It all happened on a cold, Friday evening.
I had just left work, and was supposed to be meeting my friend in the park. We had waited all week for this meetup. Since we shared busy schedules, it was hard to find a time that was beneficial to the both of us.
I hadn’t seen him in a while and I was very excited, I had even prepared a list of things for us to talk about.
As I arrived at the park’s entrance, I saw him standing over by the fountain.
Somehow, the way he was standing made me feel a little bit uncomfortable. It was just so unnatural.
He stood with a very straight posture, almost as if he were frozen. He looked almost inhuman, nobody would ever put that much effort into just standing. He wasn’t moving either, which was probably the weirdest part.
He wasn’t on his phone like he usually was, or making conversation with the people around him. He just stood there.
I assumed he was just deep in thought, solving some kind of intricate puzzle in his mind that required his full attention. It would make sense that he was.
Kai was a journalist, and he had a very precise intuition. He was always happy to help, and was always in a positive mood. If I ever had a quick question, Kai would have the answer. That was the kind of person Kai was.
At least, that was what I remembered.
As I approached him, I immediately noticed something different about him.
He looked nervous. I had never seen him like that before. It was the complete opposite of how he usually behaved.
He looked up when he saw me.
“Hey.” he said, his face emotionless.
I replied with a smile.
“You good?”
Kai said nothing.
After a few seconds had passed, he asked me a question. It was a very strange question, definitely not something that somebody would bring up as a substitute for a friendly greeting.
“Do you… do you still remember where your emergency switch is?” he asked.
Obviously I did. Every house in the city had one. They had been installed in every house in the city a couple of months back. We all had them. Personally, I thought that they were kind of useless, since there weren’t any records of them ever having to be pulled. Not only that, our city had a highly cooperative community, we were always supportive of one another.
It didn’t cross my mind that we would ever experience a level of danger that would be classified as an emergency.
“Yeah, it’s in-” I started.
Kai interrupted me.
“Listen, do you know where we are right now?” he asked.
“Uh.. the park?” I replied, starting to get nervous myself.
“I mean geographically.”
It was an odd thing to ask. We both knew perfectly where we were, there was no doubt about it. We had lived in the city for quite some time now, it was impossible not to know. I was starting to think he was playing a joke on me.
“…California?” I replied, slowly.
“Go home.”
I just stared at him.
“Go home now and get ready. When I call you, I want you to hit the switch.”
I didn’t know how to feel about that. We were told only to hit the emergency switch if we absolutely needed help, I couldn’t just activate it for no reason. Besides, I was completely fine.
“Are you sure? We can’t just pull the switch for no reason Kai. The city will probably fine us for it too.” I answered.
I was sure that he already knew this, since he was the one that told me all about the emergency switches when they were first implemented. He had even agreed with me, saying that our city had wasted money on something that wouldn’t be used at all.
“You don’t have much time. When I call you, I want you to do it. If somebody else tells you to hit it, I don’t want you to listen to them. You need to do it at a specific time.”
Kai wasn’t making much sense to me, so I decided to ask him a few more questions.
After a few more back-and-forths, I knew that the conversation was going nowhere. Every time I asked him, he would just repeat the same thing. He really wanted me to hit the switch. It was beyond strange to me.
Feeling defeated, I started to head home, unaware of exactly why I agreed to listen.
As a person that did their best to avoid trouble and stayed in their lane, hitting the switch for no reason wouldn’t be something I would just casually agree to.
I started to walk back to the park entrance, leaving Kai behind. My hands grew cold as I peeked around my shoulder at him one last time.
Kai stood in the same place, staring off into space.
He was frozen again, in that same position.
I looked closer at him, and realized he was actually staring at the park fountain. Analyzing it. He was looking for something. His eyes didn’t move.
There was nothing there.
Weird, I thought.
…
My home was within walking distance from the park, so I arrived in several minutes. I unlocked the metal gate and let myself in. It was a traditional wooden home, with little windows and far from luxurious. But it was mine, and it would always be.
I pushed open the door and was greeted with immediate darkness.
I always kept the kitchen light on, so this was an unpleasant surprise. They must have made a mistake while working on the neighborhood’s electric system.
It was when I was making my way to the living room lamp when I saw two yellow eyes watching me from the kitchen.
I turned on the lamp.
“Mango.”
Mango was my dog. A little pomeranian. He smiled when he saw me, followed by a few of his signature woofs and barks. Finally, somebody who was acting normal.
“Sorry about the lights, Mango, I’ll fix them.” I said.
Before I even had a chance to reach for the light switch, the light turned back on.
I guessed it was just a temporary outage.
I looked over at Mango to see his reaction, and saw him looking down the hallway. His ears twitched slightly but he made no sound. I wondered if there was somebody there.
