I used to read accounts from insomniacs about restlessness throughout the night and constant fatigue in the day that their condition plagues them with. I used to scoff.
Pills, breathing techniques and natural herbs; all methods I would use every so often when unable to access the veil of sleep.
But now, I look back at my days of full and healthy sleep wistfully and I envy my past. I can’t rest now. They won’t let me…
The first time I saw them was after a long day in the city of Chicago. My average-sized apartment is on the outskirts of the buzzing metropolis. I rose around 8 and after a quick shower, a tiny breakfast, and a half-hearted mouth rinse, I began my journey into what I sometimes jokingly call “The Beating Heart.”
As I hopped onto the expressway that takes me downtown every day, I finally noticed the beautiful morning I had woken up to. A bright yellow sun peered over the city skyline at me, indicating the forecast of 82 degrees Fahrenheit to be true and projecting an annoying glare onto my eyes as I drove. Rolling, endless blue skies and a cool breeze leaked through the slit in my window, blowing across my face.
One detail that I specifically remembered was the clouds. Stepping out of the car in the parking lot in front of my workplace, I did a full 360-degree turn. I can’t remember the last time I didn’t see a single cloud in the sky which is why the memory is so vivid. The sky was so blue and barren it looked like the ocean staring back at me. As far as I could see in every direction, not even a wisp of smoke. Now that I’m forcing myself to remember though, I don’t remember seeing so much as a bird or a plane in the air that whole day… just the rolling blue and the great sun god perched atop its throne in the horizon.
After a boring day of sitting at my desk and playing solitaire, I walked out of my office building around 7:30, fell into my rusted sentra, and made my way onto the express way back home. Bonnie had decided over the weekend that I should work an additional hour every day of this week to make up for the extra sick day I surprised her with a few days ago. My boss is a pain in my ass. Was… a pain in my ass. I haven’t been to work in weeks. Checks stopped coming in but at this point, I don’t think it really matters.
Cause when I finally stopped zoning out on the darkened pavement I was driving on.
And my eyes lazily wandered upward to meet the setting sun’s merigold gaze.
I saw them.
The sun’s rays outline the towering cumulonimbus but it seemed to have the effect of darkening the clouds color. This didn’t stop me from clearly seeing the image spread out upon the canvas of the sky above me.
The clouds seemed to be in the shape of massive, tall rectangles. No not in the shape of… they were towers. You couldn’t even tell it was a cloud, the details were so clear when you looked closely. It actually looked like skyscrapers in the sky, except for their color and cloudy texture. Windows, both open and closed lined the buildings vertically, antennas sprouted from the top of a couple, entrances including overhanging eaves and porticos adorned the base of them.
It took me about 5 seconds of my mouth hanging open and my eyes bulging nearly an inch out of their sockets to realize what I was looking at. I double checked in my rear view mirror.
The Chicago skyline.
When I leaned forward in the driver seat to look back up at the clouds I had a chance to glimpse the Willis Tower before the scene began to change.
“What the fu-”
My voice caught in my throat before the curse could escape my lungs. The cloud twisted and rolled off itself. It writhed and cringed. The movement was similar to the way some object would move when set on fire, seeming to react to the heat and curl in on itself. The entire mass of cloud in the sky was a churning mess of smoke before it finally settled into a horrific spectacle.
This time the sun punched through some areas of the cloud bathing them in a crimson hue.
Fire.
The floating skyline was alight with dancing flames. Buildings crumbled in real time and I watched a chunk fall from the top of the John Hancock and explode into fragmented cloud particles. Except it didn’t fall from the top of the tower. The John Hancock building was severed in two, the top half nowhere in sight.
It was chaos. I began to see people formed from clouds, running from out of the buildings, their faces contorted in terror and mania, avoiding the fires and falling debris around them. Fire popped, and embers and ash accompanied the scene, creating a haze that filled the air above me. I watched cloud people leap from windows of buildings to escape the raging fire and damage being wreaked, only to meet the unmoving ground that awaited them, exploding into particles.
Then a shiver seemed to resonate through the clouds. Then another. By the third I realized they weren’t shivers.
The Willis Tower stood tall in the center of the cloud scene. And then it fell.
With the top of the phantom building being about a mile and a half into the sky, its descent looked as if the sky was falling on top of my. It tilted and leaned before the base snapped and 100 stories worth of building began to crash down towards me.
I wish I closed my eyes then. I wish I did. But I did not.
I saw it. The beast. As the tower fell ontop of me I began to see the shadow occupying the space behind it. It was gargantuan. Massive. Enough to drive some to madness. I know because it nearly took my own sanity.
It was so tall I should have been able to see it behind the building before it fell. I could only see the shape of it. A head far too large for its already enormous body. The top of its skull spiky and with tendrils hanging from it face. Arms reaching the surface of the clouds that served as the ground for the buildings and it’s legs seemed to blend in with the buildings passing for skyscrapers themselves. Then the collapsing building was upon me and I screamed and yanked the wheel.
I had forgot I was in a car on the expressway and watched the hood of my car crumple and smash into a guard rail before my head slammed into the dash, and losing consciousness for a brief time.
This was the beginning. The first day I saw them. I think the clouds are trying to tell me that something is coming.