Just outside the entrance to Lafitte Hotel, three women, looking to be in their early twenties let their t-shirts drop back down to cover their chests and held out their hands as they were pelted by various plastic necklaces. This to the accompaniment of wolf-whistles and complimentary cat-calls.  

Edie would have paused in the doorway of the hotel, but the press of humanity behind her meant the best she could do was dart to the right as soon as she was out of the entry way. She leaned against the wall to just take a breath and observe. The street was full of people. Like the three women she’d noted initially, most were holding a drink in one hand, and a string, or more than one string of cheap plastic Mardi Gras beads in the other.

The men were generally holding up the beads, often jingling or rattling them; encouraging any nearby female to “Show them!”

Many of the women she could see were wearing loose fitting tops, pulling them up or down to show off their chests, and then claiming the various offered necklaces.

Very few of the revelers were wearing much more than flimsy clothing and plastic jewelry, here and there adorned with some kind of LED flashing accents. Mardi Gras was early this year; it was barely mid-February. The night was relatively, almost unseasonably warm; even if it hadn’t been, the amount of alcohol assured that few would notice or care.

Edie had not come for the party. She had come for the combined American Psychiatric Association’s annual membership meeting and the Health Professions Financial Aid and Grant Submissions Conference. She hadn’t even thought about it being near Mardi Gras, but too many of her co-workers had noted the coincidence of dates. And sent, and signed her up for far too many spam ads in the name of being “supportive” and “encouraging”. For a moment she closed her eyes, recalling the numerous lurid e-mails; “Come to Bourbon Street” “Celebrate Mardi Gras” and promises of parades, fortune telling, midnight ghost tours, and tales of shops that offered everything from love potions to juju bags to costumes to instructions for ritual magick.

She sighed. Despite the incense, the perfumes, the flowers and more, the signature scent of this holiday was spilled alcohol. As if to highlight her observation, she felt a cold wetness on her arm.

“Oops, sorry.” The drunken man’s breath was much worse than the smells of the street, and she moved away from the side of the building, slightly away from the bright lights of the doorway and window. Why couldn’t it have been a virtual conference?

Out of the corner of her eye she noticed unexpected color and looked up. Night had fallen, and along with the other chaos, she had half expected to see fireworks. Instead she caught a glimpse of shimmering green in the sky. She smiled; finally something familiar. Northern lights, growing slowly brighter, green fading and then changing to purple.

Her momentary smile faded as she shook her head. “That isn’t right.” She muttered to herself. It was too far south for them to be visible at all, much less this bright. Also the changes in color and pattern were happening far too quickly.

The brightness continued to increase. All around her people began to notice. Many pointed and cheered. What did they think was going on?

For that matter what was going on? From what little she knew, the ionization or radiation that produced Northern Lights wasn’t harmful. That she knew of. 

That didn’t feel reassuring.

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As more people began to focus on the pretty lights, Edie decided she’d had more than enough of this overly alcoholic holiday. With people crowding into the streets to point at the sky, there was enough room now to walk up to the porch and make her way back into the building. Less smell of alcohol here, and more smell of Cajun cooking.

She retreated to the stairs, heading up to her second floor room, opened the door with her card key, and closed it softly behind her. She didn’t bother with the room lights; there was more than enough ambient light from streetlamps, and for that matter from the increasingly color filled sky.

Shimmers of green and violet danced across the sky, changing much faster than even the time lapse photography she’d seen of particularly spectacular instances of the phenomena. 

She leaned back against the door to the room.

The light got more intense, filling the far end of the room with color. A distorted rectangle of shimmering color played out on the floor. The light visible from the window was even more intense. Reflexively she raised her left arm up, squinting at the brightness. From the open window she could hear the pleased murmurs of the crowd, apparently hoping for more.

There was a flash. And then things were darker.

Very quiet.

Hesitantly she walked slowly toward the window. Looking out, the streets were empty.

“Well, shit.” She said softly.

She didn’t see bodies. She didn’t see empty clothing. She didn’t see spilled plastic cups of beer. Just empty pavement, now dimly light by the street lights and the occasional spill of light from windows or open doors.

Empty streets, and an occasional broken plastic mardi gras necklace.

In the distance she could hear alarmed sounding voices. Names being called at first hesitantly, then urgently. Someone yelled out “Call 911”.

That wasn’t a bad idea, necessarily, but she couldn’t imagine what emergency responders could do about a mass disappearance, other than try to convince everyone that they had hallucinated the whole thing. Interesting that this should happen the same weekend as a psychiatric conference, but she couldn’t imagine how they might be connected.

She turned away from the window and retreated back into her room. After a moment she thoughtfully walked over to where her laptop sat on the desk. She wasn’t going be sleeping any time soon, so there wouldn’t be any point in trying to lay down. She logged in and entered her “guest password” which was, unimaginatively, “guest”.

Well, at least the wifi was still working.

Over the next few hours she looked through social media, news media, and conspiracy theories. She discovered that by far the conspiracy theories were the most fun to read.

New Orleans had apparently been long inhabited by aliens who now had been teleported away to their galaxy ruling masters.

Marie Laveau had allegedly claimed the lives of everyone descended from her secret coven in a massive necromantic ritual and within the next week, all the dead were expected to rise from the cemeteries in the French Quarter to serve her and take over (depending on the web site or the particular theorist) the state, the Catholic Church or the world.

NASA had caused the visual effects in the sky as a side effect of a planet wide electro-shield to provide extra boost for the launching of a multi-vessel done mission to Jupiter.

The US government had accidentally test fired a disintegrator ray on Galveston, Texas.

Wait – Galveston?

She looked further. Galveston Texas was the site of yet another enormous drunken Mardi Gras revelry and a similar mass disappearance. She found descriptions of a similar event in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. And apparently also Sydney, Australia. The latter was also being called the “Reverse Rapture” as Sydney’s version of the festival was known to have an extraordinarily outspoken LGBTQ+ contingent; and according to at least three different website run by “Devout Christians” the apparently “godless sinners against nature” had either so offended the divine they had been destroyed down to their souls, or possibly had claimed and taken directly to hell by their Satanic Lord.

She checked back to the more usual media and there wasn’t much in the way of actual information. Many news programs and “Special Broadcasts” with a bunch of talking heads basically saying “we have no idea what happened” but using a lot more words and a number of interesting graphics to do so. Social media was full of short, mostly profane speculation which was starting to echo some of the conspiracy theories. Nothing new.

Giving it up as a bad job, Enid lay down on the bed.

Her last thought before falling asleep was to wonder vaguely if the conference had been cancelled.