Chapter 2
The headlines tell me nothing. No one knows what’s happening.
Whatever the hell is going on, it’s not just concentrated to the wedding. It’s the whole fucking world.
Or maybe just my world?
Maybe this all only exists in my reality, and the hurt and horror and dying is restricted to my experience?
Archimedes whimpers, and I understand that no, others are still experiencing this alongside me. It’s not just me who’s trapped; everyone else is trapped, too. They’re suffering, too. Only they won’t remember when the day resets. I’m alone in that.
Because it is somehow tied to me. It must be.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I refresh all the news sites.
There are conflicting theories. A catastrophic solar storm. An atmospheric anomaly. Russia. Chemical warfare. My heart beats hard and fast. I press my hands to my chest trying to contain it.
I close my eyes and see gas masks. Mass casualties. My friends dressing up in their wedding best only to choke on fumes. I see blistered skin. Chemical burns. Shriveled eyes in gaping sockets.
“This is bullshit,” I say, again refreshing my browser. “Why is this happening to me? I’m not a criminal. I’m not evil. I’m not the worst person in the world.”
Archimedes huffs from the closet.
“Thanks a lot, Archie.” New headline. Multiple reports of meteors and meteor showers. Utah. Nevada. Alaska. Iceland. Australia. Japan. “Is this an apocalypse scenario? Seems like overkill. I get it. I’m going to die in the loop no matter where I go. Point taken.”
I get up and fetch Archie from the closet. He allows me to pick him up. He burrows into my chest, and I stroke the extra soft spots under his ears. We sit on the bed, and I hit refresh.
A video pops up. Shaky cell phone footage recorded out of a car window, of a plane falling out of the sky and crashing into a distant field.
Autoplay. Another video, this one taken from the Asbury Park Boardwalk down the shore, an hour south of me.
Multiple planes dropping into the ocean.
Autoplay. A plane taking out the London Eye.
“Um…” The page goes blank.
I hit refresh and nothing happens.
Again, and nothing. My Wi-Fi is down.
The lights flicker, then go off.
I dig my phone out from under my pillows and turn it on. No service. SOS.
It dawns on me that when I die this time, I’m dying alone.
I thought I was doing the right thing by taking myself out of the equation, by skipping the wedding, drastically changing the course of the day. Maybe it was my cowardice masquerading as strategy. Haven’t I learned by now? Not confronting a problem doesn’t make it go away. It’s so fucking annoying.
I squeeze Archie tighter to my chest. He grunts in protest.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’m so sorry.”
I set him down in the bathroom, toss him some treats, close the door, then cautiously reapproach the windows on the balls of my feet.
The dark sky has marbled a shade of noxious neon green. The fluffy clouds have expanded, or sunken. They’re closer now. They’ve swallowed the roof of the building across the street. They’re a weird texture. They look fuzzy, like forgotten fruit.
Do I get in my car? Drive up to the Lakeside to find my friends? Try something else to stop this from happening? Is it too late?
Wait.
What’s that noise? What is that? That whizzing. Like something traveling fast through the air. It’s not a bird. Or a bullet. It’s denser. Bigger.
A plane?
It’s getting louder. Closer. Louder. Closer. Louder. Closer. Louder.
Too close.
“Archie!” I run into the bathroom, peel the cat out of the corner, and hop into the tub, cover his body with mine. This fear glues my eyes shut, and I just hope I’m strong enough and solid enough that whatever happens next, Archie doesn’t feel it.
The crash is so thunderous it disrupts my sense of self, severs my thoughts from my body. The earth shakes, and my head hits the side of the tub. I can no longer orient myself in space. My eyes pop open to observe nebulous surroundings, my vision blurry. My ears ring.
Screams from the street. Car alarms.
My neck aches; it’s a struggle to hold up my head. I lean to the side to rest on the lip of the tub.
THUD.
THUD.
Are zombies at the door?
THUD.
THUD.
More screaming. So much screaming.
Archie scrambles free of my grasp and wedges himself behind the toilet.
“Archie. Archie…”
I manage to get one leg out of the tub, then one arm, then let gravity do the rest. I crawl across the bathroom floor.
My head is a concrete block. Everything swirls out of focus.
I must have bitten my tongue because my mouth tastes of blood.
I reach up to the sink and pull myself to stand.
The floor tilts beneath me as I stumble out into the living space.
It’s like I’m on a carnival ride. I bump against the wall, shift my weight forward, then back, then forward, trying to stay upright in a world that’s gone askew.
