It all seems so long ago now. In all likelihood, it can’t have been more than a week but being stuck in this hospital bed isn’t exactly helping in keeping a record of time. Thanks to the antipsychotic meds they have me on, the hours and days just seem to blend together now. By some miracle, my phone was able to survive the ordeal so now I’m doing the only thing I can think to do; I need to warn you guys. About whatever the hell it is I went through a week ago that landed me in this hospital bed. I’ll try my best to relay the events as accurately as possible though I don’t think it really matters at this point. Most of you won’t believe me, but I wouldn’t be surprised, no one else does either.
So here goes, I guess.
I suppose I should give some context first, I live— or lived —in a relatively small town up in the mountains. Standard run-of-the-mill stuff: a church, a school, a library, the sheriff’s office, you get the gist. I had a pretty normal life, you might even say it was good, decent grades in school, pretty good home life, I had plenty of friends, and I even had a girlfriend; as far as the life of an 18 year old boy goes, I was pretty well off.
Anyway, it was one of those towns where almost everyone knew each other so it was commonplace to be asked at random on the street how your spouse was, or if your knee injury was doing better, stuff like that.
As I said, it all started about a week ago, a Friday, I think. I had gotten home from a friend’s house at around 11pm and I was pretty worn out so I decided to tuck in early (for a Friday at least). I went through the normal steps of my bedtime routine, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and closed my blinds as I always did, almost like a ritual. I was pretty tired so I passed out the moment my head hit the pillow.
Some time later I got jolted awake by an alarm blaring from my phone. Annoyed, I picked it up and checked the time: 2 am.
“When did I set an alarm?”
I was pretty distraught so it took me a while to realize it wasn’t an alarm. It was one of those official government alerts they send out to your phone. I was a little confused since we don’t get those very often out in the sticks. But what confused me even more were the contents of the alert, just three simple words:
DON’T LOOK UP
It seemed almost hastily written, like whoever was writing them was in a hurry to do so. Despite that, I wasn’t very alarmed, thinking it was just a prank by some kid at school that was good with computers (because we had those in my town). No, what thoroughly spooked me was the literal hundreds of text messages I was receiving. I previously mentioned it was a pretty tight knit community so it was natural for me to have a good chunk of the town’s population in my contacts but I was also receiving messages from numbers I didn’t even have, and they all said the same exact thing:
“The sky looks beautiful tonight. Take a look outside”
The sheer number of the messages was enough to put me on edge, but to have them all say the same exact thing? Directly opposing the very ominous government alert I just got? I was beyond spooked at this point. So I did the only reasonable thing a dumbass like me thought to do in that moment, I looked outside.
The night was calm but there was something bothering me about it. Around this hour you would hear stray animals or some older kids dicking around with their friends, but there was not a sound to be heard; so quiet you could hear a pin slice through the air.
Everything seemed off for some reason, I’m not sure how to describe it but it looked like the town I had lived in my whole life had been torn down and some bootleg version was erected in its place. There was an uneasiness about the whole thing, I recognized all the houses but I also felt like it was my first time having set foot in this place, as if I had never seen them before. If Uncanny Valley could somehow be applied to trees and houses, it would probably be like what I was seeing out my window; I recognized the place yet it instilled a sense of eerie repulsion in me when I looked at it.
When I turned to look at the sky, having already forgotten the ominous and oddly desperate warning on my phone, I was suddenly stopped by a force that I had gone a lifetime without feeling and will go a lifetime without ever feeling again, something that I thought we humans had abandoned long ago.
I was struck with an unrelenting and crippling sense of fear. No, more like genuine, raw terror surging through every cell of my being; something I can only describe as instinct preventing me from placing myself in danger.
My body would not allow me to move my gaze above the second story windows of the surrounding houses, almost as if some primitive, long forgotten animal instinct had kicked in, and it was begging me not to look any higher. And I thank God that I listened.
I instead averted my gaze down toward my front yard, where I saw my parents and little brother standing in their pajamas, all staring unblinkingly at the sky.