Fading Stars

He’d tried to warn everyone close to him, tried and fail to convince them that something big was coming towards them. The increasing obsession for this catastrophic event severing all ties with those he sought to warn from the coming darkness, leaving him alone with the terrible knowledge of the inevitable fate that would befall everything.

His fingers flew over the keyboard in a frantic attempt of conveying as best everything he had seen happen time and time again in his dreams, the typing growing faster with each paragraph describing a hellish scene of absolute darkness. The speed of his work, paired with the minimal amount of errors in his manuscript nothing more than distant remnants of his job in the office.

A meager, insignificant job that had been so essential in clouding his mind from ever questioning his place in the world, of his importance to the universe. Questions he had begun pondering upon ever since it started.

For the past month, his mind had been afflicted by the same nightmare without fail. The moment he fell asleep; he would suddenly find himself in the middle of a bustling street, looking upwards at the starry night sky. It was a sight to take in due to its beauty because it wasn’t possible for a perfect view of it could be achieved with the city illumination everything with an excess of light, and yet it could be seen by everyone.

Everyone was enraptured by the sight of something impossible yet beautiful happening before them, gasping in awe and amazement at the ethereal splendor of the infinite void of space and the stars held within it. But then, slowly, each star began disappearing one by one for anyone to realize at first, at least until more and more began completely vanishing from the sky.

The initial awe that was held for the scene now turned to terror and panic as the moon slowly began being overtaken by the darkness, a darkness that moved with a terrible ill-natured desire to consume it all, and before long, that same darkness soon reached out to them. It crashed over them like a tidal wave, covering everything in a thick blanket of inky black from which no light could escape, leaving only the deafening sounds of mass panic flooding the city as a sign that they were still alive despite it all. Until a different sound joined the cacophony of a city enveloped in chaos.

Suddenly, from all around them the sound of flutes, drums and trumpets suddenly came. All of them mixing in a chaotic yet majestic symphony impossible to describe in precise words safe for vague terms that exalt their grand, impossible nature. And from the sudden assault of mad symphony without any explainable origin roars and unnatural screeches overlapped the growing sounds of panic before everything faded away into complete nothingness. It was always then when he would wake up from the vision.

All of what was seen in his repeating dreams was written as best he could in his warning, trying to detail everything as best he could to covey the terrible fate that would befall the world if nothing was done about it, never mind the fact of whether or not something so astronomically beyond them could be prevented at all. If at least, he hoped that perhaps this warning could reach someone that would heed it, that it could at least save one single person.

Staring out his window, the night sky lay before him, omnipotent, vast, grand and terrifying. His weary eyes watching every star intently for any signs of the event happening. A singular star in the canvas of the night sky stood out to him particularly, no clear sense as to why but something about its radiant glow seemed to beckon him to watch it intently. Something compelled him to observe it intently, as if it called out to him solely. The star’s glow was unnatural, impossible, reaching for him through his own window past the great distance between both in mere instants.

Whispers and cries filled his ears as he fell under the trance of the astral body’s light. As the man’s body continued being assaulted by an unseen entity, part of him understood what drew him to watch the star, that through the immeasurable suffering his being felt a revelation laid beneath. And in the process of his detachment from his world he realized that both shared the same knowledge of what lurked beyond as it drew near.

For a moment, he could imagine himself floating aimlessly through space, weightless and unbound to flesh and bone, conscious yet unbothered by the pass of time in deafening silence. As he watched through the eyes of the cosmic body, his eyes were filled with colors and sights of unimaginable beauty that cameras could never fully capture the entirety of their grandeur. The sentiment of insignificance drowned at the welling pride of conforming such a beautiful sight.

Constellations and systems yet to be discovered had been finally witnessed by a singular man. All of them far greater than their own.

As he continued looking with inexistent eyes at the marvels of the universe, his gaze quickly fell over a particular system curiously resembling that which Earth was part of. The sight of lights emanating from it caught is eyes, and for a moment revealed in the knowledge that there was life outside of the confines of their galaxy. His amazement and wonder for this newfound race became swiftly interrupted however when something darted past him, leaving a trail of emptiness where once he was certain stars shone moments ago.

