep, at every waking hour. He knew that one day, it would likely be the end to him.

Him, and this entire damned village.

The voice faded, and the wind blew a lock of his hair in his eyes. He could smell it, the storm lingering on the horizon. Did the other townsfolk feel it too? The disaster looming over their heads?