The smell of rotten sulfur permeated the air, chaotic, snuffing out the scent of rain and exhaust fumes as the bright purple and green light enveloped him.

Dozens were swept up in mid-air. The building walls cracked and crumbled, streets fractured open like an egg, and cars burned hot to a crisp. Then, everything stood still as if time suddenly slowed to nanoseconds, the mere ground inches away from Jacob’s face. He braced for the impact, not knowing if he’d get out without a broken bone.

But the ground didn’t meet him.

It was as if he hovered through air, frozen. The howls of the wind silenced to a whisper and the screams abated. Only the dull throbbing of light remained.

Then, darkness penetrated through the light like a rift, spreading outward, tainting whatever it touched and corrupting it. Darkness slithered down a woman’s ankle in front of Jacob, her body hovering halfway off the ground as the shockwave sent her flying, her mouth wide open in a silent scream. She forced her eyes to look down onto her ankle against the halt of time. They widened, and Jacob could feel her silent scream intensified. Their eyes met, and he could tell she was pleading for him to help her. There was nothing Jacob could do. The darkness slithered higher up her legs, to her waists, and her chest until it swallowed her whole. She disappeared.

The darkness took Jacob next. It grabbed the nape of his neck, coiling around his throat and swallowed him head-first. It felt like he was dunked in a pool filled with thick honey and slime, wrapping his entire body, and Jacob couldn’t do a thing to get rid of it. Panic seized him, fearing it would suffocate him. He took a deep breath in an attempt to prolong what was inevitable. The sulfuric smell increased tenfold and inhaling; it made his eyes watered and burned.

A voice slithered into his thoughts, but he couldn’t make out what it said. Soon, more voices joined the first, one after the other, getting louder as if drawing near. Hairs stood all over his body, and all Jacob wanted to do was to cry. Even that he couldn’t do. He was alone, trembling, and blind in the darkness. He tried to call out for his mother and father, hoping he could hear him, wanting them to be close, wanting to bring him home. Then, he remembered the light and the darkness also consumed them, and his chest tightened even more.

One voice was louder than the others. It was not the same voice he heard first, which was rough and brutish, but this one was soft and laced with honey, but it left a trail of short cuts that smoothened at the end of its sentences, wavering and unsure. It was testing him and gauging him. As the voice drew out around him, his skin prickled, and he focused on that voice more and more, thinking it could be his mother or father shouting for him. And the voice did draw near, also attracted to him. Closer and closer it came, and his voice became crisper as the cold.

It spoke in a language Jacob had never heard before. It was garbled and strange with no similar words or a flow of syllables that he could stem it out of nor spell it out for that matter. It didn’t sound angry nor calm, and Jacob had trouble guessing its intention. As soon the voice drowned out the others, its owner so close that Jacob felt it breathing against the lobe of his right ear, he decided not to trust it. The voice halted for a second as if taken aback, as if it had sensed his feeling, and Jacob felt an amused smile creeping behind its next unintelligible words.

The voice paused again and then returned to utter a single word in its strange language, one that surprised Jacob that he could understand:

Open.

So he did.

And Jacob saw, and he wept.

A little girl sat by the windowsill covered in soot, but it was a being Jacob had never seen before. She had pale blue skin that matched the color of the sky. Though she was covered in grime, her dress of white remained as pure as snow. A swarm of bees buzzed overhead, trying to drop bits of honey over its fabrics and a gaggle of hags cackled behind her, though it appeared the little girl couldn’t hear them—couldn’t see him. When the little girl touched the windowpane, it shattered from a single tap, and a slow trickle of blood dripped from the tip of her fingers, but the girl never cried.

Jacob blinked, and the girl disappeared.

Now a man stood where she was last seen. A naked man in the middle of a bridge, chained in iron and sage, with an arrow firmly gripped in his hand while he carried a jagged rock on the other. He had no eyes nor a nose, with maggots filling their dark void as three crows pecked at his bare skin. He stood, unmovable against the breeze of the wind, unhindered by the insects of the flesh that swarmed him. His lips crept to a smile, yet bloody tears streamed from his hollow eyes.

And then Jacob saw a young boy no older than fourteen. A thousand bodies lay on a golden field beneath the feet of a lone, hulking man standing at a hill, large needles sticking out of his armor and flesh, and he screamed and howled for an eternity as the dead sang a hymn that ravished the young boy with wonder in blood and stone.

Jacob peered his eyes away and glimpsed a dead naked woman laying on the bare floor while three others watched as she bled; one wore twigs, leaves, and dirt, the other with gold chains, hair, and shoes, and the last drenched herself in oil as black as night. They turned away from the dead woman, and Jacob swore he heard one of them cackle menacingly.

