The Wrong Sky

Year 1

It's been about three months since the end. I've been walking for probably about two months, ever since the grocery stores started to run out of edible food. I found some scraps of paper to write this on. I'm not sure why. It's not like I'll be able to keep a journal or anything; most of the paper went up in the same flames our cities did. I still haven't been able to see the sky. God I miss the stars. I brought one of my star charts with me so I could figure out where I was once the clouds ended, but somehow the clouds are still going.

Year 2

I reached the clouds' edge a few weeks ago. I would have written sooner, but I didn't have any paper, so my apologies. I'm not really sure who I'm apologising to, but well, please accept it. Something is off with the stars, though. They don't line up with any star charts I have. Though I'm not particularly surprised considering what that abomination of a monster did to us.

I don’t like thinking about that day, but sometimes it creeps back in, the screams, the burning, those clouds. The stars, the stars were screaming. My sister was screaming as well. She wasn’t for long though. Small mercies I guess. I've started trying to build a telescope to get a better look at the stars, maybe it might give me a way to fix everything. I do wish my sister were here though. She always loved the stars.

Year 3

I finally managed to get a mirror for my telescope. It was a much bigger risk than I wanted to take. I had to walk out of my bright spot back into the cloud banks. Which I think are dead zones at this point. The only living things I saw were those things that it sent at us. Don't think about that, don't think about that. But, well, it had to be done; it did suck to leave my farm, though I had to walk for 8 months to get here after the end, and then I had to leave in order to get this damn mirror.

Year 4

The telescope is finally done, or it was. I looked through it, and that was a mistake. It saw me, it saw me as an ant. As less than that, as an amoeba that had built a pile of proteins.

What have I done?

I saw the stars, but they're not stars, they're eyes. It's watching. It never left. It saw me and it sent something. It was tall and had tentacles for a head. It rushed towards the telescope. I stabbed it with my knife. I tried to duck under its punch, but it was bigger than it should have been.

When it hit me, I saw horror: red strands of flesh rotting and growing reaching up from its back into the endless void where the heavens should be. A hand enveloping the sky, its flesh endlessly twisting and turning over and over with spikes pulsating through it, and a grin where the sun was. I'm destroying the telescope. I'm done stargazing. I'm sorry, sis, but this sky is not one to love.

Year 5

Some people came by recently, they said a village had popped up nearby and asked if I’d like to go. I said no, I have enough with me here; my garden needs tending after all, and I’m not sharing my jam recipe just yet. They did come back with a prosthetic, one of them used to be a doctor, it turns out, and he had jury-rigged an arm for me. It’s not great, but it does its job. They asked me what had happened to the broken telescope in my backyard. I told them I was done stargazing. This world may be hell, but I must make the best of it.

Year 6

I started building a generator recently, to try and get some electricity. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I might as well try. I need something to do after all. If I die, at least this nightmare is over.

I considered venturing back into the cloud lands, but I don’t want to take that risk. I think it will find me if I do that. I don’t want to walk under those clouds now that I know what they are.

People from the village came by again, they offered me a much better condition scythe than the one I have. They wanted some of my jam in exchange for it though. I said yes, though I’m not sure why I have jam and they don’t. They asked me about my star charts. I told them I made them for my sister.

Year 10

I looked up today, it’s been a while since I did that, but when the sky turns white, exceptions have to be made.

I’ve gotten my old telescope back out, but it’s not strong enough. I need a larger mirror; I’m going back into the cloud lands. I don’t care if it sees me. I think something hurt it, and if I can figure out what that was, maybe I can do it as well, maybe I can fix things. Maybe this hell can end.

Year 12

I finally finished the observatory. I hope I’m not too late. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done; my hands are covered in blisters now, and I don't think there's a piece of mercury left within 50 km. The spinning disk was the worst part to make, but it's done.

Year 13

I figured out what made the sky go white. Something shot one of its eyes. I don't know how, but maybe if I can get enough power, I can do the same. I hope it wasn't another god. It seemed artificial, but maybe it was a fight between two of those things. I managed to get some blood from that creature all those years ago. I kept it in a vial. Maybe that can be the weapon.

Year 15

I finished the weapon, and it turns out that blood is incredibly potent. Which I learnt when some leaked out onto a loose brick in my observatory and the entire brick broke into half a dozen pieces. It is perfect. Some people from the village stopped by today. They asked if I could bring some of my jam over for the village children. I said yes, the weapon can wait a few more days after all. The laser isn't going anywhere. Once this is done, the kids will get the sky back.

Year 20

Hello, it’s been a while.

I did finish the weapon; it was jury-rigged, unstable junk. The mirror was as shiny as I could get it, and looked rather out of place next to the rusty metal casing. But it worked, not very well, but it worked. I fired it, and for the first time in a while, I saw beauty in the stars.

I hurt it. Or at least I hope I hurt it. Annoyed might be a better word. Maybe those are the same to something like it.

I should be dead; it smited the observatory. That’s the only way I can describe it. The entire building unmade itself; it just collapsed as if the weight of the sky had pressed on it. The only reason I survived is that the explosion of the remaining blood sent me out a window.

That moment is burned into my mind. The glass I spent a week on shattering under my weight. The explosion carrying me through as the spinning disk of my telescope went flying off its mount. The smell of burning sulfur and mercury. I wonder if it was intentional on the creature's part. Maybe it’s keeping the most interesting ant alive or something. I should be dead, but I’m not. I think I’m done with stargazing, the new sky does have an odd beauty though.

Some people from the village stopped by and found me; they brought me back to the village and managed to tend me back to health. It’s a miracle I can move, though. I broke nearly every bone in my body when I went out that window. I can’t walk anymore, but I can write, though it took a lot of practice to relearn it.

Year 50

My father passed away yesterday. He asked me to add one last entry to this stack of papers. He hadn’t written in it for decades, he said, but he wanted me to finish it. He said just to write about him. He was a good man, he was haunted at times though. Stargazing always brought him into a strange melancholy and made him scratch his prosthetic. When he first got sick, I found him outside our house just staring up at the stars. I heard him murmur under his breath what sounded like a curse. But then I heard him say, "Thank you, I hate you and wish you had never come here, but without you, my daughter wouldn't exist, so thank you for that."

He never told me how he lost his arm; he never told anyone, only that it was with the stars now. I know he used to live outside the village, but no one knows much of what he did out there. He did make jam, though, and apparently that's how he and my mother first met, when he brought some of it here to give to the kids. When he died, he asked us to leave him by his old house, in the crater. We did as he asked, I went back to maybe bury him, and the body was gone. I hope a scavenger got it.