07 Jan The Hole in the Sky

To whomever may be listening, welcome to the end of the world. That’s fucked up, huh? Hundreds of thousands of years of building up to this? It’s beyond surreal, and to be honest I don’t think I’ve processed it.

Processed it?! Heh, that’s funny. Like anyone can deal with this. Maybe the bible-thumpers, but I don’t think so. Can you imagine? They spent their entire lives waiting to be beamed up above, to leave before all of the shit it the fan. No, I don’t think anybody is coping well at all.

I don’t know exactly when the riots started, but it wasn’t too long after the first incident. Once the footage went viral of the sky opening, everything went to shit pretty quickly. Buildings cracked like eggs, spilling their contents into the open air where some unimaginable current pulled everything into… a void? A hole? I don’t have a clue, and neither does anyone else. Except maybe the poor souls who got to see it with their own eyes as they rose up into the sky. I guess we’ll all know soon enough.

So, Leslie, my wife, took the kids over to her brother’s place. He’s one of those survival nuts, with an underground bunker filled with equal parts food and ammunition.

We argued for days about it, especially once some scientist guys and gals nailed down the date of the last day. The formula, or algorithm, or whatever they used went way over my head but I caught the gist of it. The number of appearances, the rate at which they spread and widened, with a chance of some other stuff. Long story short, they determined today was the today. Today is the day.

I begged her not to go, to spend what time we had left together, at home, in the place we’d built. But she was adamant, stubborn as always, insisting that it was the only way that it would be safer underground. Didn’t matter that we’d all seen the footage of subway cars ripped right from their tunnels, or that the government’s bunkers were now nothing but gravel.

In the end, I gave up. Our arguing was just scaring the kids more than they already were without our help. I hugged our boys tight and told them how much I loved them, how everything was going to be okay, then I closed the door–

Sorry. I… I just can’t help it, you know? Seems I’ve cried more in the past twenty-four hours than I have in twenty years. They were my whole life, and I just let them go. I didn’t tell them the whole truth. I didn’t tell them that if they did somehow, by some miracle, survive, that I didn’t want to be there.

Truth is, if they make it through, I don’t want to be a further drain on their resources. I won’t take food out of my kids’ mouths. Never.

But that’s not going to happen anyway, let me just be clear about that. There’s no last-minute miracle coming. Entire countries are gone. A hole opens above and gets wider and wider while everything down to the topsoil goes up into a swirling column of near-black clouds. Before I left the house, I heard Australia was finally skinned, and Greenland is gone too. Like a lathe just shaving everything off the surface of the Earth, leaving nothing but dirt and rock.

As to why, who knows or cares at this point. Alien terraforming, lizard people, vast government conspiracies, God’s righteous judgment, Bill Gates, democrats. I’ve heard it all in the last few weeks, and it all doesn’t matter. And even if we knew, what difference would it make? I’m still going to die today, along with everyone else.

Damn, I’m out of beer. I’ve been steadily drinking since Leslie left. Why not? I’ve never been much for it but today of all days it’s pretty nice. My nerves are calm at least. The clouds are getting thicker by the minute. No real sunlight to speak of but it’s alright. I’m not sure if I’m fuzzy-headed from the drinking or from watching the clouds move. They’re kind of hypnotic, I guess. They curl around each other, intertwine like strings, then tear apart…then meet again, only to start the dance over. It would be beautiful, under different circumstances.

Christ! I’ve never heard a thunderclap like that. I felt it in my bones, felt my heart rattle in my chest. I’m surprised there’s not a mushroom cloud on the horizon.

That’s how I always imagined the end, you know? My father used to tell me stories about drills they had to perform in school when he was growing up. The siren would go off, the sound sawing through the afternoon air. Then they’d have to crawl under their desks and put their little hands over their heads and wait for the end. And now my sons do something similar, preparing for the chance that some asshole with an AR-15 kicks in their classroom door.

