Back in 2015 (how is that 4 years ago already?), a story came together at the right time to submit it to WindyCon’s short story competition. I was pleasantly surprised when I received an honorable mention in the contest, more so when I realize there were over twenty stories competing. Because of the length, the story will be split across multiple posts. Enjoy!
Monster has retreated to its lair
The flying snake seen near Custer, South Dakota has retreated into the caves at Wind Cave National Park following a fight with National Guard forces. Wind Cave National Park is closed until further notice.
I was just a kid getting by until a couple days after The Rupture. When I lost my mother the year before, she told me “Evie, you’ve got to believe. I’m ready to go. I hate to leave you, but believe, please, that I am going to a better place.”
“I believe, Momma, but I don’t understand.”
Yeah, that’s what I said. Not a sappy, “I love you,” or “you’ll always be with me.” I said, “I don’t understand.”
I still don’t understand why she died, why cancer picks one person but not another. But I do understand many other things. Some I wish I didn’t. Because when you speak, I hear what you say. But I hear what you don’t say as well, the meaning behind your words. And that, beyond so many other Gifts, made me useful.
It put me in a position to be involved in the early days of our local situation. Papa and I have travelled in the nearby states since things settled down, at least in the areas where it’s safe. I’m collecting stories from everybody I can, combining what they said and what they really meant. Papa and I have agreed that we’ll do a road trip before college, so we can travel farther and talk to more people. I’ll post on my blog as I travel, trying to get a feel for how different areas of the country were affected.
But let me back up to the beginning, to the night of The Rupture. It was a Friday night in the middle of May, and I was home with Aunt Mary. Papa worked most Friday nights so we could have Saturdays together. I’d finished what little homework I had for the weekend and was helping Aunt Mary get some seeds into the ground. She called what we were doing subsistence gardening; I called it future pumpkin pies. She wore dainty gardening gloves to protect her nail polish, handing me the seeds to place in the ground. I opened a hole by poking a pencil into the ground, dropped the seed in, then shoved the dirt over it with my bare hands. Nail polish had no business on my fingers, and the dirt would wash off soon enough.
We were about halfway through planting our summer squash and pumpkins when the sky darkened abruptly. Not your usual storm rolling in darkening, this was light one minute and dark the next. Aunt Mary grabbed her seeds and I shoved the pencil in my back pocket as we rushed for the porch, thinking a tornado was about to hit or the skies were about to open up on us.
And they did open up, but not with rain. All around the world, a crack appeared in the sky, like lightning flashing when it stretches across the horizon, but this lightning was purple, then blue, and finally a bright flash of red. And it happened everywhere on Earth at the exact same time, as we found out over the next few days.
Not surprisingly, it was the headline on the evening news, which Aunt Mary still watched, and for most news sites the next morning. Some news writer called it a “rupture in space,” and the name stuck. Scientists were puzzled and photographers entranced.
Things got weird pretty quickly after that. The headlines on most news sites looked like those tabloids you read when you’re bored in line at the grocery store. (Aunt Mary always picked the longest line so she could read all of the headlines.) Monster sightings went well beyond the Bigfoot tales at the checkout lane, with photos and videos as proof, especially that flying snake that landed on Mount Rushmore with hundreds of tourists watching. Those were mixed in with tales of people suddenly having strange abilities, like a kid seen levitating a few feet before walking away as his bicycle was crushed by a car, and a mother claiming her kid was turning into a cat to hide from her.
But Aunt Mary and I were busy on Saturday, finishing up the interrupted planting and harvesting some early veggies, like spinach and radishes, so we could replant those spots. While we planted, Papa turned the compost piles, then took me to see a movie while Aunt Mary sat on the porch and sipped iced tea. It was the proper way to spend a Saturday afternoon, she said, waiting for her friends to visit instead of hiding inside on a beautiful day.
We didn’t hear about anything weird until Aunt Mary turned on the evening news, and it wasn’t until Sunday morning that we saw any signs of these changes here in Edwardsville.