Estimated reading time — 10 minutes

I saw the end of the world, and its harbinger, from the top of a mountain. It’s possible that nobody else had as good a view as I did, but even if I wanted to find out, I can’t. Nobody I’ve asked has corroborated my story. Most just laugh and go along with my excuse that I’m writing a horror book and want to interview random people about the area. A rare two or three have gotten a far-away look in their eyes before shaking their head and refusing to talk about it further.

That look both scares and comforts me. After a few dozen interviews with an equal amount of coffee and beer to help bribe a story from the interviewee, I’m noticing that thousand-yard stare more and more often. A part of me had hoped that I’d gone through the most vivid nightmare ever experienced. That hope gets smaller and smaller the more often I ask someone about the black skies, the red rain, and the yellow eyes.

The last person I interviewed went pale and nauseous after I asked if she remembered anything about that week. Before I could make sure she was okay, she ran off into a nearby park sobbing and telling me to stay the hell away from her. It might have been creepy behavior, especially for a girl that had just been interviewing her, but I sat at the coffee shop for hours until I saw her come out of the park and drive away in her car. Her makeup had smeared all over her face; her jeans and jacket covered in dirt and grass stains.

That was a week ago. It was the last time I doubted that the apocalypse I’d witnessed had happened. The interviews stopped, but that burning desire to learn either if or what anyone else has seen led me here. I want to tell my story and see who else has remembered. Hopefully I can jog your memory. I’ll pray that the memories aren’t as horrifying as mine or that woman who ran off into a park for hours.

I was- am a security guard for a mining company that owns the mountains near my apartment complex. Like most security guards, I signed onto the job for the amazing work-to-pay ratio. Half of my shift was doing patrols while listening to audiobooks, the other half keeping half an eye on security cameras posted around the mountain while I played video games. Every now and then I’d have to turn away hikers and check the radio towers near my station, which was what the security company was really paying me for.

The first rumble came during lunchtime. I was in my building, a concrete little thing I called my “hut”, looking at the security cameras and eating an egg salad sandwich when my cup of coffee started to vibrate every few seconds. Nothing to worry about. Earthquakes happen around the valley pretty often, sometimes as often as six in one month. The worrying started when the shaking grew more intense yet happened at the same rate. Put another way, earthquakes usually didn’t have a pace like footsteps. It’s what makes that one scene from that dinosaur movie so memorable.

The shaking got more intense. Thick binders containing company S.O.P.’s started bouncing off of shelves. Monitors were shaken from their stands and crashed to the ground. My coffee cup bounced off of the table and spilled onto the ground. I didn’t even notice. I had my head in my hands, curled up into a corner and praying that whatever was happening would just stop.

Something screamed. I wish I could say it had been myself, but there was a distant, screeching trumpeting that overpowered any shouting I could have done. A switch flipped in my head, and I needed to see what the hell was happening outside of my building.

My balance was hard to maintain but I managed to time it well with the shakes that were now shaking everything so much that a view of the entire planet splitting and shaking open was what I’d assumed would be outside of my hut’s window. But I had to see. If the world was about to end in a fiery explosion, I wanted to see it go. Better that than crying in a cement corner and getting concussions from my head knocking against the walls.

Fumbling, but somewhat stable, I made it to the window that overlooked the north side of the mountains.

Something was crossing the sky. It was higher than the highest clouds, at least for or five miles in the air but probably much taller than that. A black, writhing thing that stretched from horizon to horizon, caging the entire sky and casting a pitch-black eclipse in a wave across the valley. There were only a few moments to take the sight in before a pillar, a leg rather, crashed into the middle of the valley.

The impact threw me around the room like a ragdoll. After landing, I stayed there on the floor and waited. My ability to think was gone at this point. There was only a raw fear while the shaking continued.

One more shake that was as powerful as the last. Then another weaker one. They’d started to subside, continuing off towards the south until the room was shaking just enough to make tiny waves in the pool of coffee on the floor next to me. I don’t remember how long I laid there on the floor, only that I got up after the coffee started soaking into my clothes. At one point I thought I heard a low thrumming as the emergency generator below the station kicked into gear.

My body was sore, and it hurt to move, but nothing was broken. Or at least, when I finally sat up and looked at what was left of my hut, broken bones weren’t stabbing any of my innards.

