The silence hung heavy on the line. Staring at his phone, Kyle watched as his sister’s call information dropped away from the screen. The mirror-like reflection showcasing the horror in his face more darkly than in his bathroom vanity.
Her shouts still echoing in his mind, Kyle stuffed his phone into his jeans pocket and dashed to the door before remembering he needed his car keys to get anywhere. His sister, Nora, lived on the opposite side of the city. Even with speeding it would still take twenty minutes to get to her house. Twenty minutes where she was stuck alone with that psycho.
Nora had been with Xander for around 5 years now. First bringing her new boyfriend to Kyle’s own wedding to meet the family. Kyle never understood the thought process with this decision. Sure, let’s toss this dude right into the deep end. Fully family drama with no foreplay. Xander fit in immediately, somehow walking the fine line between Nora and Kyle’s old-school conservative parents and Kyle’s own nerdy introversion. Xander did his best work in groups. He did his worst alone with Nora.
Pepperway family gatherings came and went, Xander attending less and less. Eventually they also started seeing less of Nora too. Kyle did his best to be supportive, trusting his sister to have her own best interests at the forefront. He and Nora didn’t have the best childhood. Mentally and emotionally absent father, a mother who cared more for looks than love, and a verbally and physically abusive step-father.
As a child, Kyle felt powerless, as though his life was spinning wildly out of control. To combat this, he strove to be the perfect child. Mature, an “old soul”, and “just so smart” were some of the descriptors attached to him by family and friends. Unfortunately, there had to be an outlet for that lost childhood innocence, that outlet was Nora. The only person that was around each and every day. The one person he didn’t owe anything to (that he thought at the time). The sister who worshiped the ground he walked on. Kyle hated his sister growing up just for the pure fact that she was the one person he was allowed to treat the way his parents treated him.
Since leaving for college Kyle had been working on repairing that relationship. He knew his actions back then were abysmal, so he went out his way to make it up to her as adults. This led to being overly cautious with criticism or anything that could be considered to have a negative connotation. His sister was the one person on the planet who had gone through what he had and came out that same other side. The least he could do was support her now.
“Where are you going? Is everything ok?” a concerned voice pulled Kyle from his musings.
It takes him a moment to reorient himself to his current situation. The panic ebbs a bit just at the sound of her voice. Penny watches him from her position on the floor playing with Evan. Taking a breath to try and center himself, Kyle stands at the kitchen table, keys in hand.
“It’s Nora… Well Xander, really. I think it's bad this time. I have to go over there and get her.” Kyle says, eyes filling with tears. “Do you mind? I should be back soon. I hope.”
“Shit, I mean, shoot. Yes. Go.” Penny curses with a glance at their son. Both her and Kyle swore like sailors before having Evan three years ago. It’s a habit that neither of them have completely broken.
“I love you both. Be good for mommy, E-man.” Kyle takes off out the garage door and into his sedan, slamming the key into the ignition.
Pulling out of the driveway, he began to second guess himself. Maybe he was overreacting, maybe things weren’t as dire as he feared. He began to go over the phone call in his mind, having driven the route from his house to Nora’s plenty of times already.
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Kyle was on the ground wrestling around with Evan, the little boy laughing his head off as his dad flipped him upside down and around. Penny was reading on the couch while the boys rough-housed, looking over with a small smile every once in a while. As Evan was screaming his joy, Kyle’s phone lit up on the TV stand. An incoming call from Nora wasn’t anything out of the ordinary.
“Go get mommy.” Kyle whispered to his son with a grin.
“AHH! No! The tickle monster!” Penny laughed, as the toddler ran to his mother and began ineffectually tickling her.
“Hey, what’s up?” Kyle stepped away from the ruckus that was his life now. The voice from the other end was hesitant and quiet, as though trying to not be overheard.
“... Hey. I messed up. He’s really mad this time. I’ve never seen him like this before. I don’t know what to do. I couldn’t think of anyone else to call. I’m sorry.” Nora half whispered through the phone. Knowing this was more serious than anticipated, Kyle stepped into the bathroom and locked the door. Evan was a nosey kid, and wouldn’t let his parents have a moment to themselves normally, so a locked door was the only deterrent.
“What’s going on? Are you ok?” Replied a flustered Kyle.
“I just… He’s just... I can’t even think. It’s too much Kyle. I can’t do this anymore. Nothing I do is right. My phone is broken now, I’m lucky to have even gotten this call through. Jesus. He’s just so angry.”
“Woah woah woah, what? Your phone is broken? What happened!?”
“I turned off my location sharing because he was starting to show up to places where I was ‘just to check.’ It freaked me out. I tried talking to him about it, but you know how he gets. He doesn’t listen, especially when he gets in his moods.”
