By B. A. Wasden - Part-time Tutor
November 8, 2023

Franklin sat in the bed of his truck; a beer hanging loosely in his hand. The alcohol had begun its ascent up his body, the weight of the day melting away. The stars were like headlights in the sky. Franklin craned his head; he hadn't looked at the sky in... He didn't know how long. Long enough that the sight of the swirling night sky provoked in him a rare sense of melancholy. Maybe he would cry? He hadn't cried in a long time. After taking a swig from his half-empty bottle, he crumpled into himself. His gaze was pulled down to the forest ground. A frown deepened on his face and a sigh creeped out. The forest floor was laden with the old mush of dying and dead leaves. 

A beetle, just barely visible in the moonlight, skittered off into the deeper darkness. A leaf not yet crumpled and emended in the ground blew away with a sudden breeze. The truck started to shake. The wind picked up with a start. A howling gust whistled through the canopy. Franklin seemed not to notice, perhaps dulled by sadness or booze. He smacked his mouth loudly, a strange, unwelcome taste dancing on his tongue. His truck shook ever more violently. 

Franklin pushed himself up from his truck when he finally noticed, catching himself with an unsteady sidestep. It wasn't just his truck shaking – everything was. The trees, rocks, and twigs hummed with a rhythmic vibration. The strange taste grew thicker and more potent in Fraklin's mouth: it was the taste of aluminum. 

The environment – the ground, the rocks, and the trees – screamed a howl of terror and pain that was pulled from the depths of these inanimate things. Franklin desperately covered his ears trying to block out the noise. But he could not. Even his body was screaming, and his skin crawled and thumped as it too began to produce a horrible shaking screech. He fell to the ground, his fingers gripping tighter and tighter to the back of his head. If he could crush his skull, he would – anything to stop the horrible sound. 

The moonlight took on a blinding shine, and the moon itself hung over Franklin when his eyes shot open, its bulbous form large and opulent in the night sky. Light poured across Franklin's face and tears streamed down his cheeks. It wasn’t the moon that hung over Frankin. No, it was something else entirely. The sound stopped suddenly – all the noise stopped – and nothing moved. Franklin was frozen. He started to rise into the air, closer and closer to the moon that was not a moon.  

Franklin could not remember what happened after. There was only the room, a wet, gray room. He was covered in some kind of slick film that reminded him of the bile his dog would throw up after eating grass. When Franklin sat up, his body felt raw and sore. He looked around the room to find the walls and ceiling had a shine to them, a glistening puddle-like quality. Orifices covered the wall randomly, seemingly placed without thought. Franklin stood up. His body felt hollow, as though something had been scooped out of him and placed somewhere far away.  

He began to move through the room. The floor below him sloped, as if a half-sphere had been dug out of the spot. Franklin stepped awkwardly onto the lip of the shallow pit. The room twisted; the walls took on a curved appearance. Opposite Franklin, the wall folded away creating a crevice. It looked like an open wound, bleeding black blood. As Franklin stood there, an instinct flooded over him – an instinct older than him, older than even the human race. He ran toward the door, anger clenching his heart in a vice grip. The pit threw off his stride. He fell violently to the ground, blood spewing from his nose. When Franklin pushed himself up, the floor greedily soaked up the blood. A static zap crawled its way across his body and an invisible string pulled him by the waist. He rose from the floor and the dark cut in the wall stared at him. 

Tendrils swam their way toward him. They were like eels, and they danced upwards and downwards through the air, taking their sweet time as they approached Franklin. The instinct came once again to him – he bit and gnashed at the air, spit madly falling from his mouth. The tendrils were the same gray as the walls, but were perfectly smooth, with no fissures or defects. Franklin tried to bite one as it came close to his face. The tendril pulled back, quickly avoiding the bite and moved to his arm. The other did the same, entrapping him slowly and meticulously leaving his head for last.  

Up his face they went, inch by inch, the cold tendrils sucking the warmth away from him. They closed his mouth, painfully holding it closed by the chin. They covered his eyes last, and the last thing Franklin saw was the black wound in gray flesh staring at him.