We’ve All Been Here

Sofie the cat was standing on my chest. Her tiny paws jabbed into my stomach and chest as I blinked up in the imperfect dark, groggily registering her loud, pleading mews. I sat up, and she bounced to the floor next to my bed. It was somewhere between late night and early morning. 

“Hurry.” Sofie said, padding along in front of me, leading me down the stairs. Her bluish fur made her barely more than a shadow as she showed me the way.

She led me to the front door and turned her glowlight eyes to me for a moment. “Hurry, Charlie.”

I opened the door and stepped out, facing my suburban lawn, Sofie slithered down the walkway toward the road. I followed, noticing that the street lights were all out. There were no lights on in any of the homes nearby, all was dark but for the starlight. 

She walked to the center of the street and stopped. It was newly paved, just as all the homes here were newly built. It was a clean, smooth, near-obsidian strip.

Sofie looked at me again, then down the street. “It is coming.” 

I started to speak, but was interrupted by another voice echoing Sofie’s words. I turned to see what looked to be a porcupine, spines quietly rattling as it waddled into the street. 

I stood there, in the dark street on the moonless night, bare feet on the pavement. A deer sprang from a bush, stopped in the street and looked in the same direction the other animals had. 

It is coming.

There was a smile in the animals' voices. There was a peace, even rapture there.

Soon, a raccoon trundled into the street, normally nervous hands still and steady. It joined in with the menagerie’s burgeoning chant.

It is coming.

Time passed and with each new animal, the cadence and volume increased. 

When the newcomer would say it, the herd would say it.

It is coming.

Finally, when hundreds of animals from birds to cows to dogs to sheep stood about me, shoulder to shoulder, rank and file. They all stared down the street into the darkness, and the chant suddenly stopped. Silence reigned.

Then there was light. It was silent, but sudden, a flashbang without the bang. The animals all chittered oddly then. The sound was like I was surrounded by billions of cockroaches. Then they all fell into swarms of them. Hissing, chittering, writhing over one another, slipping over my bare feet, endless movement in the searing, too-bright too-white light. 

The light abated. 

Darkness returned. At first the same imperfect, starlit, universal dark, then the street lights returned, and there were no animals. No searing light. Only me. My feet bled as I walked back into the house.  I went straight up the stairs, checked my phone as I laid down, five minutes had passed. I closed my eyes and tried to sleep

But there was chittering there, in the dark.