In My Solitude

We never knew it would come to this, but someone should have guessed. When the experiments began and the news reports hardly mentioned a thing about them, we all should have asked more questions. Every incidence of strangeness started shortly thereafter, when the government sanctioned those strange light shows in the sky – the ones that seemed to slice through the very fabric of our world and let something twisted and wrong creep into our reality. I remember what it felt like when I first saw those lights; stomach dropping into my socks, and a shiver of dread from head to toe. Strangely, I don’t remember saying anything to anyone about how they made me feel when I was looking up at them, not even Sam knew. Even with each shocking crack of amber light striking anticipatory fear deeper into my heart, I kept my silence – and so did everyone else. “Best to just not look at them,” that’s what I told myself.

I remember that the experimentation went on for weeks. Weeks of drawing the blinds as night fell to keep in the darkness and keep out those awful lights. Sam and I would regularly catch one another peeking out of the slats in morbid curiosity in the middle of the night. It was like a watching a train wreck or eating burnt popcorn: watching the lights was mesmerizing. Some people would spend all night out in their lawns or on their rooves watching them like it was a free show, or a violent golden Aurora Borealis. They were the first ones to get sick. It wasn’t long before the internet let us know that Cleveland was not alone, we were not the only ones. This strange hypnotic bombardment wasn’t only happening over our city, but in every major city across the country, and dozens of other cities around the world. Video clips and first-hand accounts were popping up on every social media website documenting the strange phenomena in the sky from nearly every corner of Earth. Back when cell phones still worked, and people still felt safe. Planet wide, humanity was quietly watching as some otherworldly blight was eked out of the ether and invited to consume everything we’ve ever loved. How could we have let this happen?

Maybe because it didn’t occur all at once, maybe that’s why no one tried to stop it. No one could imagine how bad things would get. When the sky started changing color - that vast beautiful bright blue graying and fading to a drab and sickly yellowed shade of green - it had been so easy to blame pollution or smog and look the other way. Global Warming and the corporate carbon footprint were at fault. That withering disease that began to spread through urban populations was just a new iteration of an old plague. New mutations of illness were normal, these things come and go. It was weeks before people began to make connections to the lights, see the patterns of where the outbreaks were hitting most heavily. The changes were so subtle at first, just a minor discoloration above the cities with those ominous lights. Just a few people getting unexplainedly sick. But it wouldn’t end there – it was as if their bilious gleam was bleaching the very firmament surrounding them. The encroaching putrescence spread across the sky, as fear and atrophy spread through the infected populous below it.

It was like that famous saying, like with all terrible changes, it came on slow at first and then all at once. So many people were so afraid, infirm, and unsure of one another, the chaos seemed inevitable. The undertow was strong in this sea of bewildering degeneracy. Did the government do this to us? Was it just some strange random happenstance? Did it even matter why? Sallow corruption was spreading from what some thought were gaping invisible holes between dimensions, rips in space and time. Somehow, even during the looting and the unprecedented rioting, the hellish strobing of unnatural lightning lit the streets. By the time that terrible illness was rampant throughout the cities, opinions seemed to have changed about the experiments. Those supposedly harmless firework-like displays of electromagnetic radiation exploding against the backdrop of the starry night sky were only the beginning of the end for us, and people wanted them to cease. How were we to know that simply stopping them wouldn’t stop the transformation from our world to what would come after?

How long has it been, now? Six months at least since the lights went out. The sky has darkened in so many ways since the power failed and the country went dark. It was Summer then, and almost too hot and humid to bear. Now we wish for Summer, for heat of any kind. The sky is bleak and pus-colored, worsening the closer you get to where things began. It seems darker during the day, like the sun – the very light – was eaten away by that aged and ashen discoloration. Heat and sun were just memories, pallid as the world was becoming – ethereal reminiscences of the time before all of this. The only lights left came from the sky, following that creeping gold death, like a grotesque, infectious thunderstorm. The lights didn’t stop when the experiments ended, we had started something that could not be stopped.

We went north and tried not to look back, moving as far away from civilization as we could. Weeks passed without meeting anyone new, though that has been a blessing in its own way. Resources have been scant, and the people left are dangerous. So many have died. Staring at those radioactive lights was a death sentence, and no one knew until it was too late. None of that mattered. We would outrun the change as long as we could. It was okay as long as we were together. We could make it together. We just had to keep going. Best not to look at things too closely. Just keep going.

Sam’s gone, now. It’s still an alien thought even in this terrible nightmare of an existence. He was the only part of this that made life bearable. He tried to keep me safe as long as he could, making me stay indoors as much as possible. The further we got from the cities, the less wan the sky, but it was always spreading, always getting worse. We would move when the horizon started to turn. The tree line would be illuminated in that unfathomable and unnatural yellow, just above those trees that creeping otherness would be slowly streaking through the heavens toward us, like doomed veins from the sight of a blood infection. He was alright for a while, we were alright, but it was always a matter of time. Those damned lights were the cause of the sickness, and he was out in them, gathering our wood and supplies. Doing what needed to be done. He wouldn’t look at them, but just being outside under that sky, it was risk he took for us – for me.

His suffering through the sickness was the worst of it. He withered just like everyone else, jaundiced and hollow-eyed at the end, and I had to witness every horrifying second of it. It was my turn to pull the weight and take my chances. At the end I had to do what was right. Out of love, I had to put an end to it – but once he was gone, I was on my own. Once he was gone, I only had two options.

I sit here every night, in the very cabin where he faded away from me, so far north I’m surprised we didn’t die of hypothermia before we had a chance to get sick. Every night, I stare at this heart-shaped locket he gave me and think of what comes next. “A locket to commemorate our love,” he had said. It was an anniversary gift from before. I look at the golden locket in the dim golden light from the small dirty window of the cabin and consider: what’s left for me? Do I keep moving north, continue on the way we have? The edge of the sky has begun to turn, we would always move when the sky began to turn, but maybe the time for that is over now. This locket is all I have left of Sam, his picture and mine side by side, held close inside a heart I keep always close to my own. It’s all I have left to remember. Maybe tonight is the night I close this locket for good, and leave this world to the evil amber luminescence invading it. Maybe ending it is better. Maybe it’s best to just not look at it.