“And in further news, no new developments in the case of the seventy-three missing persons from last month’s Brightstorm through Malden and Everett. Detectives with Boston PD spoke yesterday at a joint press conference on the seemingly fruitless efforts of their joint task force with FBI and Boston Fire to find these poor lost souls-” The news anchor on the screen said before Jay grabbed the remote and clicked it off. 

He sighed and stared out the window at the redbrick buildings across the street. Of course they didn’t find anything. None of the people caught in the storms had ever been seen again. A world full of scientific and government organizations working non-stop to do everything from measure the radiation in the area to interviewing survivors and nothing to show for it. 

Brightstorms they called them. From the footage Jay had seen on social media it was more like colorful fog. It rolled over the ground covering everything, quick and silent. What was more, they appeared all over the world no matter the climate or the weather. The first Brightstorm had struck in Hokkaido, Japan during a snowstorm. It had disappeared sixty-four people and the world hadn’t really covered it. The snowstorm had been mild for the area and concealed the fog for the most part. The exponentially larger amount of missing persons associated with it had made headlines in Japan but it was only after the Brightstorm outside Asunción, Paraguay hit two weeks later and disappeared ninety-seven people that the world took notice. 

Since then Brightstorms had been happening all over the world. Once a month like clockwork.  Nowhere was safe. What was weird was that getting caught didn’t mean you disappeared. People disappeared in every Brightstorm and none had turned back up. Ever. But it wasn’t everyone. 

One man had told a reporter tearfully from his London flat that he was in the bathroom when he saw the fog flood under the door and when it disappeared his wife and daughter were gone. There were many theories about why certain people disappeared and others stayed. The most popular here in America was that God sent the Brightstorms to cull sinners from our land of the free. Jay thought that was bullshit. Personally, his money was on aliens.

He groaned and leaned back against the polished counter of the Foot and Soul. A pair of women laden with designer shopping bags walked up to the glass front door and looked in before moving on. Jay watched them go sullenly. He brushed the long hair out of his face and dropped his elbows onto the counter. 

In his pocket his phone buzzed. He glanced at the camera above him before slipping it out and onto the counter. There was a message from his online friend Shane. As he looked, another popped up.

“Hey dude, I know you feel bad for Shdwblade, but he’s just not cutting it in these arenas.” The first read. “You gotta boot him dude.”

Jay sighed as he swiped his phone open to the message thread. Shane was the Assistant Guild Master for their Guild, the Crimson Union, on the online MMORPG Swords of Silerian. Despite living in Montana, the dude was one of Jay’s closest, and oldest, friends. They had founded their guild together five years ago when Jay was still in high school with their friend Matty. Matty had been the PVP, Player versus player,  Assistant Guild Master. That is, until he had become one of the seventy-three missing persons from the Everett Brightstorm. 

That had been a crushing blow for Jay. Matty wasn’t an online friend like Shane. He was a neighbor, a kid Jay had come up with. Sure Matty could be a dick, but Jay balanced him out. Jay focused on the relations in the guild and Matty focused on the PVP. Shane took the raids. It had worked out, until it didn’t. Now Matty was gone and Shane didn’t want to deal with the cutthroat way he had run their PVP team. 

“You are always the carrot guy, you gotta be the stick guy if you want to be GM, dude.” Shane’s second text read. 

Jay sighed again before typing out a response. “I’ll talk to him. Let’s give him another week to work on it.” The rogue in question, Shdwblade, was a good guy. Sure he wasn’t as much of a sweat as any of them, but he probably had a life or something. Jay didn’t want their guild to be the type of place people got griefed for their skill level. He had been trying to convince Matty that maybe they could have a sort of B team for the low performers to hone their skills. 

In true Matty fashion, he had said. “Bro, nobody held our hands.”

His phone buzzed again. Shane’s response popped up on the screen.

“Soft.” Was all it said.

Shit, grow a pair and handle it yourself then dude. Jay thought angrily, shoving his phone back into his pocket. Matty and Shane had always thought Jay was a bit too easy going. They could be really harsh on members of the guild and it fell on Jay to mediate and assuage their more casual members. Shane was rude and clinical with his raid teams, calling people out and kicking them if they underperformed. He was all about the loot and didn’t mind burning bridges to ensure the guild got as much as they could. 

Matty was more manipulative, thriving in the competition of pitting people against each other. He would get toxic in the game chat just to try to spur people to try harder or else get in the heads of their opponents. His antics weren’t spared for their own guild members. Lucky for Jay, he was too good at the game for either of them to have anything to say to him. 

Amongst the guild, Jay was the best rogue by far. Maybe he had turned a blind eye to his friend’s antics a few times, but they had backed him up as guild master. The three of them had a lot of fun when it was just them gaming. 

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But Matty’s disappearance hadn’t seemed like it affected Shane. He would pester Jay the same as before, and now he would get on Jay to take over Matty’s duties. Anger simmered under the surface between the two. It didn’t help that Jay had barely logged on since Matty’s disappearance. Not for the first time had a message from Shane made him think about quitting the guild, but then what would he have?

Jay glanced around the empty shop again, sighing heavily. This place was always dead on weekdays. The Foot and Soul had been his part time job in college, and now he was a full time manager. Although some days, like today, he was the only one working. It was on the far end of Newbury Street, and nestled into the basement floor of the building with a hot pot restaurant above them. The budget sneaker store did not do a lot of business, but it was pretty chill. Pat, the owner, didn’t give him shit about being on his phone when the store was empty either. 