Kyle knew all about Xander’s moods. Trying to see the best in people, Kyle had been trying to help Xander get his anxieties under control. Things had seemed to be on the upswing whenever Kyle was around. Xander would go on about his therapy, or self help books he was reading. He seemed to truly understand that his reactions to things weren’t right. The two men had spent hours talking about mental health, the struggles of overcoming the disadvantages provided by their parents. Yet he would still have his episodes where he would berate Nora, sending her tsunamis of texts detailing how awful she was treating him, or how he didn’t want to be alive anymore. Turning each of his own issues into a “valid reason” to project his least favorite views of himself onto her.
Having gone through similar mental health crises in his own past, Kyle wanted to help this guy who was supposed to be a brother to him. Nora assured Kyle constantly that she was ok and she was also trying to help Xander be the man she saw in him. It seems the kindness extended from the Pepperways created a long enough leash for Xander to choke them with.
“Shit, he heard me I think. Can I crash with you tonight? I need to get out of here. I’m really scared.” Nora’s terrified voice evoked the image of the little girl that Kyle had failed when they were kids.
“Of course! You know you’re–”
“I am just talking to Kyle. I am going over there. This is bullshit. You can’t treat me like this.” She was talking away from the phone now, clearly Xander had come into the room.
“Treat YOU like this? Are you fucking kidding me dude? You deserve everything you’ll get you lying whore.” Xander’s muffled voice became increasingly clear as he moved closer to the phone, closer to Nora. All Kyle heard then was a smack, thump, and the sound of glass crunching before the line went dead.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
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Kyle pressed down on the gas, his nerves re-ignited. He wasn’t overreacting, this was bad. Flying down the highway he just kept his mantra going, Please don’t be too late. Please don’t be too late. Even still, he had his usual guilt for being that asshole on the road, switching lanes to pass anyone he could. How in the world could he feel guilty in a time like this? No one else even notices when they drive like lunatics, especially in this city. At least the guilt was a slight distraction from the fear.
Five miles to go, four, three; Cars flew by on each side of him as he wove in and out of traffic. All of a sudden, brake lights flashed in front of him.
“Fuuuuuck, come on. What is happening!?” cursing the morons around him, Kyle tried to navigate around the slowing cars.
There was barely any room between the cars to navigate so Kyle resorted to the one thing he absolutely could not stand when other drivers did. He crossed the solid white line and flew by everyone on the right side of the highway. Feeling that bump as he went over the rumble strip was enough to crank his guilt up to another degree. He only managed to pass a dozen cars or so before he saw what had caused this massive traffic jam. A massive fissure cracked the highway in two. Opalescent mist poured out of the crack, spilling into the sky and beginning to spread out.
“What in the actual fuck…” Kyle slammed on the breaks, his tires screeching as he jerked to a few yards from the gaping hole. The opening spread out at least a half mile on each side of the highway directly bisecting the bridge he stood upon and cutting deep into the ground on either side. The multicolored mist sprayed out increasingly quickly, taking over more and more of the bright blue sky. Brilliant whites, blues, greens, and pinks overwhelming the landscape.
Kyle put the car in park and stepped out, alongside many of the other drivers nearby. Not a single one even noticed the jerk who made his own lane. All eyes were on the cloud as it dominated their sightlines. From this vantage he could see that the fissure went deep into the ground creating a massive crevasse. Stepping up to the edge, Kyle tried to see if he could find the bottom of this hole or where the mist was coming from, but there was just too much of the brilliant colored droplets flowing all around him. Absently, he noticed that even though plenty of the mist touched him, he never once felt a drop.
Voices called out to each other all around him. Confusion evident in their voices, questions bouncing around with no answers to be found. No one knew what was happening, and the demands on their fellow drivers only increased in intensity and pitch. Their terror made evident as they tried to piece together the changes to their surroundings
The sunlight steadily faded to shade, then to darkness. The early onsight of night continued to deepen as screams started to echo around Kyle. Once the darkness was absolute, he could feel the rest of his senses departing him as well. The noises of the surrounding drivers, cars idling, everything faded away. It had been a chilly day prior to this event, but Kyle no longer felt any of the bite from the early spring breeze. It was as though he was enclosed in a sensory deprivation chamber. His mother in law loved those things, trying to convince him to “go for a float.” Kyle had always been wary of the enclosed spaces, having been claustrophobic since early childhood. This darkness and overall strange experience gave him none of the signs he was enclosed anywhere. In fact, his brain felt overwhelmed at the amount of space that seemed to be around him, flipping the script and instilling a deep sense of agoraphobia. As though his mind could not handle the amount of nothing filling this void.
Attempting to take stock, Kyle held out his hand in front of his face, or at least he felt himself doing so. No hand could be seen in front of him. When he tried to touch his hand to his face, though the neurons in his brain told him that his hand was moving and then stopped when he got to where his face should be, there was no sense of touch stemming from hand or face. As he felt his breath quicken in the silent space, light sparkled into view in front of him. The colors mimicking the opalescent mist, constantly changing and shifting. Steadily the light flowed into words he could understand.
