Prologue & Scene 1

PROLOGUE

Imagine this: you’re chilling out in your room. Your parents are at the grocery store doing some last-minute shopping. The wind is picking up and an alarm is going off on your phone saying there’s a tornado warning in effect. Rain beats against the small window at the top corner of your room, your room is in the basement by the way. None of the noise or the storm really bothers you, but you keep half an eye on the toxic green sky.

The WiFi is kinda going in and out and you are getting less than a bar of cellular, so you can’t really watch anything. Luckily, you downloaded some anime and movies because you were better prepared than your parents. You’re kind of a doom and gloom “What-if-the-worst-happened” kind of person, so you have 3 portable power blocks and about 8 battery powered or charged light sources scattered about your room. A power outage was rare but it’s always important to be prepared. It was actually even rarer to have a tornado touch down in this part of the country.

You sit down on the floor with your back up against the bed and place your iPad down in front of you. Headphones on. Shounen anime? Maybe an Isekai? You wonder what you should watch. You decide to put on a movie you hadn’t seen in a long time, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. As you press play the power goes out. You shrug, it seems you won’t be having any popcorn with it.

You treat everything around you as usual or expected despite all the warning signs that something unexpected was happening. You don’t notice the swirling mass pulling up trees and sending cars flying, baring down on your house.

The headphones drown out the sound of the wailing wind and clawing water. Thunder rocks the glass of your window and shakes the walls and you ignore it. Deep down you are scared so you’d rather just ignore it and keep watching the movie. You turn up the volume and deep down you wish for your parents to hurry home.

The walls shake mercilessly. It seems like it might not stop. Your cat which was hiding under your bed lets out an alarming meow which you can’t really hear over the high volume of the movie and cacophony of the storm. But if you had looked outside, if you had decided to turn your head up to the window, you might have noticed the skies were clear…

Scene 1: Room

At 7:55pm the storm subsided. I looked away from my IPad which was at about 20%. I didn’t remember what time the storm had started but I also didn’t feel like checking the clock. Something compelled me to keep my eyes on the screen.

I got up and pressed on my sore back. The metal frame of the bed was obviously not the most comfortable place to lean against.

“Chi! Chi-Chi.” I called. My cat Chihiro had been under my bed taking shelter from the storm. I got down on my knees and checked to see if she was there. I didn’t see her. My eyes had been glued to the screen for a really long time so it was possible she had snuck by me, in fact, it was possible that my parents were home by now.

I shook out my legs and headed to the stairs leading directly to my basement room. There was also a bathroom and a laundry room, so the room wasn’t very private which was why I had a giant room divider like the kind you might see in a school gym or lunch room. It didn’t provide much soundproofing but it at least offered the illusion of privacy.

I opened the door and looked up the stairs. It was dark. There was a set of stairs that led to a landing then veered to the left and up some more stairs leading directly to the living room.

I attempted to flip on the light switch but nothing happened. Now, that I thought about it my room was also still dark. I nearly laughed at my moment of stupidity, I could imagine my mom doing the same exact thing.

I cautiously walked up the stairs. There was a sinking feeling as I ascended. In the same way I felt the need to keep my eyes on the screen, I suddenly felt the need to stop climbing. Every step had more recoil than the last. I made it to the landing and frowned.

As I said, normally the stairs led directly to the living room but instead I encountered a door. I was rooted in place. I knew I should press forward yet I couldn’t.

I forced my leg up and onto the next step, if felt like I was walking through wet cement. I grasped the railing and pulled myself up. It was no longer a feeling. It was physical phenomena occurring. It seemed like I was pushing against something. At first I thought it was in my head.

I finally made it to the top step heaving and sweating. It had taken nearly 10 minutes to reach.

The door was the same eggshell white as the narrow stairway that led to it and in it’s center at just the right height, a peephole with a cover. By now every movement was hampered by taut invisible chains. With every ounce of strength

I reached out, moved the cover aside and stretched my head up to the small hole. 

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I ran back down the stairs and fell to the floor completely exhausted. This wasn’t right, where was the neighborhood I’d grown up in, the Calloways who threw BBQs every other weekend, or Mr. Ray the professional Jazz musician next door, he had this 1950s antique Ford but it wasn’t there. Mrs. Dunham the old lady with the dog that more often than not was pulling her, her house wasn’t there, nor was my former high school music teacher Mrs. Block. Most importantly my parents’ car wasn’t there. Nothing was there!

No, that wasn’t true, in fact it was far from true. Outside was not the neighborhood I called home but somewhere new entirely. Somewhere dangerous. Just outside the door, a door that fortunately or unfortunately, would not open, was a clay desert littered with bodies. They were a distance away from the door so it was hard to make out.

One might assume that these were the remains of my neighbors but the terrain was unfamiliar and there was no sign of any houses not even the foundations. No storm could have done that much damage.

“C-chi…” I whispered. I needed to find her. Where was she? I ran around the room, opening drawers there was no way she could have gotten into.

As I was running, I caught something out of the corner of my eye that made me stop. It was looking at me from the top window. I turned my head slowly, my heart beating faster. Up in the corner window was a green eye with three black irises around the pupil. It stared down on me then closed it’s eyes. The window was now completely black.

“What are you?” I whispered.

“Are you listening?!? Did you do this!?!” I was suddenly shouting.

It didn’t respond, perhaps it couldn’t understand or couldn’t hear me. I pushed my bed into position right under the small window. The pane was 2ft by 10 inches and set in the very corner of the room, ordinarily it’d look out onto a birds nest fenced in by an aluminum cylinder, now it was pitch black.

guess I would be considered average height 5’6”, yet even with the boost and wobbling to-and-fro on my tip-toes I was struggling to stretch my chin level with the window.

“Hey! What did you do!?!” I hammered at the window with my fist. The creature’s eye winked open and stared. It didn’t seem to have any particular feeling behind it. A moment later it swam away and sunlight beamed directly into my eyes blinding me. I lost my footing and fell backwards onto the floor.