I get it now. I don’t think I ever got it then, but, yeah, I get it now. I’m not crawling underneath a desk though. I’m just going to sit right here on my front porch and watch the sky open for me. No running, no hiding. It is what it is.

I… I can see shapes leaving the ground in the distance. Malformed shadows rising in the air and up into whatever lies beyond the opening. Could be trees. Might be houses. Our nearest neighbors live out that way. Jan and Harold. They came over to the house often to chat and see the boys. They never could have kids of their own so I guess they liked being around mine. They didn’t know how lucky they were. I know that sounds awful, and I feel awful saying it. But they didn’t have to explain this impossible situation to a child, didn’t have to tell them that they… that they wouldn’t…

I don’t think I can do this. I thought I was strong enough to watch it creep towards me but I can’t. It’s like watching the world’s slowest bullet coming at you in a long, doorless hall. There’s no room to dive out of the way, no doors to duck behind.

I can see people going up now. The flailing limbs are easy to make out. I don’t know if I’m imagining their screams or if I’m actually hearing them.

I’ve changed my mind, I think. I’m… I’m glad they didn’t stay. At least they won’t see it coming. The edges are getting clearer. Not clean-cut like it was carved into the sky, nothing as obvious as that, but there’s definition there. A boundary between worlds. I don’t know if “worlds” is right, but it leads somewhere else. Some unimaginable place. Maybe even into the vacuum of space. Nobody knows.

Screaming, yes. The screaming is closer. Can you hear it? The sound warps in the wind, back and forth like waves. Sounds closer than it is.

I brought out my pistol with me. I just feel safer with it here. It won’t stop what’s coming, of course, but it will stop me. I just want to see inside before I go, see if there’s something in there. And if I can’t stick it out, well… I have another option.

It was my father’s pistol. He’s long dead now, and I’m glad he didn’t live to see this, glad I don’t have to see the smug satisfaction on his face. He already had a crazy streak in him and this just would’ve made it so much worse. He went slow. Alzheimer’s and dementia. I don’t know if it was growing up with the threat of nuclear annihilation or what, but he was always preoccupied with the End of Times. It just got worse as he got worse. Ranting and raving about the apocalypse until the nurses would have to sedate him.

One time he made me hide in a closet for most of a day, to keep me safe from some terrible end. When Mom got home she was more pissed off than I’d ever seen her before. For the rest of that summer I stayed with my aunt while Mom was at work. Dad wasn’t working by that point, just drawing disability checks from the government. He used to work, had multiple jobs in fact. But he’d always lose them in the end. As soon as one of his “bad days” would happen he’d be let go. He could never keep the crazy to himself, like he always felt the need to spread it around.

It’s getting colder out here. Ambient temperature drops as the holes approach, common knowledge by this point. Like when you open your front door in winter and all the heat rushes out of the room. Exactly like that, actually. The clouds are almost to the ground now. I can imagine them tearing into the earth like fingers, pulling up handfuls to be drawn up into the absence there.

Anyway, sorry I got caught up in the moment. What was I saying? Oh, yeah. Dad.

He burst into my room one morning, when the sun was just a glint on the horizon, maybe an hour after my mom had left for the day. He said I had to get somewhere safe.

I think I nodded to him, still all bleary-eyed and mostly asleep. He scooped me up and carried me down the hall. When we got to the linen closet, he quickly opened it up and sat me within. I don’t remember much about the early hours, but I do remember pulling a folded sheet down from the shelf, wrapping myself up, and falling back asleep.

When I woke again, light was shining underneath the door. I banged on the wood with my fists, screamed until I was hoarse and my throat was raw but Dad never showed up. I was locked up for hours, my stomach growling loud enough to echo in the closet. I pissed in the corner like an untrained puppy.

When my mom came home she found my Dad standing in the front yard, pistol in one hand and beer in the other, staring up at the sky.

