An Occurrence One Evening

An Occurrence One Evening
Written by
Charles D. O’Connor III

Dark, angry and abominable feelings, like legions of satanic nightmares, seized me on one grey and still evening while I sat comfortably in an oversized easy chair in the study of my home. Springing frantically to my feet, I tried to sooth my ailing nerves but found the ungodly sensations swelling to astounding heights. Breathing became extremely difficult and I fled desperately down the long, shadowy hallway; bursting out of the front door and into the city streets- coughing and gasping for air.
The moment the cold, whistling breeze filled my lungs the overwhelming feelings slowly faded until eventually they were no longer detectable and, once again, I was able to breathe clearly and easily. However, as I continued to gulp down the air I realized how strongly acidic it was.
I did not view this, at first, as strange because living in a city near factories and vehicles constantly whooshing by at all hours- releasing great quantities of carbon monoxide and other chemicals into the air; made me greatly accustomed to odd tastes and odors.
So I passed it off as smog and headed back into the house, thankful for whatever mental horror that had attacked me was now gone, when I happened to look out into the distance and spotted something strangely peculiar.
Every car, truck and van had stopped in the middle of the road. Both the drivers and pedestrians were all clumped together in many large, disassembled groups- looking up toward the whitish, grey sky. I wondered what had happened to cause this and with great intrigue, walked over; crossing long stretches of cracked and crumbling roads while being observed by the bent signs, broken fire hydrants and rust covered buildings surrounding me.
When I neared the scene I asked what had happened, but nobody responded or even gave a physical sign that they had heard me. They merely continued with what they were doing; looking up toward the sky.
I then peered into the faces of as many people as possible; repeating myself, but again receiving the same response as before, silence. However this was only the first set of odd features I observed.
Their skin was of a ghost white and when I gently brushed my hand over it I was startled at how cold it felt. Were they dead? No, they could not have been because dead things are incapable of standing. Their faces were drained of all emotion to; reminding me of the mannequin’s one may see in shopping malls. Some of the people’s eyes had rolled to the back of their heads while others glared at me in a sort of neurotic happiness.
What had happened to these people? Were they all the victims of hypnotism, some type of gas or a highly mysterious phenomenon? I did not know but began attempting to shake everyone awake when my ears detected a faint pattering of feet behind me.
I turned and noticed a small figure approaching me from out of the gloomy and depressing horizon ahead; gradually growing more discernable with every step.
The object turned out to be a dog; a very large dog. Bright brown fur, like that of a grizzly bear, covered the animal’s body. Its eyes were a dark brown and seemed to be shifting everywhere with extreme caution. A red leash hung from around its neck which signified the dog had an owner, but where was this person? Could he or she be from among those groups of people looking up coldly at the sky?
I did not wish to ponder the thought much longer because it only added to the apprehension I was now feeling and out of compassion and a developing need to feel close with something I progressed toward the animal; saying hello along with other friendly things in the manner and tone of an adult verbally conversing with a baby.
Unfortunately the animal did not react in the way I had hoped. It immediately crouched down, growling wildly and looking at me with bare, empty eyes.
I backed away slowly, taking every precaution to avert my eyes and look in another direction. But the animal continued its insidious growls; eventually reaching pitches and tones impossible for any dog, or creature of this world to attain.
Now I was becoming concerned that it may attack, and with every bit of courage I could muster I turned to face the angry beast. What my eyes saw however was viler, sickening and more terrifyingly perplexing then any mere attack from an animal. Convulsing uncontrollably a few inches off the ground was the brown body of the dog. It howled, cried and yelped in pain; coughing up a white milky substance as if it were having a seizure or being devoured by the jaws of some invisible, nameless horror.
No earthly creature deserves to be the victim of an attack this ruthless and though I desperately wanted to help it, I did not know what the consequences would be if I did. So I looked on helplessly, praying earnestly to God for a quick and merciful end.
God must have heard my cries because the attack did not last much longer, and when the dogs’ body finally dropped down to the ground with a loud, wet thud, I backed up; a look of relief but extreme abhorrence now etched on my face. What had I just witnessed? I did not have an answer and my brain was too woozy and shook up to concoct any logical explanation. The only thing I was able to tell myself was this had to be a nightmare. Yes, I obviously had fallen asleep in my study while reading a book or doing some other mental activity. I kept repeating that this was only a dream and even tried with the little sanity I still possessed to force myself awake. However, deep down my heart told me this was no dream, but a reality.
Somehow, in what way I do not know, I managed to calm my nerves following this realization and began to analyze the situation. The cars stopping in the middle of the roads, the acidic tasting air, the death of the dog, and most importantly of all- the multitudes of people looking blankly up to the sky; all these things seemed to be pawns to a much more substantial picture. What was that picture and what, if any, would my role be in it? The questions and possibilities gnawed incessantly at my brain while I walked despairingly through the dirty, crowded and silent streets.
