A Plague of Darkness
A Plague of Darkness
Considering how quickly the darkness enveloped the world, I feel it is necessary to work backwards from when the blight started to infect our globe to date. If humanity emerges from this cataclysm one day, it is important that there is some form of text, record, or evidence of what humanity was before it fell.
Looking back now, I can see the signs clear as day. People started to disappear overnight. More frequently that one would expect. And in more gruesome fashion than your run of the mill kidnapping. The news would report a missing person, be it man, woman, or child, and delve into the gory details, ravenous for views and clicks of their latest grotesque display. A carpet of blood trailing down a car park stairwell. A car filled with viscera. A child's ear and arm found on a playground slide.
Of course if all these atrocities occurred in one city in a short space of time, the resultant public and government panic would be swift and decisive. But no, this creeping invisible enemy struck often, and all but all across the globe. It would take months for the world to come together, putting the jigsaw pieces together to understand the picture at large. This was an enemy for the world.
What started to increase panic was how death seemingly spread to the families of those initially struck down. A grandparent disappeared in a retirement village was one thing. The entire immediate family of said grandparent vanished in a bloody cloud in cinema car park.
The police started to take action, patrolling at night, but the disappearances continued. Then reports come in from various sources of deathly pale figures skulking at night. Darting from shadow to shadow, advancing on civilians. The stories are few and far between, those who tell them talk of sprinting for their lives as the spectral being advanced upon them. One link between these "folk tales" is that the figures would give up the chase upon the would-be-victim entering a building. Little did we know that this security would be our downfall.
The government's response to these atrocities: downplay, divert, and dismiss. Some blamed gang violence. Some sought to simply explain them away by simple acts of domestic violence that the "left wing media" had exaggerated. Some blamed foreign powers wanting to undermine incumbent powers. But it didn't matter. No amount of pontificating or procrastinating could stop the tidal wave of bodies from turning up one day.
Except, no bodies ever turned up. Yes, body parts were occasionally found amongst the detritus and debris following these faceless attacks. But never a body. And yet those who disappeared were never truly seen again. Except for those reports of distant relatives posting on social media that they had seen their loved one's faces, pressed against a window on a cold winter night, only for them to look again and the visage had disappeared. Of course, as we all learnt, this was akin to your 4 minute warning on a nuclear warhead approaching. Those seeing the faces of lost relatives were not long for this world.
One accepted pattern that did emerge was that the disappearances only occurred at night, and as an addendum to that, they tended to only happen in public places. People started to blame foreign powers, utilising spies and subterfuge to somehow grasp a foothold on foreign soil. Things grew so dire that this was almost considered believable but for the fact that each nation suffered equally.
And then the darkness came. The light of the day became shorter and shorter. Not just winter short. Unnaturally short. Soon, the hours of light were outnumbered by the dark, almost matching the number of those taken by this silent enemy against those left to watch in horror. Scientists flailed and panicked for a rational explanation but none stuck, and more pressingly there was no solution.
Daily rolling news could barely keep up with this cascade of calamity. Each day a new tragic figure to a global missing persons count. It continued to tick over and over until the percentage of the global population became too much to bear. Even now I can't bring myself to repeat the figure. Soon, TV news crews started to become skeleton crews. What was once a sickeningly cheery two-handed morning breakfast television show, was more akin to a hostage tape, fronted by a bedraggled host forced to relay the grimmest of grim news.
As populations plummeted, the extremists started to take note. Be it religious, or political, they took advantage of the mandatory curfews, that grew tighter by the day as darkness drew closer. Each nation saw a mob of armed civilians storm public buildings, demanding solutions to a problem that no one understood.
And those who stood in the dark, impotently raging at our leaders, were cut down without remorse or emotion. And the media of the world caught the carnage on carnivorous celluloid. Now we saw Them. Our loved ones, sharp in tooth and claw, pale of skin. Ripping into humanity, with dispassionate violence. Tearing crimson life from throats, turning those who stood before them to their side. Biding their time, they built up their forces and struck when we lay arrogant and docile, ignorant in our belief that we had some form of control over this apocalypse.
We watched, horrified on our devices. Viewing violence and tragedy unfold on a global scale. And what did we do? Nothing. We could do nothing. Nothing but watch as man, woman, and child, turned on family, friend, and stranger, like they were nothing more than shafts of wheat before the scythe.
Then we turned to our literature. Demons afraid of the light, unable to enter premises without permission. We were sure that we were fighting a plague of darkness borne from fiction and legend. There were those who clutched crucifix, and blades blessed by holy water who led crusades into the dominant night. None returned.
But monsters did return. As our essential links to the outside world, internet, and television, were cut and destroyed, our only communication outside became the "tap, tap, tap" of clawed fingers knocking on our doors. I peered through my windows to witness in horror my street full of these pale monstrosities. They wore the skins of our loved one's but behind their blazing red eyes, and teeth dripping with gristle and blood, they were no kin of ours.
And now I looked at the figure at my door. I write to you now, knowing that their knocking hypnotic, and I now feel that they have somehow begun to talk to me. Speaking of my birthday's gone by and time's of happiness. I feel entrapped by their siren's call. The logical side of my brain tells me that I must write what I know before I fall prey to their calls.
But I know that I cannot last out this storm. Either my supplies will dwindle and I will be forced to venture out into the what little sunlight we now have left, or my mind will fracture and I will fall into the deadly embrace of the impostor at my door. All I ask is that if some form of life, true life, rises out of this horror that they do better than my humanity.