My dad spent the next five years or so instilling the dread of the apocalypse into me. He’d watch these televangelists on TV, then give me a lesson on everything they said when the show ended. He even sent money to those con artists. Some days we’d be wondering if we could pay the rent, but we didn’t have to worry about some asshole preacher having the money to fill his private jet now did we?

Speculation about the identity of the Antichrist was a favorite of his. The carousel included Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, and eventually Saddam Hussein. I lived with the fear that any day the Tribulation would begin, and I’d be forced to make the decision to either accept the Mark of the Beast or die of starvation. The Mark was always different too. Barcode tattoos, credit cards, RFI tags implanted in your skin, vaccines.

I’m glad I’m an only child, so no one else had to deal with Dad’s lunacy. The day of my wedding, my mom pulled me aside to tell me that Leslie and I would never work because we were both only children. She said we would be too stubborn to stay together. It’s crazy what you think about at the end.

What is that? It sounds like knocking, pounding. Maybe trees bouncing off each other on the way up. I can’t tell from here, all the debris just looks like shadows shooting into the sky.

Maybe Dad was right. Maybe this shit is biblical and it just doesn’t look the way everyone expected it to look. No heavenly light piercing through clouds or people just disappearing or whatever else Hollywood has come up with. Maybe it’s just a celestial vacuum cleaner sucking up everything into the sky. Don’t know why we’d need all this crap in Heaven but who am I to question the divine plan?

The sky is…I don’t know how to describe it, what color to name it. “Gray” just isn’t enough, and “silver” would probably make you think that it’s shiny when it isn’t. It’s like the dull gunmetal color of Dad’s pistol. The clouds are gyring around the nearest hole, moving much slower than you’d think.

Everything is slow, has been slow for months. Time’s different when you have all the time in the world. I was laid off nine months ago. That isn’t entirely true, I guess. I was fired, ashamed as I am to admit it. I had just found out about the holes opening in the sky and I tried telling people but they wouldn’t listen. My boss overheard me, we got into it, and I took a swing at him. Not my proudest moment, but the son of a bitch just wouldn’t listen. Guess I got the last laugh though, huh? But I don’t feel like laughing.

Dad’s probably laughing, wherever he is. Is this funny, old man? You got what you wanted! Everything is going to shit and God’s calling us all home! And what is that goddamn banging sound?!

Oh shit, man. It actually is pretty funny. Here I am laughing and raving just like the bastard–

Here it comes. Like it’s stretching to meet me. The clouds splitting in a jagged line and coming this way, like the hole got too wide and just split. Jesus, listen to that wind howl. Like a goddamn freight train.

I thought I was ready, I really did but now I’m scared. I don’t think I want to see what’s in there anymore. I could end it here, just do it and get it over with. It’d be so easy.

But what if I’m wrong? I’m not saying it’s Heaven up there but it might be something. It could be a paradise, a fresh start for the human race, or goddamn Oz, for fuck’s sake. Just anything but here.

I’m not going to look. I’ll let it take me but I’m not looking but I have to look–

It’s…it doesn’t make any sense. There’s no light but there’s reflections and things and dear Christ what are they? Their voices, voices like squeaking hinges–

What is–? Leslie?! What are you doing?! Take the boys back…back where? No! Don’t look at it! What? At the hole! Don’t look at it!

Get them away from here! I swear to God I’ll shoot! I’d rather put you all down easy than have you see what’s happening. Don’t you get it? Don’t you fucking get it?!

I’ll do it, please don’t make me, no–

There…it’s done. Now they won’t see, they never have to see.

They’re safe now.

Jesus Christ.

Where…where did it go?

---

🎧 Available Audio Adaptations: None Available

Written by Ryan Harville
Edited by Craig Groshek
Thumbnail Art by Craig Groshek
Narrated by N/A

🔔 More stories from author: Ryan Harville

Publisher's Notes: N/A

Author's Notes: N/A

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