Panicked, he searched for the thing that had consumed stars so silently and instantaneously, fearing the same would happen to him. The absolute silence that surrounded him remained untouched even at the trail of destruction the invisible horror grew more noticeable as it neared the solar system. Everything was consumed, leaving neither debris nor dust as all planets and stars simply became shrouded in darkness. Yet as this darkness grew, the gluttonous beast’s presence was finally revealed.

It was shapeless, and much larger than what he’d believed it to be. Its form was even darker than the void of space, glaringly so, covering the entire horizon where it stood omnipotent and colossal in its impossible color. The grotesque being was seemed to be composed of innumerable mouths that tore and ripped even the fabric of reality with every greedy maul that unfortunately got near it.  It held no eyes, guided only by its insatiable hunger, yet its movements remained wild and inept. Eight large tendril accompanied every mouth, and every single one of them reached further into space, grasping entire constellations and planets from their astral thrones and into the many jaws of the monster. The same maddening melody resounded in the vastness of space perfectly synchronized with the frenzied consumption of worlds.

The peculiar planet he had seen mere moments ago was now completely gone, and in its place laid a lifeless rock tainted crushed in the living darkness’s tendrils, slowly being dragged to the nearest maw as it was devoured, the beast’s mouth unmoving as the planet fell within it.

The unholy sight, was too much to bear, and he desperately sought to at least scream at the presence of the nightmare only to find his mouth was too, inexistent. His fear only increased the instance he felt his weight being pulled suddenly with great strength towards a mouth, rows upon rows of sharp and twisted fangs and teeth widening as they readied to devour him. then everything became dark.

With a jolt, his eyes shoot open, breathing labored and fast as he suddenly woke up screaming without restraint, body covered in sweat as his hands urgently tried to ensure he was back in his body and that it still remained untouched despite feeling his very being be torn and ripped apart physically and spiritually by painfully sharp teeth.

At the memory of what he had laid witness to, the man tore the curtains and blinds from his window in frantic motions, only to stare at the still dark sky outside, the same as it was the moment his body and mind were pulled from each other only to gaze at the lurking devourer that slowly moved through the cosmos wolfing down on everything at its reach.

In horror, he watched the spot where the strange star glowed with ethereal beauty be empty, while all the others still remained shimmering with the same intensity and in the same place above in the sky as they were before his forced astral projection. The star, or whatever thing it was, was no longer there, not vanished, but devoured by that thing.

The knowledge of what truly hid in the darkness of space, of what soon followed the moment he woke from his dreams pushed him to hastily finish his warning to the world in hopes that perhaps they could escape the approaching end, but as he continued writing about just how inevitable and immense this entity was, the realization of just how utterly pointless it was overcome him.

Sure, once finished the world would be warned, yes, but in the end he would just be hoping for the best. And if someone were to take his words of warning and consider them possible despite it contradicting what they knew and determined as logical and conceivable, what use would a mere post in several forums be? What could one person do when all others deny it? What could the world do against the will of something as ancient and powerful as the universe itself?

Question after question, it dawned at him the meaning of his dreams, of his visions. Neither one was meant to inspire in him a desire to guide humanity to salvation, none of them were means through which the tools of their salvation would be given for them alone to face against an impossible so grand as that ceaseless devourer.

As he looked at his work, a feeling of emptiness grew louder within him. What could he accomplish? With just two clicks, everything he had done for the past week had been erased, and in its stead a simple and heartfelt apology to everyone he had pushed away in an impossible task that was never given.

For the last time, his gaze was drawn back to the window, no longer focused on the sky, but in the city below. A sad smile filled with longing and regret grew on his face as the window was opened and he step through the small gap. The sound of cars, planes and people filled his ears, a sea of artificial light and colors being savored by his eyes before they were closed shut and the air began rushing against his face, his smile still present as he continued to fall the length of the apartment building.

As skull shattered and his body broke the street filled with screams of panic and surprise. People surrounded the splattered by, careful not to step on the growing pool of blood that flowed out of it. Every bystander nearby rushed to the scene with morbid curiosity, the frantic screams for emergency responders to be contacted filling the spaces left by shocked gasps and murmurs. And as everyone in that sidewalk focused on the broken body of a man tormented by the knowledge of the existence of something terrible, none noticed above them two stars fading into the darkness of space nor the appearance of a particular darker spot in the night sky.