I exited the hospital relieved that another shift had come and gone. Twelve hour shifts sucked, but I had long gotten over caring. Emergency medicine was my calling, so it was absolutely worth it. It wasn’t like I was in bad shape either, I could deal with the long shifts, I just hated them.
Plus tonight was board game night! The guys and I all had pretty demanding lives now so our nights had been slowly whittled down from weekly to monthly. We had all been friends since junior high. A few of the group had moved away, but the 4 of us that remained had kept the tradition alive and well.
After a quick trip across town I parked in the visitor section of Mary's apartment complex. She’s been my best friend for nearly as long as I can remember. She had a spare room for our games and was always willing to host.
I spotted James’ and Randy’s cars, so I was the last to arrive, as usual. I certainly had the most demanding job of the bunch. Being a doctor, healing people, it was deeply rewarding, but I was under no illusions that I had found a good work life balance. Really the only time I requested being off work and not on call was board game time each month. That made me popular with the administration staff and my attending, but it probably wasn’t healthy in the long run. Meh that was future me problems.
I knocked on Mary’s door. “Come in Jacob!” I heard a yell from inside a moment later. Guess she saw me pull up. I shrugged and let myself in. Mary’s apartment wasn’t exactly massive, but she was able to afford a two bedroom all on her own in the heart of Seattle which made it nothing to sneeze at.
I saw a flash in the corner of my eye and suddenly Mary was on me hugging me. “Good to see you! I was starting to get worried Dr. Daniels wouldn’t make an appearance.” I hugged her back holding back a biting retort. It was good to see her, I had to miss last month and two months was about as long as we had ever gone without seeing each other.
“Good to see you too.” I gave her a tight squeeze before letting her go. Mary was a tall lanky girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. She was dressed in jean shorts and a tank-top, which given it was the middle of summer seemed quite comfortable to me.
I loved Mary, granted only platonically, not that I hadn’t tried to ask her out. Unfortunately for me she was as queer as a three dollar bill, which I couldn’t blame her for, women were pretty great. It had been more than 10 years since my ill-fated courting attempt, so I had well and truly gotten over my crush. Our relationship evolved into what I truly hoped would be a life-long friendship, I didn’t want to be without her.
Plus having a lesbian best friend meant we both had a great wingman/woman. She would send the straights my way and I would be sure to work with her on any bi or gay women. Not that we had ever succeeded. But it was the attempt that counted.
“Come on we are almost done with our first game, you can watch me crush them!” She flexed her nearly non-existent muscles like a total goof.
I smiled and followed after her. Randy with his short curly hair and wiry beard was staring at the board game intently running a finger along his chin. He was a big guy, but it was by no means all fat he loved to work out, not that he didn’t have a bit of a belly.
James on the other hand was a bit like me, brown hair and eyes, on the smaller side for a guy. While he was thin, I had a wiry strength. I worked out nearly as much as Randy, but I focused on aerobics rather than strength. That made me deceptively muscular and James just a bit of pip-squeek, but ultimately we had a similar body type.
“Doctor!” James said.
“Doctor,” Randy said while holding back a smile.
“Doctor.” Mary added into the ongoing joke. Ever since I graduated this was how they greeted me every time we were all together. I loved these dorks.
I chuckled. “How’s it going guys?” I took one look at the board and frowned. “Oh, looks like Mary wasn’t lying about crushing you both.”
Randy gave me annoyed side-eye that I knew wasn’t serious. “Yup, don’t think I’ve been spanked this hard since last night with your mom.” James said.
I gave him a more serious annoyed look. I didn’t have parents, or at least not ones I knew about, I grew up in the system. James was entirely aware and seemed to enjoy going back to the same well for that joke. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with it, but it has gone on for long enough that I didn’t really care that much anymore. “Well I’d love to meet her.” I quipped before sitting down in the only empty seat.
Mary noticed my discomfort and immediately went to change the subject by taking her rather devastating turn. “I think that about wraps things up.” She said triumphantly. The game wasn’t over technically, but we all knew it would be in a matter of a few more turns.