There was a thud against the glass display case and Jay started.

“What the hell!” He yelled at nobody. Making his way around the counter and towards the front he saw a man laying crumpled by the display window. “Oh shit.” Jay cursed, jogging over to the front door to help the man. The stairs down to the shop’s level just dropped from street level so tourists sometimes tripped. “Hey are you okay man? Need me to call someone?” Jay said as he opened the door with a little digital chime. 

The guy hadn’t waited for him. “Run!” He screamed, scrambling up the steps still bleeding from his chin. 

What the hell? Jay stared after the man then down at the blood smeared display. Pat would be pissed. He was about to go check the utility closet for cleaning supplies when there was another scream. A woman in Louis Vuitton pumps came trotting down the sidewalk with a yipping Bichon Frisé under each arm. 

“Run for your life deary!” She shrieked when she saw Jay standing there. 

Jay glanced in the direction she had come. Shoppers screaming and sprinting towards him. Cars swerving into wrought iron fences and decorative trees. Behind it all a rolling massive cloud of shimmering lights. It felt like a full second before it clicked in Jay’s head. 

A Brightstorm.

“Oh shit!” Jay muttered to himself. He was moving before his mind could comprehend,  vaulting up the side of the ledge, not even bothering to take the stairs. He was already at the next shop’s door before he thought to turn around. “Lady, lose the pumps man!” He said, sprinting back to her and pulling the dogs free of her hands. They yipped and barked at him but he clutched them close like footballs. “Let’s go!”

“They’re from last season though!” She wailed. When he just stared at her with disgust she frowned and kicked them off. The pair of them ran for their lives down the street towards Harvard Bridge. If they could make it there maybe crossing into Cambridge would allow them to dodge the Brightstorm. Behind them people were disappearing into the fog. Some were residents who tried to unlock their apartment doors before the fog got to them. Jay wasn’t going top chance that. He and the woman ran down Newbury. 

A car sped past with their horn blaring. The sleek black sedan rear-ended a white van and both crashed into the sidewalk not twenty feet in front of Jay. He swerved into the street and past a pair of dudes trying to drag their friend along. The woman followed him, barefoot and frazzled. She was shrieking periodically whenever she turned to see the Brightstorm gaining on them. 

This was absolute bullshit! Never had he heard of two Brightstorms hitting in the same damn area, let alone within a month. Jay must have pissed off some cosmic entity in a previous life or something. People around him were tripping over each other to get away from the fog rolling in behind them. He dodged around them, ignoring the stitch growing in his side. 

There was a yelp behind him just as he reached the gradual incline toMass Ave. Jay turned and saw the woman, who had been doing everything she could to keep up with him, had stumbled out of sheer fatigue and fallen. She looked fearfully up at him, a plea in her eyes. But then she turned and looked at the quickly approaching Brightstorm and turned back.

“You go dear, get out of here!” She yelled, waving him on as she tried to push herself up. Jay stared at her.

As if sensing the imminent danger, one of the Bichon’s yipped and bit at Jay’s hand. Its little teeth didn’t break the skin, but startled him enough to drop the thing. The fluffy white dog yipped and bolted to its owner, licking her face. After a moment of watching them, Jay set the other dog down and ran back to the woman.

“We’re in this together, come on.” He breathed, helping her up. Glancing over her shoulder at the Brightstorm, he knew that even if he ran now there was no escape. No one could outrun that fog. You just had to hope it didn’t spread to wherever you were. 

“Oh dear.” She gasped. “I just can’t-” But Jay pulled her along. 

“Come on, let’s just go as fast as you can.” He said, holding her arm. Maybe they wouldn’t be taken. The storms never took everyone, only a few. The Bichon’s pranced around them, bouncing along and barking. The dogs were completely oblivious to the danger.

The fog rolled in and when it was only twenty feet from them the woman yanked her arm out of his grasp. She stepped away, tears in her eyes. “Go, go! Don’t wait here with me!” She cried, looking back and forth between him and the fog now only ten feet from her. “Run, dear!”

Jay stumbled back as she said it. He hadn’t been looking at the fog, just focusing on helping her along as their impending doom approached. Now fear gripped him. The smoky substance sparkled with glittering colors, subtle and dazzling. How could death have such ethereal beauty. It was otherworldly. 

He stumbled and landed on his hip, having been walking away from her backwards. The woman snatched up her dogs and kissed them each once. Jay watched as he crab walked backwards away as the woman took a big gulp of air and closed her eyes tight. The fog rolled around her and then she and her dogs were gone from sight. 

Jay was alone now. 

He tried to stand and run but only stumbled, his muscles flagging. He took a few more steps before the fog was upon him also. 

“Hey dear, I’m still here! I think I’m okay!” The woman’s voice said. 

Jay looked around at the fog rolled over him. He couldn’t make out anything around him. He took a tentative step towards her voice. 

“Great!” He tried to say, but nothing came out. He moved to touch his throat but stopped with his hand halfway there. He could see through his hand. He was translucent, the shimmering fog swirling behind and through his hand. Jay looked down at his body and saw his torso floating above nothing. His legs were gone. 

As he stared on in horror his form slowly disappeared, leaving only the swirling colors of the Brightstorm. Without even a voice to cry out, Jay disappeared from the world.