II
Darkness was now approaching, concealing all visible scenery and making it increasingly difficult to see where I was going. I must have unknowingly walked a great distance from my house because when my eyes adjusted to the darkness, what I did see did not look familiar and the fear of being “done away with” was slowly building to monstrously insane proportions inside me.
I wanted to return home, I had to, to normalcy where everything was okay. But now it was too late; much too late and I spent my next moments stumbling helplessly through a winding labyrinth of broken streets, rotting grey buildings and people with empty, dead expressions at every turn; with only the faint glow of street lights to guide me.
At some point I found myself in an alley. The air was musty and smelt like rotting fish carcasses and the ground was buried underneath heaps of garbage.
Casting aside some trash bags, I proceeded in inching my way through the alley and back out into the streets when my eyes noticed some movement in the darkness ahead. Straining my eyes to the point where the alley converged with the street, I was able make out a vague outline. The outline walked in a leisurely and lost manner, but it walked on two legs- that meant it was a person. I found someone, I found help! I shouted aloud in relief, throwing my arms into the air and running through, and on top of, the remaining stretch of garbage in joyful desperation.
But when the shadows unveiled who was to be my savior and guide, I leaped back in a great state of panic. Whether this two legged creature was, or had at one time been human, I did not know. Thin strands of black hair hung lifelessly down to his shoulders and a great hoard of white maggots crawled feverishly over his face, which was a dark and decaying shade of green.
When he noticed me his face shot up and his thick legs quickly hobbled toward me. Whipping away some maggots with his left hand, he began talking in a delirious and panic stricken manner.
“I didn’t know anyone was left! Thank God I found you, thank God”.
Realizing he was as scared as I, I let my guard down and asked if he knew what was happening, all the while pleading for him not to leave me alone.
“I do not know what is happening,” he responded, severely on edge. “But my wife and only child have already become the victims of this nightmare”.
I looked at him and asked what had happened.
The man looked sadly into the distance toward another group of empty and lifeless people and told me his story:
“Earlier this evening my wife Courtney, our five year old daughter Chelsea and myself were about to sit down and have dinner when Courtney complained of feeling rather fearful. I asked her if she wanted a doctor but she declined, saying it must have been because of her rough day at work and then proceeded to sit down and eat.
“Five minutes later she got up to get milk from the fridge, when her face turned blue and I heard frantic gasps for air coming from her lips. I leaped up from the table in shock, saying I was going to call 9-11, but heard her in a strained tone tell me to take her outside for some air.
“Though I found my wife’s thinking highly peculiar, I obeyed. So with Chelsea following me, I carried my wife outside and placed her on a chair. But when I did this she began laughing horribly like some deranged madman.
“She turned to me and asked if I could hear them. I did not know what she was referring to and when I said I was going to call a doctor she laughed again as if I was pathetic. ‘Can’t you hear them?’ she asked once more. ‘They are promising us a better life and existence; a place where we can live fully and with no restraints.’
“I told her she was losing her mind and needed help and was about to go in and phone 9-11 when she turned and hit Chelsea with uncanny, brute force to the side of the head. Chelsea dropped immediately to the ground- landing with a loud thud, cutting her forehead. Courtney picked up her lifeless body and darted off into the street like an animal with its prey; shouting, slurring and giggling- telling Chelsea mommy would take her to the savior where they all will live a better life”.
The man paused for a second to catch his breath and then continued.
“I tried running after them but was stopped by some dark, malignant presence floating insanely about. The whole atmosphere then began shaking violently and I saw, like from a cannibalistic nightmare, a gigantic wave of blood gushing rapidly down from the sky; spreading over and engulfing everything in its sight. The billions of people, who now looked like skeletons, all thin and white, suddenly sprung to life; groaning and laughing in wicked ecstasy while the wave of blood rushed them off into the night. After witnessing this my mind must have completely shut down because the next thing I remember was waking up face down on the concrete in a small puddle of blood with my face all gag green and covered in maggots”.
I cringed horribly after hearing his story but guessed, with much mental strain, that there was a reason to why the two of us were the only ones left alive. Maybe we were meant to survive, and if this was true, then we did not have a moment to spare.
I presented these thoughts to the man and he agreed that we must leave this instant. So with careful steps and steadfast eyes, the two of us slowly made our way out of the city in hopes that we might escape the arrival of what his wife, in her first moments of mental sickness, referred to as “The Savior”.
III
The first few moments of our escape brought a sense of titanic morbidity while we walked the cold, grey streets using a flashlight we had to pry from the lifeless hands of a cop. One time we thought we heard mad shrills of laughter on all sides of us; mocking and wanting to close in, and another time we thought something sadistic and raving was watching us. But each time we turned we saw nothing but the lifeless bodies looking up toward the sky.