Randy huffed and rubbed his eyes. “Well good to see you made the best possible move even though you are already winning.” He said before begrudgingly making his half-hearted play.
“It's no fun if you pull your punches.” Mary said gleefully.
The trio continued to play for another round before the game ended and victory points began to be counted. “42…” James said in a defeated tone. “Guess the answer to life, the universe, and everything is sucking at board games…”
“89.” Randy said, it was actually a pretty good score, a winning score if things had gone differently.
However things had not gone differently as Mary put down her last victory point chip, triumph written plainly on her face. “125.” Her grin was wide.
I gave her a questioning look. “You sure? I don’t know if we've ever seen that high a score before.”
She gave me a look. “Oh if only the super duper smarty pants genius doctor could count for me, my girl brain can’t deal with numbers bigger than 5.” She said as she dumped her pile of victory points in front of me.
I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that, I was just surprised is all.” I ignored the chips, counting them was a trap and I knew it. I wasn’t quite inept enough to double down on putting my foot in my mouth. Plus this was Mary, she was a whiz with numbers at least my equal certainly. Though she enjoyed them more than I did. She was absolutely right to make fun of me for questioning her. “Sorry, you're right that was shitty.” I followed up. “Congrats I’ll have to jump in next to work on beating your high score!”
Mary gave me a beaming smile. “See-” She gave a look at Randy and James. “This is why he’s my best friend, knows the very second he’s stepped in it.”
Randy ignored both of us. “Dinner first!” He said as he patted his belly.
“Pizza or do we want to walk over to the diner?” Mary asked.
I considered for a moment, a walk did sound nice. “Let’s head to the diner.” I said.
James nodded. “Agreed, it's milkshake time!” With that we all headed out, walking toward the diner.
“Did you see that FF16 trailer? Those summons were awesome.” James said as we wandered down the street. Randy and he continued to chatter away but I tuned them out since Mary seemed deep in thought.
“Penny for your thoughts?” I asked while the two of us slowed down letting Randy and James get ahead.
Mary rolled her eyes. “It will cost you a lot more than a penny.”
My smile faded at that and I turned to stop her. “I’m serious, are you alright?”
Mary stopped and gave me an appraising look. “Just I took a girl to the diner, it was our third date and I thought she was enjoying our time together, then she dumped me.”
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Wow, I hadn’t even realized she had been on a date. We told each other everything but I guess I had been a bit distant these last two months. She knew I was busy and obviously didn’t want to bother me. Which was dumb; I would have absolutely made time for her. “Sorry to hear that.” I said earnestly. “Hug?” I asked.
She grimaced but stepped close and I wrapped my arms around her. “Thanks.” She said somewhat muffled. “Could you just be my girlfriend?” She asked.
I let her go and moved back a bit while still holding her shoulders. “Last I checked I don’t have the right parts.”
Mary glared at me then punched my arm after I let her go. “Well work on that.”
I rubbed my arm in a show of mock pain. “Ouch! Would if I could. Never exactly been that attached to the whole man thing.” I said jovially.
She gave me a confused look. “Really?”
The question took me a bit by surprise, I hadn’t meant anything serious by it, but it was true. I was never much of a dudes' dude, and I really didn’t care much for being a man. I didn’t exactly think that meant I was a woman, but if it was easy I would certainly give it a go. It is unfortunately very much not easy. “Yeah, find me a painless way and I’ll become your perfect girl.” I said with a bit of a chuckle.
Mary thought about it for a second. “That… is actually strangely sweet.” I shook my head and we started walking again.
Not four steps toward the diner we stopped dead in our tracks as the dusk became suddenly bright. I flinched and squinted at the strange light in the sky. It glowed pure white and radiated even light to make it look like it was the middle of the day again.
“The fuck is…” I trailed off as I saw it begin to descend toward us. I stepped back bumping into Mary making us both nearly fall just as the orb stopped right in front of us.
I couldn’t look at it directly using my hand to block most of the light. “What is going on?” Mary asked. I glanced back at her and moved away so she could get a better look. Randy and James were running towards us but at this point they were a block away.