I checked the hallway. I checked it twice. It was empty. I assumed he was just tired.
I grabbed Mango’s food from the fridge and took my time feeding him. My mind was still a blur. After cleaning up, I headed up to my room to do some computer work, anything to distract myself. There wasn’t a lot to do, just emails. It wasn’t until I had finished watching my third YouTube video when the thought occurred to me.
The power wasn’t out, it was just the kitchen light.
The refrigerator was working perfectly, and so was every other appliance in the house. I had even double checked to make sure. My food was still cold and the TV in the other room was still on.
I couldn’t figure out why it was just that one light.
I was sitting on my bed rethinking everything that had happened, when a loud noise broke my train of thought.
It was my phone. Kai was calling me.
I hadn’t expected the call to be so soon.
I really didn’t want to answer it. I already had enough. I looked away, letting the noise fill the room. It would be dark outside soon, I assumed it was around four or five in the afternoon. I didn’t care. I wouldn’t answer it. I wouldn’t.
“Hello?…”
My voice was full of regret.
“Remember what I told you earlier today?” he asked.
“Yeah… the switch. But why? I keep telling you Kai, there isn’t any danger…”
I remembered the previous events of the day. I was sure they were just coincidences, it wouldn’t make sense otherwise. Hitting the switch would be an extreme overreaction. I couldn’t think of a single reason that would justify me hitting it. There was literally nothing to be scared of.
Kai’s voice returned.
“You have less than a minute left. I’m serious, you have to go now. Have you hit it already? Hit the switch, now.”
Just one more normal sentence from Kai is all I wanted.
My heart began to beat faster.
“Wait.. are you going to hit yours? So we can both be safe from… whatever it is? I still don’t know what this is all about, can you just-”
It was at that moment when it all began.
Kai’s voice had begun to do something I had never heard before.
I will never forget how bizarre it sounded. I couldn’t describe it.
It was as if he was talking through a megaphone and shouting underwater at the same time.
He was thirty feet away yelling at me and then he was right beside me, whispering. He was perfectly clear, then his voice was completely distorted.
It was as if he was struggling to speak, like something was holding him back.
The phone was disconnecting, I thought.
I couldn’t trust myself anymore. Something was happening to Kai.
I clicked the “speaker mode” button just in time to hear it.
Kai’s last sentence.
“Hit.. h-… hit.. HIT.. the.. HIT THE SWITCH-”
My instincts kicked in. I scrambled to my feet, heading straight for the bathroom.
I threw open the bathroom door and opened the overhead cabinet.
I didn’t even notice that the bathroom lights were already on.
I frantically punished everything inside the cabinet to the side, until I could see it clearly. A little latch that connected to the wooden wall at the back of the cabinet. I gently pulled on it, and the piece of wood fell down. What I saw genuinely surprised me.
It was the switch.
But it didn’t look the same as I had remembered.
I knew I was supposed to be looking at a small, white, piece of plastic resting on a slab of metal. It was how they were for every house, every emergency switch looked the same.
But instead, I was staring at a golden button that was radiating some kind of emerald green light.
There was something about the glow, the bright sheen, I couldn’t move at all. It was like nothing I had ever seen. I just wanted to stare forever.
It was at that time when I heard the sound of shattering glass, somewhere down the hallway.
I heard Mango barking in the distance. It was the loudest I had ever heard him be.
I couldn’t move.
I was in danger.
I needed help.
I smashed the button.
…
I waited.
My head was pounding now, and it was hard to stand upright.
Nothing had happened. Nothing.
“I hit the button Kai.” I whispered, afraid to talk.
That was when it somehow got worse.
I started to see things. Things that I hadn’t seen before. Things that nobody should be allowed to see. But I did.
I was shown multiple unfamiliar images, they appeared and disappeared in front of me, immediately as I saw them. Pictures flashed before my eyes.
I heard sounds that I didn’t recognize. I tried my best to block out the noises. But the pictures. Those pictures I couldn’t ignore.
They were all pictures of me.
Me at some kind of amusement park.
Me walking a dog through a forest.
Me driving my car.
In all of them, I had that same posture. That same posture that Kai had in the park. My back was straight, and I was staring at nothing.
They kept on appearing in front of me, no matter if my eyes were open or closed. I just kept seeing these random pictures.
But regardless, I knew it for a fact: that person in the photos wasn’t me.
That’s when the voices started.
Every time I looked, they would talk to me. These voices. They would accuse me of hurting them. They would tell me it was my fault. That I would pay for what I had done. That they wouldn’t forget who I was. I didn’t know who the voices belonged to.
My entire body had gone cold.
I wondered how many I was going to see, I couldn’t even remember them all. The second I saw a photo, it was immediately replaced by a new one.