A part of my psyche realized I was technically still at work and took over. As far as that part of my brain was aware, the room was a mess and my lead would kill me when she got there for her shift. One of the radios on the charging dock was still in its socket. I took it out and thumbed the “talk” button on the side.

“Hey, Maze?”

Maze was short for Maisey, my supervisor that had a trailer-turned-office at the bottom of the mountain.

No response.

“Maze? Maze!? Please respond, I… I need help.”

I let go of the talk button for a response. None came.

“Maze!? Maze!? Please tell me you’re there, all of the monitors are broken on the floor, I feel like my whole body is bruised, and all of the paperwork is soaking in a puddle of coffee.

What do I do!?”

No answer but a slight echo from my shouting off of the concrete walls. I was really starting to notice the silence when a few pitter-patters came from the roof.

At least it’s not raining, I cursed as I walked to the window, radio still in hand.

“Maze, can you…”

The window was dark. Pitch black. A short time ago I could see an entire valley below a bright blue summer sky. I imagined, just for a second, that my hut had been sunken into the ground or somehow put into some void that I’d never escape from.

A roar came from behind me and far overhead. The sound crested my mountain, and with it a green light that flowed along the sky the same direction as the sound, north to south. I could see the valley for a few seconds as the dim light crept south, a portion of it funneling into what I’d seen crash into the middle of the valley. I referred to it as a leg before, and even now I think that’s the most accurate term for it. The thing had bent and pushed into the ground while I saw it.

Chills went down my arms when I saw, in the brief seconds the light went through it, just how big the leg was. Not width wise, but length. It made my head spin even trying to judge the size. Even at the time I was certain that it was connected to whatever was in the sky.

After the light went into the leg and beyond the southern horizon, the valley started to light up too. Not much of it, though. Whatever that pillar was, it must have knocked out all of the electricity in the valley.

I listened, terrified, while the rainfall got heavier and small blue lights began popping on all over the valley. A lot of electronics can survive an electromagnetic pulse if their circuitry and parts are simple enough, including a lot of flashlights and even some cars, which I just assumed the lights were.

It might sound odd to bring it up right now, but I want you to consider something I heard referred to as the “terminal freak out point”.

At what point when shit starts to go down do you start to panic? Everyone has one, even the most carefully planned and prepared apocalypse preppers you’ve heard about online.

It took three things happening in quick succession for me to reach my own terminal freak out point. The first was realizing that the red haze in front of the lights down in the valley was the rain itself. The rain was thick and red. Mist formed along the bottom of the valley that made any attempts at clearly watching what was happening close to impossible.

Second was the things that came out of the sky.

Even now, sitting here in a library at a public computer, people are giving me looks as my teeth chatter and my legs start to shake. But I’ll push through.

They didn’t fall out of the sky, per se, rather they hung from it. That black sky which was so far above our own was partially illuminated by a litany of yellow orbs that descended from whatever had swallowed the valley, maybe even the world, up in darkness. Whatever encompassed us, the yellow lights illuminated a billowing, black cloud that seemed to undulate at a fixed height in the sky.

The closer the bright yellow lights got to the ground, the more their light refracted into the rain and mist dropping into the valley. It would have been an unfathomable mercy if this hadn’t been the case, but it illuminated whatever they were. I still don’t know, but whenever I bring this up to people I interview, this is always the part where they get uncomfortable. Their subconscious must remember what the things looked like, as I do, and very clearly at that.

Heads.

Huge, black heads with glowing yellow eyes that shone like spotlights. Most were human; some were animals like cats, dogs, or horses. At a few points, when I was still in enough shock to keep staring at them, I saw the heads of insects with dozens and dozens of glowing eyes. They all descended and screamed. The screams didn’t have any sound to them, but the expressions of agony on each of the faces were quite clear. When they were done screaming, they ascended back into the sky to be replaced by another.

The valley was awash in yellow lights, red rain, and red mist. I still wasn’t at my terminal freakout point. Hanging off of the edge, sure, but I was struck stupid with fear and confusion at what I was seeing. I wasn’t pushed off the edge until I did start to hear screaming.

