Light the Way

95%

August 2

Tonight feels darker than last night. I suppose that's why I'm writing this, why the pen is already slippery in my hands and my heart is beating a little too fast. It's the Black Wave. I can feel it already.

It's the monster under every little kid's bed (it was the monster under mine) and now it's crawling out from under the mattress, nails digging into the bed frame, large inky body spilling out into the room. Everyone can feel it coming, just no one ever mentions it.

The Black Wave. Ha! Just last year my friend, Mia, and I joked about it, laughing when we thought back on the stories we were told as children, of a mysterious wave of darkness washing over distant cities and swallowing all who lived in them. I mean, it was a children's story, told to frighten them into eating their vegetables. How were we to know it was real?

Now Lower Sector is on the verge of losing all light. It's on the news: dimmed street lights, flickering lamps. Toasters still work apparently. They can still turn on the television and bake a cake and refrigerate their steaks (hell, they could do all three simultaneously if they so desired), they just can't turn on the lights. Weird.

I suppose when it started a couple months ago I wasn't all that worried because it felt distant and I was disconnected from it. But Lower Sector is about to lose their light completely and now the process is starting all over, except it's here now. Here, in Middle Society, right on my doorstep, knock, knock, knocking on my door. If I wasn't so freaking scared, I'd laugh.

Our cute, laughable children's story has just bitten us in the ass.