Okay, I was lying about that last part, but it really felt that I was about to die. But just a few hundred feet before I hit the ground, the world exploded. Everything around me was rippling with brilliant streaks of every color imaginable, starting to expand from right below me. It was a vortex of color and power—you could feel it in your bones, as if your very life was being sucked into it. All the light that it had just expelled was beginning to be pulled back into itself. It was what I believed the center of a black hole would look like as it began its conquest of everything near it. I just had one thought before I fell into the light:

“Oh great, I’m going to miss movie night at the orphanage tonight.”

Then, without sound, all the flashes of light were drawn into the hole in one instant along with me. It was dark. So very dark. All around me, there was nothing to tell me where I was or what was happening. But I could tell that I was falling. I don’t know how I could tell that I was falling, but I just knew. In the distance, like in my dream, I could see dim specks of every color, like with the portal, except not as bright.

“So,” I said out loud into the void of darkness. “Is this the afterlife?”

It was calming to be able to hear my own voice.

“Ok,” I thought to myself. “Let’s analyze what’s going on here. As far as I know, we are in the place that I had a dream about last night. We are plummeting towards something that I can’t see or isn’t there. So, I know nothing except that I don’t know where I am.”

“That’s comforting.”

“Well, there is nothing to do but sit tight and wait this out,” I thought.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I was scared. To put it lightly, I had no idea where I was or what was happening. For all I know, I could be portal traveling to another world. Or I could just be dead. After facing the facts, I decided to do what any sane person would do in this situation: I started to play rock, paper, scissors with myself.

“Darkness, only darkness,” I said out loud to myself.

I have been here for what seems like forever. I have fallen asleep several times since I have entered what I concluded to be a portal to space. But since coming to wherever I am, I have not become thirsty or hungry. But what scares me the most is that I don’t know how long I have been in here. I could have been a few hours, or it easily could have been a week. The problem is that I just can’t tell. There is nothing to focus on, nothing to look at, to tell how long I have been in here. The only thing I can see is specks of light in the distance, mocking me with their shimmering illusion.

I had lost my parachute to the dark a while ago. I think it might have slipped off during one of the times I was sleeping. Not that it would have mattered much in here. But I missed it all the same. It gave a sense of stability because I knew it was real—I could hold it. The only thing that I had left was my sanity, and even that wasn’t going to last long in this numb, senseless void.

Something had changed. I could sense it. I couldn’t tell what it was, but somehow something had changed. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I knew it all the same. I continued to ponder and look around to see if I could figure out what had changed in my surroundings. But as I continued to look around at all the specks of lights speeding past, I still couldn’t place my finger on what was bothering me.

Then I realized it was the lights. They were moving faster than normal. I was falling faster than I had been falling for the last eternity.

The sound. Everything began to shake from the sound.

It was ear-splitting—that is the only way to describe the pitch. It shook your very body; it felt like you were about to be shaken apart. But it wasn’t a high sound, and it wasn’t a deep sound; it was a mix of both. It sounded like every animal at once screaming into your ear. It was a primal sound of anger and terror. It was frightening. That is the one word to describe it.

At that moment, I knew that I never wanted to meet whatever created that sound. But being me, that’s exactly what was about to happen.