Shelter in Place
A short-short story.
Image Source: APOD
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It started with three text messages, one after another: LOCK ALL WINDOWS. UNPLUG ALL ELECTRONICS. DO NOT GO OUTSIDE.
They later said it was a patch in space. Some freak anomaly that turned us all into freaks. That seemed too easy. I'm writing this with four hands, none of which I recognize as my own. The keyboard's drying out the hand-eyes. But they make it easier to choose your words more carefully, that's for sure. Above me, stars bend like flailing worms on the asphalt. I have never seen something, some everything, so bright. Holy.
Dan's gone. We were never close, being more my girlfriend's friend than mine. Last time we saw Dan he'd gone out back to the fire pit to look skyward — up into space, the reality mangled like a busted accordion, the spasmodic aurorae. One second he was there, the next he was booming out of the atmosphere, a burst of light, a meteor going backward down a one-way street.
At first, we thought about hiding beneath our beds, let ourselves fall to ashes separately, quietly, like school children. But we felt the pull of the living room and opened the front curtains and watched the world writhe like the all-night marathon on a demonic television. Mona said it was outside, screaming at her in tongues, Jesus Christ a sinner on Earth. None of us wanted to ask her what it was, hoping it was just in her mind like we'd all been dosed and just had to ride out the hills and valleys of a bad vibration. But an hour later we were talking about the pit with the sun at its core, planetoids colliding and bursting, purples and golds and whites and greens and blues, too quick to follow. Disheartened faces at the nexus, my face, her face, Dan's face asking us something. Every face that's ever been, a pool of faces, primordial lakes of faces, gazing. A place for everyone, a place you’re afraid to land when it’s over. Like whatever it was that got people screaming about the existence of Hell in the first place.
As I said, the powers that be told us it was a patch in space. A blip. Just that, nothing more. If we all repeat it, it would be true. A one-off. Nothing for which we'd be blamed. Certainly, nothing we'd done to ourselves. Nobody plagues their own planet so willfully.
Angus got the TV going after the fires on the lawn died down and one of the local channels aired its first news broadcast. It wouldn't be long until the sirens started, frightened children in every direction. The newscaster couldn't stop laughing. Purple-faced, white-lipped, black-tongued. He kept screaming for the make-up person. Begging for the cameraman to turn off his eyes. Demanding that we, the viewers at home, please be quiet.