The horrors of the loop intensify every time, become harder and harder to surmount, which makes me wonder where it could possibly go from here? What’s more intense than the end of the world? Than…
There’s a rap at my window. I blink, rub my eyes. Look.
The clouds have taken over everything. There’s nothing but darkness, and whatever moves inside it. I catch glimpses, something shifting within the clouds, I just can’t figure out what it is. What exactly I’m looking at. I can’t see it.
But it sees me.
I see you.
A light so bright it burns like fire. It’s all over me. My skin, my skin, I’d rip it off if I could. It’s so hot. Everything is white. Everything is pain. I want to run but I can’t move. I’m in the light. The light has me.
The window squeals open, and the light smothers me, takes me whole.
—
I come to on the pavement. On the street.
It’s looking at me. With its eye. There’s a giant, cloudy eye above me. No. It’s inside my head. It’s looking at me from inside of my head. It sees me, and I see it.
Its skin, or shell, the exterior, is a pale gray.
Its eye is massive and reptilian, set in a giant domed skull.
And its mouth—its mouth is the worst part.
It’s not on right. It’s vertical. Like a sideways Venus flytrap.
It’s puckered and proportionally small but toothy.
The body is humanoid, head set on broad shoulders.
Its long arms reach toward infinity. Its hands are enormous, as big as its head, with six extensive fingers.
Its mouth rips wide, wider, wider, wider, wider, as it makes a low, vulgar gurgling noise. Another mouth emerges, this one with even more teeth. Longer, sharper teeth.
Of course, it’s not just an apocalypse.
It’s an alien apocalypse.
For a moment, it disappears into the darkness, into the clouds, slipping into the recesses of my mind.
A flash of neon lightning and it reemerges.
It’s not the classic green Martian, it’s not a Xenomorph, it’s not War of the Worlds, it’s not E.T.
It’s all of them together and somehow even worse. An abysmal amalgamation.
The razor of light returns, boring into my skull. It’s on me. It has me. I’m in it. It’s pulling me up. It’s sticky. It’s thick. I can’t get out. I can’t get out. It’s not a tractor beam, or maybe it is just entirely more awful than fiction prepared me for.
It’s loud. It makes this outrageously repulsive suctioning, slurping sound as it takes me, and I can feel it. Like there are hundreds of tiny, gummy mouths chomping on my skin. This bizarre, pulsing pressure all over my body.
It smells of smoke and rain, and a little bit like gasoline. I always liked the smell of gasoline. Smells like going somewhere.
The sensations intensify, the light squeezes me, and it triggers this panic in my body that I can’t override, that I can’t shut off.
My survival instinct doesn’t understand, hasn’t yet gotten the hint.
There is no survival. I’m at the mercy of an alien being.
An invader. A monster. It’s writhing around in my head.
I don’t know what it wants, but I know it will get it.
I know I’m floating, that I’m high above the ground—I can sense it. My feet tingle.
There’s that gasoline smell in my nostrils, in my throat, only I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to stay here. I want to stay. I want to stay. I want to stay.
I miss them already. Archie, my disgruntled son. I hope he’s okay.
Cass. Luke. Evan. Wyatt. Steph. Jace. Even Ravi. Even Danny.
Everyone in my life.
I miss them all so much. I love them all so much.
There’s the distance between us. Miles. Years.
Experiences. Heartbreaks. Resentments. Mistakes.
But it’s not too far. It’s not too far to cross that distance.
Or to just accept it. To forgive it. Learn to live with it.
The only world I want to be in is a world with them in it.
Even if it gets messy and so sad and sometimes lonely and always imperfect.
I want the world as it is, my life as it is. My life. I want it. I don’t want to go.
Don’t take me.
Don’t take me.
Let me go.
Get out of my head.
Let me go. Let me go let me go let me go. Leave me be, won’t you? Please. Please. It’s too much. Please. Just let me go. Let me go.
An intense, atrociously wet noise deep in my brain, like the click of a slobbering tongue.
The alien responds in one word. The word is not spoken out loud, or in a language I should understand, but I hear it, and I do. I understand. The word is, “Okay.”
I’m falling through the dark.
I’m falling. Falling, falling, falling, falling, falling. Because this is what happens when we’re let go. When we let go. We fall.
Wind whips through my hair, my limbs flail like fucking crazy, and it’s happening so fast I don’t even have time to wonder how long it’ll take to hit the ground. I don’t even have time to scream.