My eyes tore open and adjusted to the dim light. The emerald blue sky outside denoted that the hours had sunk far into evening. I lay immobile for decades of seconds, the stiffness of dehydration had flooded my joints and masterfully engineered a deep throbbing between my temples . This alone made the ascent from the floor agonizing....'What time is it?' I muttered to myself, before glimpsing the alarm clock planted at my feet. '5:55' it blurted in rhythmic flashes, the symmetry of the hour mocking my disheveled condition.
Shaking my head I attempted to make sense of the past couple of hours, 'or was it minutes?' I caught myself mid thought. It all seemed so unfeasible and yet all the while so real. I closed my eyes and allowed my mind to travel back to the warmth of the summer night...
Desiring fresh air, I left the amber glow of midsummer festivities and stepped out onto the dimly lit balcony. My shoes created a rhythmic clicking on the concrete balcony, while my black dress moved slightly in the warm evening breeze. With a glass of champagne in my hand I leaned against the ivy clad raining to admire the sight before me. The penthouse suite offered an unparalleled view of the city, skyscrapers littered the skyline, glittering like diamonds with spectrums of light that shone from within. But tonight it was not the city that took my breath away, but the sky that hung above.
Not a single cloud hung in the bronze sky. What I had always known to be a black or blue heaven at such a late hour , now displayed magnificent sepia tones. Rich and deep brown melted into blood red, rose quartz pink, to light amber and then beige. The sky was lit with more stars than I had seen on the darkest of nights far from the obtrusive lights of the city. It was as if a nebula from the farthest reaches of the galaxy had made its way to neighbor our blue and green planet lending its gas, plasma and dust to provide a night time spectacular unlike that which I had ever seen.
Momentarily, I looked back to the warmth of the party continuing on behind me and smiled at the moment's perfection. Turning back to the perfect sky, my breath stopped, in slow motion my glass slipped from fingers, danced with gravity as it fell before shattering into hundreds of peices on the concrete some three stories below. I could not believe my eyes, this surely could not be. I ran... back through the party, out the apartment down the swirling staircase, out of the doors to the street below. I couldn't understand. It did not make sense, no force of nature, no force of man could create the scene that was playing before my eyes. I fell to the corner of the sidewalk with my eyes glued to the sky. An intuitive knowledge rose from within, and I knew that this was not no show, no figment of my imagination but true and real events unfolding in the most impossible of circumstances.
They had hung the Golden Gate Bridge in the sky. Hundreds of clouds colored in the same sepia tones as the night sky composed its grandeur. The clouds hung together like the interconnected tissues of magnified marrow. The strength of one of the worlds greatest architectural wonders was made known simply by its colossal size and impeccable symmetry as it floated nearer and nearer. Soon it took up more than half of the heavens, before silently and abruptly, it stopped. Though its position ceased to grow nearer, the scene continued to move in a now different and unfathomable way.
Slowly the clouds began to break away, falling away like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle turned to an angle not suited to the laws set by gravity's dictatorship. Had I been able to utter words I would have alerted all those inside, but due to the sheer impossibility of what was happening I could spare none. With my mouth gaping open, I watched as bit by bit the bridge fell to shambles. It was what happened next that silenced more than my voice, but the onslaught of loud thoughts as my mind struggled to make sense of it all.
With the clouds falling faster and faster, it became clear that the bridge would soon cease to retain a perceptible form. As the final grouping of clouds fell away, the air trembled and the sky exploded. Thousands of black birds projected through the hole in the sky where the bridge had once stood. I followed as the massive flock of black silhouettes dis burst across the sky. And then my eyes fell upon them..... the Empire State, The Pyramids and several other architectural marvels of the world were suspended in the heavens above. Piece by piece they too began to fall apart.
Crowds of pedestrians had begun to form through the streets, all pointing, all waiting in horror as their minds slowly began to conceive of the horror of dissipating reality. The clouds forming buildings and monuments began falling apart quicker and quicker, soon a cannon of black bird explosions was beginning to fill the sky. Soundlessly they soured as the sky's darkness increased, soon very little of the night's sky was visible. Black engulfed every single corner of the sky. It seemed to me that the world had never been so still, had never been so silent, paralysis had infiltrated all living things, no a soul had the courage to breath or blink. Motionless fear slowly began filling the spirits of all and a shallow murmur gave way to terrified screams as blackness began to descend upon the earth. I stood still as frantic crowds began to dash through the streets. I observed in petrified horror as the buildings around me began to slowly fall apart soon become un-recognizable. Intuitively I knew what was to happen next. As I closed my eyes, I began to feel the soft caress of wings, opening them again I found myself surrounded in darkness. Now I knew...this was the end.
I fell through space, through time, and was born to this floor, this time 5:55. Stiff and sore I lie surrounded by black.... with no past, no present, no future. No hope.