All at once, I heard an entire valley of people scream. I’m actually not sure if this is real or not. It’s a real possibility that it was a nightmare that I had while I holed up in my hut for the next week, but I think it was real. I pray to God, literally, that my mind doesn’t have the imagination to think of a sound like what I heard. Millions of wails of despair from a valley of people reaching the terminal freakout point. It formed a choir that I’m sure mimicked the deepest bowels of torment in Hell. I screamed too. Screamed until I tasted blood.

After that point, my memory gets a bit fuzzy.

What I do remember is pulling my window curtains shut and never looking out of them again. My concrete hut became my home, which I left only when I needed to go to the bathroom outside under an umbrella. It was horribly uncomfortable, but I made it work.

There were emergency rations and snacks, enough for three days. I dragged it out for a week. After five days my stomach was making weird gurgling noises while pain racked my entire body, like my insides were tearing themselves up. There’s not a doubt in my mind that if I hadn’t had the emergency lights, a few paperbacks in my bag, and a few cases of water, I would have gladly thrown myself off of one of the mountain’s steep cliffs. I’m actually not sure if that’s the truth or not. I hope it is.

Besides my books, all my existence really was for a week was the countdown. That initial wave of green that went across the sky and into the pillar repeated itself. Every time it did, I heard screams come from the skies that made my ears ring even when I stuck my fingers in them. The intervals between each of the waves got shorter and shorter over time. At one point I was bored enough to do the math with a pencil and notebook, or at least the best math I could, to see when there wouldn’t be any more breaks between the waves of green light and screams.

A week. Whatever else was going to happen in this nightmare, it would be in a week. I waited. Besides dying, which was still more scary to me than what was going on outside, there was nothing else to do.

At the end, I was so delirious from the constant screaming in the air (mostly from the sky, occasionally from the valley), the hunger, and the time that was impossible to keep track of in my hut, that I crawled out into the rain to see the end for myself. Even thinking about walking made me nauseous.

The final vivid memory I have of the apocalypse started with me dragging myself to the edge of the concrete platform my hut was on and looking out to a destroyed and emaciated valley. There wasn’t much time to get a good look, not that I could have gotten one through the red mist, but I did see that there were still some lights bouncing around the buildings. A few of the skyscrapers in the downtown area across from my mountain were burned to a crisp, and I swear I could see a party of some kind going on the rooftop of the tallest one. An insane sight, but I can’t throw any stones; I was there to watch too. And I did watch. The waves of green light and screaming heads in the obsidian sky increased to such a frequency that I’m pretty sure I felt my ears give out to a painful whining sound.

The last thing I saw was another head descending from the sky. At that point the heads and the black, inky ceiling were a constant green that exaggerated the glowing eyes. I’m not completely sure, but I think that last head I saw was mine. We matched perfectly, both screaming in a mix of defiance and subservience at whatever was coming.

Then there’s a flash. In my memory, it’s yellow.

My screams were echoing off of my apartment walls. I was in bed, just as I had been the day it had all started. It took some time for me to calm down and remember what a healthy body felt like to move around in while I ate so much that I puked.

Despite what I said earlier, I admit that I’ve never thought it was a dream. I wouldn’t have tried interviewing anyone if that were true. I’d guess that deep down I still hold some hope that what I saw didn’t happen, even though I know it did.

While I’ve taken breaks from writing this for you, I’ve noticed fewer people out on the streets. I’m downtown now, and even during times of low traffic you used to be able to see at least a dozen people walking wherever – plus the constant flow of public transport. There were still plenty of people going about their business when I first woke up, much to my shock.

On my way around the block to stretch my legs just now, I saw one person on the street. It was a woman in a business suit, a laptop case hanging from one of her hands. She was in the middle of the sidewalk, looking up at the sky. I think she looked scared.

I think people are starting to remember. That scares me almost as much as the apocalypse did because, being as objective as I can about what I experienced, my situation was somewhat of a best-case-scenario. I had a building with lights, books, food, and water all to myself. What could it have been like on the ground level, with millions of people in a compact area? What about the rest of the world?

I hope other people reading this also remember what happened. If you do, let me know. I get the feeling that we’re going to reach a second terminal freakout point when everybody else starts to remember.

Credit: Chance Kimber

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