The text moved up to the top left of his vision. It remained statically that that quadrant of his vision no matter where he moved his head, or tried to move his head. Kyle still wasn’t exactly sure if he was actually moving or just thought he was. Each line hung in the air for a few moments, but was eventually pushed up by the text that followed.
EVOLUTION 97%
EVOLUTION 98%
EVOLUTION 99%
EVOLUTION 100%
EARTH EVOLUTION COMPLETED.
NEW ENTITY CREATED.
RESETTING NEURON RECEPTOR DEFAULTS.
…
…
…
Good Luck.
The final line hung in the air for what felt like simultaneously an hour and a second. Kyle noticed that it seemed different from the other text, softer somehow, more radiant. It wasn’t that the text was actually brighter, it just felt familiar, as though he had read something similar recently. For some reason the text made him think of home, of Evan and Penny, it gave him the strength to last this strangeness out so that he could get back to them.
In a blink the darkness was gone, replaced by the exact scene he had been in previously with a few extreme differences. The chasm that had yawned in front of him was gone, as though the earth had never been broken there at all. In fact the entire space that the crack had occupied was completely restored, better than it was before, though without any trace of civilization occupying the space. Where there had been highway, houses, powerlines, any sign of humanity in the area of the crevasse was erased. It was unblemished nature, huge trees sprouted out providing shade even at the height where Kyle stood on top of the asphalt. Beautiful flowers, vibrant grassy fields spread out in each direction. Through the foliage he could still see the other side of the highway continuing into the distance. Animal noises could be heard clearly through the area nature had apparently reclaimed. Some familiar such as bird song, but some more sinister sounding screeches echoed through the trees.
Standing in awe, Kyle looked around to see if anyone else was seeing this. From the awestruck faces of the other commuters, he knew he wasn’t going crazy. Something had drastically shifted. What had the text said again? Earth evolution complete? What does that even mean? A brief rumbling pulled his thoughts back to his situation. The bridge had started shaking subtly, but it was clearly increasing in severity.
“Everyone back away from the edge!” It took a moment after he got back behind his car that Kyle realized the shout had come from his own mouth.
The mini earthquake was quelled by a crumbling sound as the cliffside that was the bridge cascaded to the ground bringing a few SUVs that were parked too close to the edge with it.
“Noooo!” A heavyset man cried as he watched his massive pickup truck tumble off the embankment. A huge crunch echoed as it landed on its front bumper, accordioning the hood of the car. “That was my baby.”
“Did anyone else see those weird words?” A woman called out from behind Kyle.
This prompted another torrent of shouting that put the chaos of the initial mist eruption to shame. Kyle was able to pick out a few key pieces of information. Some were saying their phones were dead, some had tried to get back into their cars only to find that turning the key produced no results. Reaching into his own pocket he quickly confirmed the rumors, no phone, and hopping back into his car he saw that it too was completely dead.
“Shit. Shitshitshit.” he muttered under his breath. “OK, ok. Penny and Evan are at home, they should be safe. We have plenty of food for now. Nora is still the primary concern. Now she’s truly stuck with Xander.”
Leaping back out of the car, he tried to survey the surrounding area. He still needed to get to Nora, only a few miles out, it should only take an hour or two to get there. Mind racing, Kyle had to make his first important decision, make his way down the collapsed bridge, or head back to the most recent off ramp. The ramp was only about a quarter mile back, but it would still be a big detour. Taking a deep breath, he analyzed the path he could take down the bridge as it would be the fastest option, but pieces of asphalt and concrete were still breaking off and falling down onto the ground below. It didn’t seem quite stable enough to traverse.
“Health over efficiency right now.” Kyle thought as he turned on his heel and headed off toward the ramp.
Feet pounding the pavement, Kyle quickly makes his way back to the previous exit. Back in the day he was a star track and field athlete, though it had been 15 years and about 60 pounds since he was at the height of his running abilities. Nevermind the fact that his best event was the 100m dash, or that anything longer than a 400m run was enough to completely put him off from running.
“I’ve only been telling myself to get out and run every day for the past 5 years. But who listens to Kyle? Nobody…”
Even his thoughts felt out of breath as he thundered down the ramp, aiming straight for the verdant green nature preserve. Luckily there was a path that ran alongside the highway for joggers, so he continued to follow the path until it ended abruptly at a field of wild flowers. Slowing to a stop, he scanned the area. The bridge remains on his left, civilization behind him, and untamed wilderness ahead. With a deep sigh, he tentatively placed one foot into the flowers hoping the ground was stable, unable to get the picture of that never ending chasm out of his mind. The ground held as Kyle made his way into the wild.