Through Glass(12)

I pressed my cheek against the window to look up, I didn’t see the sun; I could barely see the sky. My shaking hand flew to my mouth as I watched blackness, darker than ink, cover the wide expanse of blue above us. It spread over the bright sky like a thousand spiders with their angular legs cutting into the blue, wiping it from existence.

The legs crawled through the brightness of day, cutting into it with jagged motions that crawled over my skin, sending ice over my spine. The black grew and spread, the jagged legs taking away the brightness of the world, leaving us in the dim light of a moonless night; the world cast in shadows of blue and grey.

I couldn’t take my eyes from the horror of the world outside. My mouth opened in silent terror; any thought of screaming had been immediately drowned from the fear and confusion that circled through me.

I watched it, trying to figure out what was going on. Nothing that I was seeing made sense, nothing was right. I froze, fighting a need to run toward it; to hide, to scream, to fight the faceless villain that I was sure had caused this nightmare. It wouldn’t help and so I simply stared at it, wanting to find an explanation, but I already knew that I wouldn’t find one.

In only a matter of moments, the sky was gone. A moving wave of black covering the world above us as the pulsing black mass surrounded us in an orb of silence.

Silence.

The black had sucked the birds from the sky and taken the wind from the trees. In the stillness of my room, the absence of sound was only intensified. I stared out as the light continued to fade, leaving us in the darkness of a cloudy night. The houses looked like haunted trees across the motionless world. My eyes adjusted quickly, bringing the world around me into focus until only the shapes in the distance faded into the darkness.

I kept my face pressed against the glass as the silence washed over me, as my pulse beat loud and heavy in my ears. I waited for the blue to return; waited to wake up from whatever nightmare I was trapped in. It was the only explanation I could think of, the only thing I could grasp onto. I didn’t wake up though, and I knew, in the back of my mind, that all of this was real.

I watched the black, unable to look away, or to even move, before the silence was cut apart by the sound that would come to haunt my world.

A high pitched shriek rang through the silence, the sound a grinding buzz in my ears as I gasped in fear at its sudden arrival. I covered my ears in a panic, desperate to get the awful noise out of my head as I curled into a ball on my desk, my head pressing into my knees. I pushed hard against my ears, but the sound didn’t leave. It only grew until it vibrated inside of me, moving through my bones as it congregated inside my skull.

Everything rattled inside of me as the vibration continued, the shriek growing right beside it. It grew until it became a pain, a rippling heat that covered my bones and took away my desire to move and my ability to focus beyond the noise that seemed to be coming from inside of me. My body ached as the sound rattled through me, my mouth clenching as I cried, as I tried to cope with the pain.

I stayed curled in the ball; my body aching and writhing as I tried to manage and to move beyond it. I couldn’t. I stayed still, clawing at the sound vibrations while lying on my desk as my eyes scanned the sky, waiting for everything to end.

The sound grew as the darkness began to seep lower into the world below. The silky black of the sky above our heads darkened as it rippled like the waves of an ocean. The ebbs and flows moving over the sky like water before it pooled and began to fall. Thicker than rain, slow and steady, the sky dripped thousands of drops of black; the color smooth and shiny as the black rain moved and fell. The dark fell onto us, bathing the pristine streets in liquid smoke, covering what little I could still see in a smothering blanket that only promised death.

The sky had begun to bleed in ebony streaks.

My heart beat accelerated, the sound in my ears adding to the screech that sang with the rain that fell on top of us. My fear peaked as I watched it. My body shaking as I fought to move, to get away, but my body wouldn’t respond. I watched as the black hit against my window, leaving black streaks of what looked like oil against the pane. Drop after drop hit the window, streaking the glass as the terrifying screech that had filled me evaporated.

The pain that had filled my body slowly left, leaving me numb with residual pressure as I lay still, watching the sky fall on top of us from my curled position on the desk. My chest heaved as I caught my breath and control over my body slowly came back. I lifted myself slowly, my body aching as I slid my feet onto the windowsill, with my face pressed against the glass as I watched the drops of ink seep from the sky. The mass of them was growing until they became something more and cut through the air with the wide brim of a sail.

It was no longer just the black rain that floated gracefully toward us. There were now black masses floating like wispy smoke, dancing through the air like an elegant gown. The black ribbons fell through the already darkened sky, making the black that surrounded us more oppressive, but strangely, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about the dark anymore. I didn’t care about the vanishing sun or the way the sky had bled. The fear I had felt vanished and all I wanted was to sit here and watch the dancing blackness fall from the sky, wishing I could be among them. It twirled and spun through the air as it fell to the ground, swirling down on top of us.

I watched the ribbons of darkness fall, mesmerized by their beauty, by the calm serenity that they brought to the suddenly dark world. My body loosened as I watched them, my breathing slowed as everything relaxed. I didn’t know why I had been so afraid only a minute before. The darkness was beautiful. I smiled as they continued to fall, the darkness taking away what little I had been able to see, only to disappear against the earth in a splash of smoke and sparkling tinsel.