Then there was another man dressed in red and gold, mouth open but his eyes remained closed, sitting alone on a long table under the swept of the stars, with shadows dancing around him pulled by thin strings dangling from above.

Jacob saw a wailing tempest, stronger and mighty, clamoring against the hinges of a cage where a small cub lay whimpering against the ear-splitting thunder. A giant carcass lay rotting beyond the bars as the cub clawed for it in vain—its mother, its provider—failing to reach her out with its tiny stubby paws.

And then Jacob found himself on a radiant shore with sands as white as snow, with his shadow fleeing him as the water receded, and on a cliff, six riders on six pale horses watched over him, cloaked in dark clothes, dark words, and dark minds. One raised its finger in a shudder, and the others followed, turning the blue waters red as blood.

He shoved the visions as far as he could throw them at the back of his mind, but it always found a way to crawl back in, and all Jacob could do was scream. Scream as loud as he could until everyone—everything—disappeared.

It was what he wanted. For all of them to disappear, to leave him out on his own. Jacob needed to think, and yet the crowd grew around him, some even touching him, until the air thickened and he could hardly breathe.

Jacob closed his eyes, never daring to open them. He clawed at his throat, gasping for air. He squirmed as his throat clenched harder and harder.

Open, the voice returned once again. Open.

And so Jacob did, finding it harder to resist.

When his sight finally returned, with his eyes wide open and aimed upward, night already graced the skies instead of the day.

The voice vanished; The darkness went with it.

Stars dotted in a silent waltz in a clear sky. The storm had gone with the darkness and the honeyed voice, though it left a strange thing.

The moon.

There were two.

Suddenly, the smell of smoke and fire invaded his nostrils, and Jacob went into a coughing fit, his lungs burning as if he held his breath for a minute too long. Phlegm and saliva came out of his mouth, though nothing from his empty stomach. His back ached, pressed against the bare concrete of the street. He rolled over to his stomach and pushed off against the ground, but his arms and knees gave out, and gravity pulled him back onto the ground face-first.

Jacob wanted to lay on the ground for a long while. His muscles ached as if he had been running for an hour. Out of breath, he tried to get back up, but a hand grabbed him by the arm and yanked him up to his feet. His father towered before him.

“Up!” he screamed. “Move!”

There was an urgency to his father’s voice that Jacob didn’t want to argue. His father gripped his arm harder as he dragged him close to his heels. Jacob looked frantically for his mother, but she was nowhere in sight.

And then Jacob saw what lay before him.

The city was in utter chaos. It was as if a giant gaping rift had formed through the middle, cutting the street in half. A gas pipe flamed a streak of fire like a geyser not far from them. Another one popped and sprouted where a man stood, and he caught in flames. His horrible screams etched into Jacob’s memory.

He looked around the battered street and saw The Ford Explorer upside down several feet away. They made it out with scrapes and bruises, and fortunately, nothing too severe or life-threatening.

Pieces of glass were everywhere.

All the buildings’ windows shattered while a few had their facade wholly destroyed, left in crumbled ruins on the ground.

Jacob could see through many of the buildings’ interior: Living rooms, bedrooms, dining rooms, office rooms, and bathrooms. All with many people left dazed and confused as they wandered from the rubble to rubble. Many of its inhabitants crawled out of the debris while others remained unmoving. Most of the cars were upturned or on the side. And one building twenty stories high leaned against another as pieces of debris from its crumbling walls fell onto the crowded streets.

One large piece of glass fell and scraped Jacob’s right temple; blood slowly oozed out of the cut. He instinctively put his hands up, shielding his head from the debris falling onto the scurrying crowd. Someone grabbed his shoulders, spun him around, and pulled him behind a car.

Bang!

A gunshot went off.

Jacob and his father ducked behind the car. Confusion muddled Jacob’s mind, wondering why anyone would start shooting when everything’s falling apart.

Jacob quickly checked himself. So far, no bullet struck him, but he did feel the slight sting of the cut on his forehead, the ringing on his ear joined the cacophony of screams and chaos around him.

Gunshots at a rapid succession resounded far down the street.

There was a piercing scream, followed by shouting from one—no— several people, demanding the shooter to drop the weapon. A small group of police officers piled on someone at the middle of the intersection, while two of them screamed at the crowd to get back.

“What’s happening, dad?” Jacob asked his father, but as he looked upon him, he didn’t found an answer through his expression.

“Come. We should head this way,” his father said sternly.

Father grabbed his shoulders once again and pushed him back up to his feet. Okay, now go!” He bellowed.

Jacob didn’t have to be told twice.