It Blocked the Light

You know there is something really weird about the Sun suddenly vanishing. I’m not talking about having a cloud roll in and cause the sunlight to fade for a few moments. I mean having not only the blue sky blocked but also the clouds. It happened I swear. I was going for a walk and suddenly something blocked everything above my neighborhood. 

I want to say it happened sometime around the first day of winter. Winter solstice? I dunno I never really keep track of these things. I only remembered this year because of what happened. It was midday when I was walking down the street and suddenly my neighbor's Christmas lights seemed obnoxiously bright. I’d been staring at the snow-covered sidewalk as I walked, trying to make sure I didn’t miss a step and slip and break my ass, again. If you ever lived anywhere with snow, you know landing in that cold shit will ruin your day. Unless you're a kid I was not.

I also wasn’t particularly old, so it is not like this was some kinda senile mind fuckery. In my mid-thirties, I’d figured I’d seen enough while walking around the neighborhood to know the regulations on the brightness of Christmas lights. So I was about to look over and possibly complain- yeah, I know what kind of Grinch complains about Christmas lights, but when you have to deal with them shining in your bedroom window when you have work in the morning. Sorry, I am getting off track.

I look up and notice the Christmas lights aren’t any brighter than they were before. It was just darker. Why the fuck was it darker? Did I lose track of time? Had I been abducted by aliens and suddenly it was hours later. I hoped not my cat would flip out if I was so much as a few minutes late feeding her. I yanked my phone out and... Nope 11:45 am, Sunday. Same day it had been before, just a few minutes since I left my home.

A chill ran down my spine as I looked up at the darkened sky. It wasn’t like normal clouds, rolling in and preparing to snow or rain. It was just darkness, like whatever had covered the sky was so big light couldn’t seep around the edges. So it wasn’t like an unexpected eclipse, you could see the ring of light around this. Oh no, this was something way bigger.

Pressing the keys into the door I looked over my shoulder but nothing seemed to be there. Of course nothing was behind me, the weirdness was going on above us. I opened the door and quickly locked it behind me, making sure to tuck my keys in my jacket pocket. For some reason, I felt as though it was better to keep them near. The rest of the day seemed to go off without a hitch. It was not till that evening that I started to really question if I was losing my mind.

I went to bed early trying to avoid trying to think of why it was as dark as night outside. I could hear people in and out of their houses, always looking up at where the sun should have been. When night fell even I had gone out to see, but the moon and stars seemed to be gone as well. Like some big curtain had been pulled between us and the rest of the galaxy. I kept checking my phone but there were no emergency alerts and the newscasters on TV just kept talking about how it was probably the Russians. So bed seemed like a fair idea.

I think it must have been about three in the morning when I woke up once more to the odd feeling. I lay in bed staring at the ceiling trying to process why I had woken up. It had been an odd feeling. Like someone had been speaking to me but I had been asleep and unable to actually process what they had been saying. Brushing it off as a bizarre dream I opted to roll on to my side and try to get more rest. We’d be getting emergency alerts if we had to run right? And then it hit again. Words. Some kind of odd foreign language echoing through my home. From outside my home? It seemed to be everywhere.

I climbed to my feet and reached under my bed pulling free the old baseball bat I’d kept under there. I watched way too many true crime documentaries to not pack something by my bed. I slowly made my way to my closet, checked, cleared, and onward to the doorway. My home was small, a living room with my bedroom, an extra room I used for an office, a bathroom, and a kitchen that was significantly smaller than any kitchen had any business being. I could see pretty much the entire house from my bedroom door. Just to be sure I checked the other rooms, but the place was empty.

Nothing. Empty. Just me as usual. It was only me here. A high-pitched scream broke my focus. I turned towards it. Was it a woman outside? Fuck. I heard it again. Definitely Linda next door. Did I want to go out there, into that weird night? Unfortunately, my misplaced desire to help got the better of my common sense and I pulled on my boots, threw on my jacket, and ran out in my pajamas.

What welcomed me was nothing like I had ever imagined. The lady next door was screaming at the top of her lungs. Something had landed on her house. A dark pillar, huge, I can’t even process how wide it was, but it had crushed most of the old Victorian house Linda lived in. All I could see were bits of wire and wood from where the house had been, sprung up around the base of the pillar, gravestones of the home that once stood there. She went rushing past me, screaming at the top of her lungs. Hysterical. I certainly would have been in a similar mood if some big thing of blackness had simply fallen on my home. She was lucky to be alive. I hoped everyone had gotten out as I moved forward.

I heard it again, the odd language echoing around me. L ouder now that I was outside. It was coming from above. From whatever was blocking out the light. It was almost spellbinding, like, I wanted to just stand there and listen. But the hysterical screams of the woman behind me dragged me from the pleasant thoughts of dreaming.

“Oh my God, it's a leg!” 

I turned around as he heard her speak. A leg? This was a leg? How could that be? Nothing could be a leg. The endless pillar that landed on her house went on forever up into the sky. How could it be attached to anything? And then it moved. It slowly lifted up, like an exhausted elephant and vanished up into the sky. The stars and moon suddenly shined again, nearly blinding me in their shocking brilliance, no longer blocked.

I did not know what to do. I turned and went back into my home and laid down. This was too much to process. I eventually fell asleep to the sound of Linda’s screaming and the buzzing of emergency alerts and sirens.