A World in Darkness and Peril

Odorio stood on his balcony gazing at the pointy skyline and chatting away the trivialities of the day over his phone. Next to him was Mushi who meowed into the balmy air of the evening as Odorio stroked his back absently. It was an ordinary night- to the best of everyone's imagination. Odorio hung up his call, scrolled a couple of posts on social media, and as usual, reacted haha over a meme before in the most ordinary fashion, he turned to go back inside. 

Suddenly, he heard a muffled blast in the distance. A sound of something heavy falling and shattering onto the floor. Someone from inside the house habitually said it was a transformer blowing up. "Green light in the sky. Terrible sound though."

More terrible sounds followed. Somewhere, something was blowing up. Then the ambiance began to dim. Odorio looked at the skyline, bright lights of the distant skyscrapers went off one by one until there was no distinguishable horizon but just a dark, hypnotizingly black void as far as one could see. Then there was a sound of windows getting thrown open, and murmurs of confused people began to fill the air. 

Mind bent with confusion, Odorio glanced at a text on his phone. It was Chen from school, the girl who kept talking about the stuff of other worlds in terms too nerdy for Odorio. In fact, there was significant befuddlement among gossipmongers as to what could cause her to hang around a guy like Odorio, who was a born backbencher and often on detention for sharing memes on the official class group. 

"You got a message, too?"

Odorio thought this was no time for school nonsense. Or what type of nonsense was this? A city-wide electricity breakdown? What could have suddenly caused this to happen? Odorio could not speculate the reason. Neighbors had also come out to the balconies and into the street. 

"There's a danger of airstrikes, that is why all lights are being shut down. I was right about it, only the news people wouldn't let me write a column about border tensions," Odorio heard the old man next door, whose radio had incessantly annoyed him over the years due to his bathroom's proximity to the old man's room, which was also the only time Odorio spent listening to the news. "Pathetic! They think they know better."

Odorio felt the commotion down the street was growing. Maybe the schoolboys had come out of their houses, eager to leave their homework and add to the mayhem. Which made Odorio wonder, what was he doing inside? He revved up to ninja mode and swung down the pillar by the side of the balcony. Lighting up his way by the torch of his cell phone, he ran to join his hooligan friends.

Down in the middle of the street, nothing about the mayhem was jolly. People ran screaming in all directions and Odorio was dumbfounded. He couldn't spot any of his friends. He glanced down at his phone and there were other texts from Chen, 

"I thought this was some sorta mega-prank by some of you guys. But something really horrible is happening!"

"Odorio? You there???"

"You gone already?"

Now Odorio could feel his adrenaline building up. What exactly was happening here? Gone where? He tried to call Chen, call back home, call others, but no one responded. His phone was disconnected and dead. And now the panic of the mayhem was descending onto his own nerves. What terrible thing was about to happen? Was there really a looming national security threat?

Suddenly, Odorio froze when a long-haired, mad-looking guy grabbed him by his collar. "You got texts too? Please help me out!! Please help your brother!!" He shook Odorio frantically, whose mind was now a terrible mess.

"I 've got no idea what's going on," blurted Odorio. "What texts?"

The guy let him go and started looking around for someone else, almost in a cannibal-like fury that could scare anyone. "They're hiding their special ones and they'll leave the rest of us here to die!!" cried the man as he ran away in a dash. "Please save me!"

Odorio then noticed the terrible reality. This madman was not the only one yelling around mindlessly like that. There were people around him whose faces bore signs of the doom's day. Some yelled around urging others to help them and some sat slumped on footpaths, having given up all hope. What had happened to Chen? Where are people hiding and who is hiding them? He suddenly realized that he had been carried away in a sea of unknown people who were saying wild things and he knew nothing better. 

Maneuvering around, he tried to figure things out. The slumped man on the footpath with droopy eyes spelled out the despair for him, "Somethin' really terrible's comin' up, man. The government took their selected few to protect them in caves or dungeons somewhere. You didn't get no text, you're left to die here like ants. Like all the rest of us."

Odorio's face was contorted in confusion and worry now. There wasn't anything like a government-level prank, so what was this then?

In all this time, the horror had been surfacing from the skies. Odorio looked up with the other unlucky ones as the mammoth ship took shape, slowly descending into the distant landscape. In the next moment, people flew across in all directions like houseflies escaping a net. Huge as a mountain but shaped like a sleek and armed alien city, it gave the horizon a new glowing and a terrorizing skyline as it descended. Odorio ran for a shelter with his trembling legs, fumbling and bumping into others who were also running alongside him to their destinations at nowhere. 

As the world was plunged into darkness and peril, flags of another world reigned in the skies, sending mobs of people in flight for their lives. A gigantic holographic screen shone across the sky with characters that looked like gibberish to the people of Earth. The characters blinked and changed, like a cursor on a computer screen, and slowly the gibberish was turning into characters of the English language, it was as if some machine was churning them out after random attempts at translation. Soon, above a berserk, wild population running for their lives, a holographic screen displayed the message:

"Inter-galactic Court of Justice (IGCJ) judgment notice"

Charge: Level 1 offense- Mimicry and Ridicule of esteemed Galactic and extra-Galactic Inhabitants over the Internet"