My companion, whose name I later discovered was Aster, asked, while surveying each side of the street with the flashlight and for purposes of conversation to get my mind off of the morbidity we were both feeling and into a more tough mind set, what I did to survive up to this point. Nervously, I told him I survived on good fortune and that was all. A feeling of impending doom, I said in recollection, had made it devilishly hard to breathe and drove me from my study to the outside, where I discovered all that has happened. I told him of the dog and about my feelings that something terribly evil was hunting me and of how, to which he managed a half-smile, I wished to find someone living and did.
Putting together our experiences in a logical and educated fashion: visions of blood carrying people away, the grave feeling that everything had stopped, the violent death of the dog, the feeling we both shared of being hunted suggested to us the end of the world was near.
This realization conjured up stories in the bible having to do with villages getting wiped out by seething, evil monstrosities and of other stories having to do with death and the coming of the devil. Aster looked at me coldly when we passed by a street containing a Police Station, an army recruitment center and Hospital. He had all rights to because these three things were representations of our human ideals and beliefs, the belief that we have absolute, non questioning control over the earth and everything accompanying it.
Looking at it now, all disheveled and barren with only the vicious whistling wind blowing by it like a representation of a dead fossil in the desert, it called up feelings of great fear, inadequacy and danger in our hearts. But the one thing which kept us on our feet, the one thing that kept us going was the fact we both had, for whatever reason, survived. I thought of it as the will of God and used the notion to comfort my companion, as he did with me, whenever his overwhelming distress over what he referred to as ‘Some unseen and seething force of indescribable revulsion slowly stalking us from afar’ surfaced.
Whatever doubt, if any, I had about my immediate assertion that our survival was the will of God vanished when we made out the “You Are Now Leaving” sign in the distance. Our first order of business was to find help in any form possible after leaving, but I celebrated and planned ahead too soon.
I started to run joyfully toward the sign when I heard the sound of Aster’s body collapse on the concrete. Immediately I went to his aid and found his eyes to be stark with fear and his breathing beginning to die away. When Aster saw me he weakly reached up a hand and cried out in an intense bout of perverted shrieks, “THE SAVIOR IS HERE”. I backed up in terror as I observed his body crinkle and, along with his hair, turn ghost white. Aster’s body shook and twisted harshly about the ground before I saw him almost levitated to his feet. From there, now with a blank, empty look on his face, he walked passed me; stopping in the middle of another group of people who had congregated to look up toward the sky.
This was too much for me to handle and I attempted to run but my feet refused to cooperate. They seemed to be nailed down to the ground and whatever had attacked Aster immediately came to me with brutal and unrelentless prowess; dragging my spirit down into hellish terrains where even worse feelings brewed.
Words and actions are not enough to describe the terror I then felt. The entire upper half of my body flinched back like it was being hit by a high speed locomotive. I cried out with such strenuous force that my vocal chords snapped and a bit of blood came up from my mouth; dripping down my lips and chin and onto my clothes.
It was after this that not only did my fear vanish but the entire range of my feelings and cares did as well. Who I was, what I was or anything having remotely to do with my identity was undetectable.
Now a bluish fog was forming over the atmosphere, replacing the air and eerily glazing over the buildings, cars and other structures in a slow, calculating fashion.
The groups of people in front of me, whom I only recognized now as odd looking figures, sprung to life when the blue fog came in contact with them. They all chanted aloud in unison, “The savior is now here, the savior is now here. Come and take us to what you have promised”.
An ear deafening rumble stopped the chanting and up above, in the sky, I saw a massive black void completely fill up all sight; leaving me in complete darkness. It was a black hole.
Out of this dreadful black mouth where detestable creatures of dreams feast, emerged a violent suction that whiffed me up into the air and flung me dozens of miles into it’s black, eternal abysses. During my frightful journey, with the air scratching relentlessly at my face, I saw earth’s entire population of people and its civilizations appear alongside me. Crazed, neurotic and possessed laughter came fleeing out of them as I saw them all burst into a terribly red flame, and like a shooting star, took off into what appeared to be an eerie mist of silver. What was behind it I did not know but what I heard choked me with indescribable horror as I heard the entire cosmos laugh. There was the tearing of limbs, the cracking of bones and the horrid sounds of chewing and slurping.
After the attacks silenced I saw the silvery mist burn away and two green eyes burst open along with a vicious array of sharp, yellow teeth. I didn’t know what it was because these were the only features I was able to discern, but it was beckoning me toward him and I could do absolutely nothing except obey. And as I drifted toward the detestable nightmare the last thoughts that ever ran through my brain before oblivion wiped me out was “MY GOD I AM THE LAST”!