It was a late Friday night and Alex had just finished his shift. It had been a very intense day for him since he was a one-man marketing department in the small company of thirty-something people that worked there. Honestly, it was on days like these that he asked himself whether it was worth it, and yet as soon as he would reach home and take a glance at the stack of bills on the kitchen table, need triumphed over want in a matter of seconds. Not tonight though, tonight, instead of going home and fermenting in his thoughts, he would go to his high school and college friend’s housewarming party and try his best to distract himself.

After clocking out and catching an Uber, followed by a very pleasant, and by pleasant Alex mostly meant quiet, 45-minute drive from his office to the opposite side of town, Alex found himself in front of a brand new, if small, apartment building where Colin’s supposed party was taking place while holding a cheap bottle of wine he bought yesterday in preparation. He carefully approached the intercom and called Colin’s apartment number. After a couple of seconds of rhythmic beeping from the intercom, the sound died out, which meant whoever was on the other side had picked up.

“Hey man, it’s me, sorry for being so late but I had to pull overtime again. Hope the party is not over yet.”

Unfortunately, the voice that responded afterward did not belong to Colin, who had a mellow and gentle voice, but rather a female, with a slightly high-pitched voice.

“Hello, who is this?”

“Hello, I’m Alex, Colin’s friend, I came to the housewarming party. This is Colin’s apartment, right?

After a small noise, Alex could hear background sounds speaking further away from the intercom on the other side.

“Hey, Colin! There’s some Alex downstairs, says he came to the housewarming?”

“Great, he’s finally here! Sarah, be a darling and go open the door for him. God knows why, but this shitty intercom cannot open the building door for visitors so someone has to do it manually on the ground floor, and, as you can see, I’m busy with the stew.”

“Aye aye chef, on my way, I hope this stew is worthy of the sacrifice I’m making here though.”

After this, Alex again heard someone, presumably Sarah, approaching the intercom.

“Hey, sorry for the wait, I’ll be downstairs in a second to open the main door for you. Is that fine with you?”

A small, almost undetectable frown had formed on Alex’s face.

“Is that fine with me? What kind of question was that supposed to be? Had there ever been someone who answered ‘No’ and turned back to leave when someone asked them that?”

“Yeah, sure, no rush.”

After about three minutes of uneventful waiting, the main door of the building was opened, and Alex was greeted by Sarah. After a couple of awkward seconds where he wasn’t quite sure what to say, Sarah filled in the silence.

“Hey man, will you keep staring, or deign to enter already? I know you said no rush and all that, but I’d like to taste the stew while it’s still hot, so please move those perfectly fine legs and let’s go.”

After receiving a quick grin from her after seeing him flustered, Alex did just that, he moved inside the building and let her guide him to the apartment which was on the third floor. Once inside, He quickly greeted both Colin and Claire, Colin’s girlfriend. Colin moved in for a quick hug and returned his attention to the oven. Claire also gave him a hug, followed by a short introduction.

“Long time no see, this here is my cousin, Sarah. Sarah, this is Colin’s oldest friend, Alex. Now, be good guests and go socialize while the hosts are preparing the food, wouldn’t you? Off you go now.”

Immediately after, Sarah chimed in.

“Okay” she replied, then turned her head from Claire to Alex. “Wouldn’t want to be a bother to our wonderful hosts, would we?”

“Sure, just let me wash my face with some cold water before I join you.”

After quick instructions, he quickly found his way to the bathroom and washed his face. After drying it with one of the towels hanging on the wall, he found himself face to face with his reflection in the bathroom mirror. Alex wasn’t handsome by any measure, but neither was he ugly. All in all, his dark green eyes, his pale, almost too pale, skin as well as wild strands of gray hair scattered all throughout his otherwise black hair made for a slightly above average look, according to his ex-girlfriend at any rate. This stray thought led him to remember Claire’s weird remark about socializing and Sarah’s weirdly fast agreement with her.

“Oh no, not again, I’ve told them time and time again to stop setting me up with people.

Then the previously small, almost undetectable frown on his face was starting to cross the line to a full-blown, very obvious frown.

“Maybe that’s not it. Maybe it’s my imagination, yeah, it’s just politeness 101 to get to know someone you’ve just met.”

After opting to ignore that thought and burying it deep within, he made his way to the living room where Sarah was sitting on the sofa scrolling through something on her phone.