I must have seen hundreds of pictures in a matter of seconds, they were all unique.
All except for one.
There was one that kept coming back to me.
I wasn’t in this one.
It was a picture of some kind of blue tornado. A spiral of wind. This one was the worst one.
The dizziness and pain when I saw this one, it was nothing compared to the rest. Not only that, the voice would change.
The voice was mine.
I was talking to myself, but at the same time, it wasn’t me talking. I heard it clearly.
I was telling myself that I had made the right decision. That there was nothing left to do. It was the last resort. It wasn’t my fault.
I didn’t know what to do.
I had to leave.
I hadn’t even realized that I had been surrounded in pure darkness until I was outside. The power had gone out completely in the house. Somehow I had managed to find my way to the front door.
I couldn’t even see or think straight, my head was spinning.
I threw myself onto the soft grass of my lawn and clutched my head, begging for the pain to go away.
Slowly, the pictures had begun to fade away, and the voices grew softer.
Slowly, I was able to see more clearly and hear my own thoughts.
Kai’s voice returned again.
“Amelia?”
It was his voice. It was clear this time, I could hear him perfectly. I was so happy to hear his normal self again. I couldn’t believe it.
I raised my hand to my face, and was about to reply to Kai, when I realized my hands were empty.
Sometime during that experience with the button, I had dropped my phone.
Shocked, I immediately looked around me, scanning the area for any traces of Kai.
I didn’t see him.
“Amelia, I’m here. You can hear me, right?”
I froze.
He was right.
He was here.
Kai was in my head.
But that was impossible.
“…where are you Kai. What is happening to me. Tell me.”
My eyes were glued to the grass in front of me.
“You hit the switch. That means I can tell you now.” he said.
At that point, Kai could have told me anything and I would have believed it.
“We aren’t on the map, Amelia. Nobody knows we are here. We didn’t even know ourselves. This city was destroyed five hundred days ago. I watched it happen myself.”
There was something I had left out about Kai. One thing I haven’t explained. One crucial detail.
Kai was really good at his job. Really, really good.
I thought back to five hundred days ago. I couldn’t remember anything special that happened in the past year.
“The emergency switches. It was after that day when they installed them. I’ve seen the things that have happened to those without the switches. They tried to take them off themselves. They didn’t want the switches in their houses. I heard what happened to them with my own ears.” he said.
I only had one last question. Then I was done.
“Where are you Kai. Answer me right now. Where are you. Where are you.” I kept repeating it, until my voice slowly faded away.
It was quiet again.
His voice reappeared.
“I’m glad it was you that got the button Amelia. I’m happy it was you. What did you see? Was it exactly as they had described it?” he said.
I was sure that I couldn’t hold it together much longer.
The sound of barking snapped me out of my trance.
Mango.
The barking stopped abruptly.
I looked up at my house.
And I saw the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
…
It was from that one picture that kept coming back. That one with my voice. I couldn’t forget it.
That blue tornado. It was back.
This picture was real.
And it was right where my house once was.
“KAI!? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?” I yelled over the wind.
The wind was too harsh. I couldn’t stand up.
Kai’s voice changed again. That voice he was using before. I didn’t want to listen to him if he sounded like that. I couldn’t listen. Covering my ears did nothing.
To be honest, I couldn’t remember exactly what he said.
He spoke of the day our city was destroyed. The secrets we were holding from the rest of the world. He was crazy.
Help.
He was crying out for help.
I closed my eyes. I tried to remind myself that this wasn’t Kai talking. Whoever it was, this person wasn’t friendly.
I did all that I could to block out the voices. Everything in my power for my head to be silent. In doing that, I guessed I had made room for more to enter.
I began to hear a conversation between a man and a woman. I didn’t recognize their voices.
They didn’t talk for long, but what they said, I would remember forever.
“Are the other two experiencing the same thing?”
The man’s voice.
“They are. We’re almost done, in fact. Less than two minutes left on all of them.”
The woman replied.
“And you’re sure that they don’t know where we are?”
“I told you already, we’re completely safe.”
“Alright. I just want to make sure. You still remember that last time when that girl could hear us? What if she finds out?”
“You’re overreacting. And plus, she never made it past the third stage anyways.”
I was too tired to continue fighting. I hoped that Kai was safe.
My world went dark, and I collapsed on the grass. I didn’t care anymore.
…
When I awoke, I was in my bathroom again.
I was standing up straight.
The lights were on and I was staring at the back of my overhead cabinet.
I was staring at a small, white, piece of plastic, resting on a slab of metal.
My emergency switch. It was back.
The same one that was in every house in the city.
I didn’t know why I was looking at it.
Kai’s voice reappeared in my ear, one last time.
“Hit the switch Amelia. You don’t have much time.”