Taken Away

My brother was cooking dinner, and my mother was watching the news. She never watched the news, she always said that they focused on the negative things and never on the positive things happening in the world. However, today was different, the war was only getting worse and she knew that. Countries that were previously not involved were putting their people inside the lion’s mouth, and our nation was one of them. But I thought otherwise, it's just a game of politics like any other. There's always a lot of drama but nothing actually ever happens, I don’t know why my mother was so worried about this conflict. Neither did my brother who told me to wash my hands since dinner was almost ready.

 I walk over to the sink and turn the tap on. I take a small amount of soap and start rubbing my hands together for a few seconds. Only before I could finish, the water stopped running and the lights went out. There’s no windows in my bathroom so I couldn’t see anything except the tiny dim light under the door. “Mom! Did the power go out again?!” – There was no answer, it wasn’t unusual for the lights to go out in these parts of town but it wasn’t usual for my mother to not respond. My hands were still soaked with soap suds, so I had to clean off with a dry towel. I opened the door and there was no one inside the apartment. I couldn’t really see clearly since the only light source was the far away moon reflecting on the windows of the towering skyscrapers that ruled the city. 

Both my brother and mother were missing. I checked the kitchen and it was empty as if my brother had never been there. I went outside to the corridor to see if anyone was there, but it was too dark to make anything out of it. Surprisingly, my phone didn’t work even though I left it charging for at least an hour, so I couldn’t call anyone or use its flashlight. “I must be dreaming”– I thought since the situation was too weird to bear. If I looked outside, there would be no sound in the streets as if everyone and everything in the city had disappeared. I decided to make my way downstairs to check out what was happening, maybe my family was in the lobby waiting for me. The only problem was that I lived on the eleventh floor and the elevator did not work, so I had to go down the stairs. They were an endless sea of darkness, which meant I had to depend on touch and intuition to go down the stairs. The stairs were designed in a zig-zag pattern, and just like my bathroom, there were no windows inside the staircase. I tripped, fell and hit myself on the wall numerous times. When I finally made it downstairs I was so happy I almost dropped to my knees. Much to my surprise, my brother and mother were not present in the lobby, nor was anybody else. It was also so dark inside the lobby that some of the corners could be compared to vantablack. It was weird that even electronics that had their own battery didn’t work, not even the “EXIT” signs were on.

The city was quiet, where there were usually hundreds of cars beeping and causing a ruckus. Now lay nothing, just empty endless dark streets. I looked up at the sky and I was genuinely surprised by how lit up it was, mostly because there was no light pollution. Sadly I couldn’t see most of it since the towering buildings were acting as silhouettes blocking the night sky. One of the buildings that stood out the most compared to the rest was the 102-Story Steel Giant. Which was blocking the moon so you could see the entire thing with the light that bounced off its majestic features. “I could see the whole night sky from up there.”– I had always wanted to see the naked night sky. I remembered in one of my science textbooks, there was this whole page dedicated to the night sky with all these tiny stars scattered around. Little old me thought that wasn't real, since all I saw at night was an empty dark-blue void.  “Mr. Boggens! Why is the book showing all these stars when in reality there aren’t any in the sky?” The teacher gave me a funny look and then understood what I was really asking, “Well kiddo, our city is simply more vibrant than the night sky. Though if you go to the countryside you will be able to see all the stars in the world, they say there are more stars in the sky than grains of sand on Earth.” Ever since that day, I became a huge astronomy nerd. I would go on the internet and look at every video NASA would post. I never had the chance to actually go somewhere with zero light pollution. That was because my mother had unexpected twins before marriage, which my father’s family did not appreciate. She moved to the city in hopes of getting a good job so she could support my brother and I, and she managed to get us into pretty good schools. However, we never had any spare money to go on vacation. So that’s why without giving it a second thought, I began running towards the tallest tower in the city to see the true night sky for the first time.

As I got closer, the shadow of the Colossal tower became bigger and bigger. But getting there was taking forever. These streets seem a lot smaller when there’s people everywhere, but now it was just an empty bunch of avenues that never seemed to end. I stopped, gasping for air and began walking instead. A city at night in a black-out is a dark and quiet place, the usual bustling sounds of people and vehicles are replaced with silence. The shops and streets that once were as bright as day are now obscured, with only the moonlight providing any visibility. As I approached the end of the street, I saw the cinema. The neon lights and posters that would brighten the exterior were now absent. My brother and I would always come to this place, we would go watch a movie and then sneak into another movie until the day was over. He always wanted us to have something only we knew about and this was it. We would watch all kinds of movies so once we were around our friends, we had something to talk about. As I turn to leave, I can’t help but look back at the cinema, a place where time flies by.

On the corner of the street, I saw someone standing in the middle of the street. It was a guy with light hair and a little above average height. I approached him carefully, he was the only person I had seen since the blackout. He didn’t seem to be armed so when I was close enough I reached out to touch his shoulder and said. “Hey dude, do you know what’s going on? Do you know where everybody is?” – He turned around, but didn’t say anything, just gave me a friendly smile. He seemed to have interest in the night sky so I suggested we should go to the tallest building in the city and see the night sky from there. He did not respond, instead he took my hand and suddenly I felt my feet being lifted off the ground. I was initially startled until the man gave me a look that reassured my safety, and we began flying towards the Steel Giant of the city.

When we reached the skyscraper the man took a ginormous leap straight at the building. I closed my eyes because we were about to hit the tower, only when the second I opened my eyes again we were running up on the side of the Giant. I looked at the view and you could see for miles in every direction, I felt a sense of awe at the true size of this city. When we reached the top, I sat down on the side of the Giant with the mysterious man sitting next to me. I looked up at the night sky and I was truly shocked by the true beauty of the naked sky. Trillions upon trillions of tiny dots in the sky blinking in the night sky. Some were red, others blue but mostly all were yellowish. You could also see some of the planets. The dangerous Venus and the magnificent Saturn. However nothing could compare to the moon. In the night sky it was a radiant orb, a brilliant silver disk suspended against the other stars. The moon reflected the light of the sun spreading its glow to the buildings below. When I was younger, my mother would tell me the moon was a symbol of hope and peace. To me, it was a reminder of the beauty and majesty hiding in the cosmos.

I was truly in awe but at that very moment I heard the dim sound of a siren. I turned to the man, who was looking at me with his oceanic eyes. He was smiling at me but also fading away from existence. The more he disappeared the louder was the siren. The stars began to disappear but the moon still held its might. I looked down and the city was coming back. I could see the thousands of cars beeping and honking. Millions of people doing whatever one does on a Saturday night. What I had just experienced wasn’t a dream, but it certainly wasn’t reality. The siren was only growing louder and the traffic came to a halt, people started to get out of their cars and look up at the only visible thing in the night sky of the city. It was a falling star, a creator of destruction and death. A fiery comet with a foreign flag. I guess it wasn’t a game of politics, but a game of life or death. The city was quiet, I think everybody knew that nothing could be done. My mother is probably crying right now while my brother has left dinner to burn to console her. Everyone in the city is contemplating if this was irreversible, but was it ever in our hands? In a few seconds, I will be dead. I began to remember everything I had done in my life. Places around the city my family and I had gone to, movies I’d watched with them, even the clubs I participated in at school. It was all meaningless when it came to war, but at least I got to see the naked night sky with my very eyes and that’s all that mattered to me right now. It impacted, and the moon shone with all its might.