“Hey, sorry for the wait. By the way, do you know if it’s allowed to smoke on the balcony? It’s been quite a while since my last cig and I could use one after today.”

“You smoke, huh, didn’t peg you for one. But yeah, to answer your question, it’s totally fine. I think I’ll join you if you don’t mind sharing.”

“Uh, okay, be my guest.”

Shortly after, the two found themselves at the balcony, which, conveniently enough, had 2 small chairs with a table on which an almost empty ashtray was placed. Alex sat on the chair to his left, took out his pack of Marlboro Reds, offered one to Sarah and took one for himself. After both of them lit the cigarettes and took the first drag, Alex was content to smoke in silence. Sarah, not so much.

“So, not one for conversation, are you?”

“Not necessarily, I’m simply bad at starting them. Otherwise, I like to believe myself at least a little bit competent in upholding one.”

“Okay, I’ll bite,” she said, immediately taking another drag. ”Let’s go with a classic. Do you have any hobbies?”

“Escapism and wallowing in self-pity” thought Alex.

“Well, probably the only other thing except for work that I spend time on is reading, so, I guess reading? Does reading count?

“Absolutely, what kind of books do you enjoy?”

“Fantasy, Sci-Fi, recently got into the relatively new genre called litrpg, but generally anything that allows me to forget reality”

“Oh, you know, a little bit of everything. Philosophy, classics, biographies and memoirs, stuff like that.”

“Hmm, sounds interesting…”

Feeling that slightly longer than usual pause at the end of that ‘interesting’, Alex took that as his cue that it was his turn to act interested in Sarah.

“What about you? What do you do for a li-“ Suddenly stopping mid-sentence, Alex started having an insanely strong feeling that he was about to die, this feeling was accompanied by a torrent of cold sweat all over his body alongside uncontrollable muscle spasms. It was tremendously hard to describe this feeling, mainly because it was so foreign and different than anything he ever felt before, in fact, he had to force himself to hold on to the small table corner lest he actually fell off from his mini-chair. After about a minute the feeling subsided, but not entirely. Turning his attention to Sarah, he asked.

“Did you feel that?” “Have you felt that?” Both of them blurted at each other.

Instantly, both of them heard Claire scream from the kitchen. It didn’t take them long to make their way over to see what happened. The first thing that Alex saw was red, a lot of red, on the floor. But more importantly, he was seeing enough red that if someone was missing that much, they were a goner. Heart reeling from the previous sensation and the amount of blood he was seeing, his heart was pumping him full of adrenaline at this point. As he fully entered the kitchen, the full picture formed itself for him. Colin was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood, his head caved a good 3 centimeters in from something sharp. Not knife sharp, he thought, but rather table corner sharp. Sure enough, after a couple of seconds of surveying the kitchen, he saw the kitchen counter corner all bloody from the lost blood in the general direction Colin’s head was facing. ”He must have fallen during the time that sensation hit. If Sarah and I felt that, chances are it affected both Colin and Claire.” Coming to his senses, he immediately went to check for a pulse.

Extending two fingers to Colin’s carotid artery, he noticed the body was still warm. “Maybe there’s hope” he thought. There was none. One second passed, then three, five, ten. “Fuck, no pulse” he said to himself. The grim reality that he just lost his oldest, maybe only friend, didn’t quite set in. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at this, this wasn’t the first time Alex saw a dead body. In fact, it was the third, second, if you only counted the lifeless bodies of loved ones. He turned to Claire and said.

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing we can do, he’s already dead. Sarah, would you mind taking her to the living room while I call 911?”

Sarah grimly nodded and tried to steer Claire from her chair to the living room leaving Alex alone with Colin’s dead body. He took a couple of seconds to process everything, but it still seemed so surreal to him. “Shit man, you just had to leave me too, didn’t you? Fuck.” he thought. Sadness was steadily turning into anger. “Fuck!” Anger at Colin, for dying, anger at Claire, for reacting so uselessly in a situation where seconds were priceless, anger at himself for being so close and so far at the same time when this happened. Most importantly though, it was mindless anger aimed at a mindless world where someone could die just like that.