My mother is calling now. I am going to the door.
Looking back now, I can see the signs clear as day. People started to disappear overnight. More frequently that one would expect. And in more gruesome fashion than your run of the mill kidnapping. The news would report a missing person, be it man, woman, or child, and delve into the gory details, ravenous for views and clicks of their latest grotesque display. A carpet of blood trailing down a car park stairwell. A car filled with viscera. A child's ear and arm found on a playground slide.
Of course if all these atrocities occurred in one city in a short space of time, the resultant public and government panic would be swift and decisive. But no, this creeping invisible enemy struck often, and all but all across the globe. It would take months for the world to come together, putting the jigsaw pieces together to understand the picture at large. This was an enemy for the world.
What started to increase panic was how death seemingly spread to the families of those initially struck down. A grandparent disappeared in a retirement village was one thing. The entire immediate family of said grandparent vanished in a bloody cloud in cinema car park.
The police started to take action, patrolling at night, but the disappearances continued. Then reports come in from various sources of deathly pale figures skulking at night. Darting from shadow to shadow, advancing on civilians. The stories are few and far between, those who tell them talk of sprinting for their lives as the spectral being advanced upon them. One link between these "folk tales" is that the figures would give up the chase upon the would-be-victim entering a building. Little did we know that this security would be our downfall.
The government's response to these atrocities: downplay, divert, and dismiss. Some blamed gang violence. Some sought to simply explain them away by simple acts of domestic violence that the "left wing media" had exaggerated. Some blamed foreign powers wanting to undermine incumbent powers. But it didn't matter. No amount of pontificating or procrastinating could stop the tidal wave of bodies from turning up one day.
Except, no bodies ever turned up. Yes, body parts were occasionally found amongst the detritus and debris following these faceless attacks. But never a body. And yet those who disappeared were never truly seen again. Except for those reports of distant relatives posting on social media that they had seen their loved one's faces, pressed against a window on a cold winter night, only for them to look again and the visage had disappeared. Of course, as we all learnt, this was akin to your 4 minute warning on a nuclear warhead approaching. Those seeing the faces of lost relatives were not long for this world.
One accepted pattern that did emerge was that the disappearances only occurred at night, and as an addendum to that, they tended to only happen in public places. People started to blame foreign powers, utilising spies and subterfuge to somehow grasp a foothold on foreign soil. Things grew so dire that this was almost considered believable but for the fact that each nation suffered equally.
And then the darkness came. The light of the day became shorter and shorter. Not just winter short. Unnaturally short. Soon, the hours of light were outnumbered by the dark, almost matching the number of those taken by this silent enemy against those left to watch in horror. Scientists flailed and panicked for a rational explanation but none stuck, and more pressingly there was no solution.
Daily rolling news could barely keep up with this cascade of calamity. Each day a new tragic figure to a global missing persons count. It continued to tick over and over until the percentage of the global population became too much to bear. Even now I can't bring myself to repeat the figure. Soon, TV news crews started to become skeleton crews. What was once a sickeningly cheery two-handed morning breakfast television show, was more akin to a hostage tape, fronted by a bedraggled host forced to relay the grimmest of grim news.
As populations plummeted, the extremists started to take note. Be it religious, or political, they took advantage of the mandatory curfews, that grew tighter by the day as darkness drew closer. Each nation saw a mob of armed civilians storm public buildings, demanding solutions to a problem that no one understood.
And those who stood in the dark, impotently raging at our leaders, were cut down without remorse or emotion. And the media of the world caught the carnage on carnivorous celluloid. Now we saw Them. Our loved ones, sharp in tooth and claw, pale of skin. Ripping into humanity, with dispassionate violence. Tearing crimson life from throats, turning those who stood before them to their side. Biding their time, they built up their forces and struck when we lay arrogant and docile, ignorant in our belief that we had some form of control over this apocalypse.
We watched, horrified on our devices. Viewing violence and tragedy unfold on a global scale. And what did we do? Nothing. We could do nothing. Nothing but watch as man, woman, and child, turned on family, friend, and stranger, like they were nothing more than shafts of wheat before the scythe.
Then we turned to our literature. Demons afraid of the light, unable to enter premises without permission. We were sure that we were fighting a plague of darkness borne from fiction and legend. There were those who clutched crucifix, and blades blessed by holy water who led crusades into the dominant night. None returned.
But monsters did return. As our essential links to the outside world, internet, and television, were cut and destroyed, our only communication outside became the "tap, tap, tap" of clawed fingers knocking on our doors. I peered through my windows to witness in horror my street full of these pale monstrosities. They wore the skins of our loved one's but behind their blazing red eyes, and teeth dripping with gristle and blood, they were no kin of ours.
And now I looked at the figure at my door. I write to you now, knowing that their knocking hypnotic, and I now feel that they have somehow begun to talk to me. Speaking of my birthday's gone by and time's of happiness. I feel entrapped by their siren's call. The logical side of my brain tells me that I must write what I know before I fall prey to their calls.
But I know that I cannot last out this storm. Either my supplies will dwindle and I will be forced to venture out into the what little sunlight we now have left, or my mind will fracture and I will fall into the deadly embrace of the impostor at my door. All I ask is that if some form of life, true life, rises out of this horror that they do better than my humanity.
My mother is calling now. I am going to the door.
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