Quiet lay heavy over a lonesome house, all its many windows closed and curtained, shutting out what little moonlight shone through the dense trees and black clouds passing silently overhead. A single sliver of soft light came through the curtains of the room where two boys spoke in low voices.

“Danny, he’ll be fine, seriously,” the older boy said, pulling the blankets over the younger one. “Dad works late all the time, it’s just a part of his job. He won’t get hurt, okay?”

“I know, it wasn’t about that this time,” Danny said hoarsely, wiping tears from his puffy eyes. “Sorry for waking you up.”

“It’s okay, buddy,” the older boy ran his fingers through Danny’s hair. “You don’t have to apologize for stuff you can’t control. Sounded like it must’ve been real scary this time, huh?”

Danny looked away, squirming under the covers.

“It was about you this time,” he sniffled. “You and me were underwater, but you were the only one drowning. The ocean was really sad about it, but it had to do it, and I just watched it happen. It was my fault.”

“Oh, I’m sorry you saw something like that, Danny. Trust me, though, I’m a really good swimmer,” the older boy smiled. “If I’m in water, I can make it out. But tell you what, I won’t go swimming in the ocean ever again, just to be safe, okay?”

“Okay,” Danny said after a moment’s thought. “Sorry for waking you up.”

“You already said that, buddy. It’s really alright, but you gotta go back to sleep. I’ll take you to get ice cream after school tomorrow, okay?”

“Mmh, can we get pizza instead?”

“We’ll get both, you weirdo,” the older boy kissed Danny’s forehead. “G’night Danny.”

“Night, Leo,” Danny said, turning in his bed to look at the soft night light by the wall.

Leo stepped out into the hallway with an unintentional but practiced silence. Tall though he was and still growing, his light weight didn’t allow the rich wood underfoot to creak as he walked back to his room on the same floor. Leo had always hated the chill he got wandering the place at night, and it was worse tonight for some reason. He wasn’t sure if his brother’s dream had spooked him or if it was just the humidity, but anxiety started creeping up his back and he walked faster.

Once he was safely in his own room, he knew he’d have trouble sleeping like he always did. Though he didn’t want to, he felt some resentment toward his brother for waking him up so often when just falling asleep in the first place was so difficult without medicine. After checking the clock at his bedside, he figured it wasn’t worth the risk to take it now. Only a few hours left before school the next day, technically later that day, he reasoned.

He climbed into bed and tried to sleep as best he could, but ended up doing what he always did instead, thinking about too many things to allow himself to rest. Dawn began to break through the curtains before he had started to drift off, so little time remained before he needed to get up. Before he could get what little sleep remained, his cell phone lit up. An unearthly, warbling alarm rang through the room, one he was unfamiliar with. He angrily snatched it from the table and glared at the screen to read it.

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A message to evacuate the city or find shelter immediately. Incoming nuclear missile, widespread risk of harm and death, estimated 6 minutes to impact. Several emergency bunkers in various locations were listed as well as possible evacuation points. The closest was a few miles away, but Leo was still too young to drive and his father had always insisted that they use his own personal saferoom within the house if anything like this happened. Precious seconds after reading the alert, Leo jumped up from his bed and ran down the hallway. Metal bars descended over the windows and the same alarm from his phone began to blare through the entire house.

Danny had already stepped out of his room, clearly panicking. Leo grabbed and held him as he screamed to be heard over the siren.

“What’s happening,” he yelled. “My phone went off and-.”

“I know,” Leo took his hand and started moving again. “We need to get down to the bunker.”

Danny began to cry, but Leo didn’t slow down to comfort him. Practically dragging his brother down the stairs, he quickly made his way toward a small, inconspicuous closet at the end of a hall on the ground floor. 

The warning had lied. Before he could get to the door, a bright flash filled the home even through the thick forest and closed curtains. The alarm stopped, and the entire house was suddenly silent, empty of even the hum of electricity. 

They never did reach the door. 

For barely more than two seconds, they were both as frozen in time as the house seemed to be, staring at the light peering at them through the curtains, examining every cell of their bodies unthinkingly. For those two seconds, their very souls were laid bare before the light, and after that, it passed over and through them without care. In its wake, a smashing wave crushed the side of their house, and them very shortly after.

Their thoughts and senses were lost to them in that instant, all besides those of touch. The feeling of motion of being blown back, somehow both pushing and pulling them with such urgency that the wave almost tore them apart trying to decide between which one it should feel like. The feeling of wetness in their now-blind eyes and now-deaf ears, bursting with whatever essential fluids they once held. The feeling of roughness as they each finally touched something solid, one on his back to the thick bark of the oaks he hit as he flew, the other with his face in the sharp rocks and dust of the gravel driveway. Both broken in different ways, neither could breathe to tell the other, even if the younger one’s neck hadn’t snapped as his body flew over his head, slightly faster for the lack of rocks in the way. But in the quickness of it all, neither felt pain.

Time froze again. Danny was lying in the gravel, not breathing, not smelling, not tasting, not screaming. He could see, however, and could only not see for long enough to realize that he hadn’t simply blinked and appeared here. The sky was empty and white, save for the clouds and treetops, and he looked around and saw his brother. Torn to pieces on the trees, now only his head, torso, and one arm remaining with what could be considered ‘him’, the others stuck in midair, caught falling to the ground.

Danny turned and saw himself, heels over corkscrewed head, and a figure standing there. Shrouded in a blackness so thick that even the all-enveloping whiteness of the new sky could not define it. Danny realized that was wrong, though. It wasn’t shrouded in black, and it wasn’t black at all. It simply wasn’t.

The nothing moved toward Danny, hypnotizing in its emptiness, slowly reaching to touch him, when it stopped. 

“Wait,” it said, voiceless. “Don’t tell me, please….”

The nothing disappeared, and Danny was snapped from the daze of emptiness. The concepts of the words removed from his mind returned to him, and he realized what it had said. Moments later, the nothing appeared again.

“I know it isn’t your fault specifically, but you guys really messed up here,” it ‘said’. “I worked too hard for too long to prevent something like this from happening, but I suppose humans really do just want to kill everything, all the time, forever. I say let them. I quit.”

Time. Motion. Wetness. Blindness. Deafness. Roughness. Pain. Pain. Pain.

Blood wept from the rocks embedded in Danny’s face even as it began to change. Bones broke, organs shifted, and his body stretched out with ripping, tearing, and cracking. Even as Danny came to a stop, lying in the gravel, his hearing came back in time to realize he was screaming, along with his brother shortly after, as they both changed into something altogether unnatural.