Alex took out his phone to call 911 and immediately his eyes glanced over the dreaded ‘No Signal’ icon. “What the fuck is going on here? First that dread, then Colin, now this ‘No Signal’ bullshit.” As soon as he thought that, the lights went out. He was facing the kitchen window, so when the lights went out, the night-lights beyond the window became much more pronounced, but only for a few seconds. Soon enough Alex was overlooking a dark neighborhood, considering that the time between his light and the rest of the lights going out was minimal.

“Okay, okay, calm down. I don’t like this. What was the saying? ‘Once is coincidence, twice is happenstance, and the third time is enemy action. The lights were the fourth time, so what does that make it?”

Alex turned on the flashlight on his phone and found his way over to Claire and Sarah, who was still hugging and comforting Claire, even after the lights went out. He looked at them and said.

“Okay, so, as you can see the lights went out and also there’s no signal. So, can’t call 911. Thoughts?”

After hearing that, Claire broke down even harder. If she was sobbing before, now she was full-on crying. Sarah looked slightly annoyed, and Alex was wondering whether she was annoyed at him for causing Claire to cry after all the effort she put into calming her down or if she was annoyed at Claire for having an extended mental breakdown. She turned her head and spoke.

“No thoughts really, it’s obvious something is going on here, and we can either stay here hoping that someone, somewhere will fix this and we’ll have both our signal and electricity soon, or, we can go out and try to understand what’s going on.”

“Hmm, she’s right” Alex thought, they had to make a choice. He was leaning towards leaving the apartment with both of the girls, getting to either Colin or Claire’s car and taking a drive to the local police station.

Just as he opened his mouth to voice his opinion, a tremendous ripping sound was heard from outside. Alex, Sarah, and Claire made their way to the balcony to try and understand just what the hell was happening. What they saw was something insane happening. The sight was like someone was ripping a cloth, only, the cloth was the fabric of reality and this someone, or something was really, really angry. After the blackout, the night sky was visible quite clearly due to lessened light pollution, and looking at the sky right now, Alex could see no stars. What he did see were gigantic tears in the sky appearing from all over the place. Some were scattered all the way to the horizon, some closer, but only compared to those on the horizon, and finally one opened in the patch of sky overlooking the city center. Seconds after there seemed to be no more new tears appearing, the already formed ones stabilized, or at least Alex thought that they did and from them all, a crimson matter spewed forth. The crimson matter seemed to be in a state between liquid and gaseous, and as soon as it entered our world, it seemed to be trying to homogenously cover every little corner it could find, above, below, to the sides. And the more it spread, the more it was thinning itself out. Shortly after the whole sky turned a dark crimson color, the strange substance started expanding downwards. Alex noticed that most of it was concentrated in the sky and the majority of it that did reach the ground become impossible to make out, at least visually.

After a while, the crimson seemed to settle. He thought it was finally over, whatever it was, but right at that moment, he noticed something far away in the sky falling. Alex couldn’t make out anything about the objects falling far away except that they looked pretty big, and if they looked pretty big at that distance it meant that in reality, they are simply gigantic. Something seemed off to him. ”Even after all this crazy shit, something seems off.” he thought looking mindlessly at the falling objects in the distance. Immediately something clicked inside his mind. “You have to be kidding me, those things are falling from the places where the tears initially appeared, before the crimson covered the sky. Which means that-! Oh, no. No, no, nononononononono” Just as that thought passed through him, he heard a buzzing sound from the sky above where the tear closest to him opened up. He couldn’t waste time, if an object that size was falling somewhere within 30 minutes distance by car away, the impact would cause a mini earthquake for sure.

“Sarah, Claire, listen to me, go and find some cover, and hold on! Now! Go!”

Both of them looked scared, confused, and stunned. Sarah spoke up.

“What do you mean? What is happening?”

“There is no time to explain, move!”

Sarah reluctantly took the still in-shock Claire to the master bedroom and got under the bed while clutching the back of their necks and holding on. After feeling a small sense of relief after sending both Sarah and Claire to relative safety Alex turned to search for cover as well but it was too late. The buzzing sound got closer and closer. There was simply no time for him to do anything but watch. The object falling was shaped like an obelisk, the color of metallic black with a crimson sheen which Alex assumed was reflected from the crimson sky, but he couldn’t be sure. Unfortunately, the speed with which the obelisk was falling was too great for him to make out anything except the general form and the color.

“So, this is how the world ends, huh?” he thought to himself, and then the obelisk crashed into the ground.