Part 1
I never knew how to live life to the fullest until I went through this moment of it. It seemed like an average day for me as I got up, took a shower, ate breakfast, and went to school. Before leaving I said goodbye to my mother, who was cleaning up the dishes before she too would go to work. My father had already left for work and wouldn’t be back until 6 in the evening. When I arrived at school I sat at the table where all of my friends were. I’m not going to say I was the most popular kid at school, but I held quite the reputation for people to know who I was.
After the five-minute warning bell to go to Homeroom, I got up and went to the classroom. The teacher, Mr. O’Reilly, was playing music from the early 2000’s. I never thought of him to be playing My Chemical Romance and Nickelback, but over time you could see he had that taste in music on him. After Homeroom came 1st period, so I grabbed my bag and went to Theology. Ms. Stuart was attempting to pull a website on the projector but couldn’t connect to the internet. It was fine by me, it just meant I can chill on my iPad playing Clash of Clans, but even I couldn’t connect to the internet.
Ms. Stuart eventually gave up and told us to study for the upcoming finals since what she had planned for today was not going to work. A lot of us pulled out our books, the rest went to sleep since it was still early in the morning. About halfway through the period, the ground began to shake a little bit. We all felt it and began screaming and shouting like kids when the fire alarm went off. We enjoyed joking around about things like that and paid no attention to it at all. The bell rang, and everything seemed normal until 5th period. I had lunch then and I was getting ready to hang out with my friends, and it made me happy now that I could finally stop doing work for a small portion of my day.
In the middle of my lunch, the ground shook again, this time even larger. This brought concern to some, but to others it was another bit of joking around. I looked outside and to my surprise the bright sunny sky turned into dark clouds, and rain began to fall. A thunderstorm soon hit the school, and I was pissed. I didn’t have any umbrella or jacket to get me through the rain going home, so I had no choice but to hope it would pass. My lunch period soon ended and so I went to my 6th period. My teacher was out, so I once again hung out with most of my friends in the library of the school. The curtains were closed, and the rain was still heavily pouring as every drop thumped onto the window like a toddle hitting it with a toy hammer.
The teacher overlooking the study hall, Mr. Lance, decided to put in a DVD of the SpongeBob movie, and of course being the childish teens, we celebrated. In the middle of the movie, the screen turned off, and everything went black. We were all upset that the storm did something to the electricity, and just began to talk to each other until the power came back on. Minutes passed, and soon an hour went by. The bell didn’t ring for the next class to start, and soon most of us got tired and decided to make our way to our next periods.
When one of the students opened the door into the hallway, he stopped dead in his tracks.
“What the hell?”
We all looked and noticed through the windows was nothing. A pitch-black void was covering the outside, and nothing could be seen, not even a foot outside that window. Someone pointed out the clocks stopped moving, most of us pulled out our phones and it didn’t even turn on. We still heard the storm outside, along with heavy wind. Some of us went right in front of the window and we heard distant sirens of cops, ambulances, and an announcement by one of those big speakers on a military truck.
“All citizens are to go indoors and stay inside until further notice. If someone from the outside knocks after an hour, do not answer them, do not let them in, do not even attempt to interact with them. Once again, all—”
A large screech could be heard overpowering the man on the loudspeaker outside. Gunshots soon followed, and numerous screams from men, women, and even children were heard screaming. You would hear their screams be silenced with a loud tear, as if someone went right next to your ear and ripped a piece of paper. Some of us who had heard it were beginning to panic as we scattered around the school along with every one of us who was confused and worried. We had no phones to contact our parents, and everyone began to form groups with their friends to stay with. The teachers tried to calm everyone down and told us to stay away from the windows and doors that lead outside.
Mr. O’Reilly gathered some other teachers and went through every classroom to make sure the windows were closed as well as the doors. I could still hear the gunfire outside, as if a war was being fought and we had no clue about what’s going on. The history teacher, Mr. Cormack, had an old radio in his classroom where he would play his music when school was over. He grabbed it as we were all in the library and tried to set it up to see if we could hear anything. After five minutes, a low and disfigured sound came from the radio. It was a news anchor, trying to explain the situation.
“We received word from the military that they are evacuating cities and counties after many casualties were sustained in a sort of void that is currently looming over parts of Pennsylvania and New York. The void seems to be spreading all over the eastern part of the United States, Europe, and Asia. Be advised that anyone in the following hotspots is on their own until the military attempts to free them: Pittsburg, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Was—”
The line cut off, we all muttered at each other. This so-called void was one of the counties that was a hotspot, and it was only spreading. We heard a loud roar outside of the windows, as if a bear the size of a skyscraper was outside. There were over five hundred students in this school, all of us didn’t know what was going on. The girls were crying, the teachers were trying to keep everyone together and safe, and the boys were talking to each other, making conspiracies as to what was going on. I went to my friends, and even they were making up reasons as to what was happening.
“The radio was about to say Washington D.C.” One of the students in the back of the room shouted.
“Maybe this is a government project gone wrong and now they are trying to clean up the mess they made.”
An argument soon erupted in the room. The argument soon led to a fight that we knew could not be tolerated, especially under these circumstances. The ground shook again, and everyone began to quiet down. We heard someone yell from outside, right at our front door. The teachers went down to check what was going on, me and the rest of the students in the library followed. When we made it to the front door, we saw two soldiers outside banging on the door’s window and begging us to let them in. The speaker stated to not let anyone in under any situation, and the begging soon changed to crying. They were pounding on the door and window until one of the soldiers raised her rifle at us. As she was about to shoot at the window, the other soldier was grabbed into the void, followed by a tear. The other soldier turned around and started firing in random directions before body slamming into the window after emptying her magazine.
Before she could do it again, a tentacle-like thing grabbed her. She screamed as loud as ever. What happened next will forever scar me for as long as I live.