A sudden crash sounded as a car drove slowly into a parked car on the side of the road. I was pretty confident at those speeds the person was fine, they had just been paying more attention to the orb than the road.
A cracking sound brought me back to the orb. It dimmed enough that I could see its surface. It was a perfect glass orb except for the conspicuous crack on its shell. Visible energy began to pour out of the crack and it shot into the ground burning the concrete. If that had hit us we’d be dead!
“We need to get ba-” I was cut off by more cracking and I saw to my horror one of the cracks was facing right toward Mary. “Down!” I shouted as I leapt toward the orb trying to put my body between it and Mary. To my shock and dismay Mary had shouted the same thing and was doing exactly the same thing.
We collided with each other unable to stop in time then stumbled and fell toward the orb. We both touched it at the same time and I felt something strange. Like an energy was shot from the orb directly into me then that energy began to gather inside me. It burned and I screamed as I watched Mary do the same thing, her eyes now glowing a strange white light.
Then nothingness.
A moment passed and I saw James and Randy running toward us. Though my view of them was strangely low to the ground. My vision was blinded by white light for a second before the sheet of light began to move away from me. It hit and passed through Randy and James, for a split second I thought they were fine until they began to glow white.
Their bodies began to disintegrate into ash. The ash was blown away in the wind but then it too disintegrated into nothingness. Their bodies broke down in about a second leaving behind only a glowing blue orb with wisps of blue energy coming off it upwards almost like a fire. I tried to scream but nothing came out. Just like that they were gone. My friends of more than a decade were just gone.
I tried to speak again, but nothing happened. When I say nothing I mean absolutely nothing, my mouth didn’t move at all. In fact… I attempted to look down at myself only to see the concrete of the sidewalk below me, a scorch mark there from when the orb first cracked. I didn’t seem to have a body anymore. That was certainly different.
I glanced back up to see that the white wave of energy had continued to move while I was distracted. It touched another person and they too disintegrated turning into a blue orb with ‘flames’ just like the others. It continued constantly picking up pace as it moved away from me. Quickly it went out of view of the relatively secluded street, my view blocked by the near-forest that was some Seattle streets.
The wave hit a person that was walking a dog. The person disappeared, but the dog remained and began to bark loudly. It growled at the wave of energy as if trying to ask for its owner back. Then it just booked it down the street away from me.
The wave did go up too though and I watched as it kept speeding away from me. Distantly I saw it hit a plane that was already getting low to the ground to land at the airport. I was somewhat surprised that the plane didn’t just immediately fall out of the sky, but a moment later I realized autopilot was indeed a thing that existed.
What was amazing though was that I could see a tiny clump of blue specks left in the plane’s wake. Were those the people that had been on the plane? I shook my head, but yet again the attempt at motion didn’t produce the effect I wanted.
Instead whatever I was now moved slightly from side to side. I could move? I looked around to see a blue flaming orb, which I decided to call a spirit, sitting right next to me floating in the sky. That spirit was moving around unlike all the others in the area. It turned then stopped moving suddenly. I attempted to reach out to it only for my body to move forward and bump into it. We collided and just bounced off each other moving about an inch away from one another.
It was then that I decided I was also a spirit. Which meant my body at least was gone. That thought was certainly frightening, but for whatever reason I didn’t feel the dread I had expected to. In fact I had been awed by the strange events, but otherwise I hadn’t really felt anything. I knew I was way calmer than I should be, but I couldn’t muster the will to care.
I decided examining my own lack of emotions was not exactly a productive use of my time. I needed to be sure the others were safe. I turned to check on the spirit that had been to my side only to see it move toward where Randy and James had been. No, that spirit wasn’t an it, it was a she, she had been exactly where Mary had been, the spirit must then be Mary.
Mary moved slowly and I followed after her. She eventually got to James and Randy and stopped. A long moment went by with nothing. The two spirits of my friends just floated there not moving a single inch. I bumped into one but yet again we just bounced off each other. I turned toward Mary wanting desperately to ask what she thought. However I didn’t have a means of communication.
I considered that idea, then looked around. If I could find something to write with, even just a sharp rock would be fine. I saw one that I knew I could use to scratch writing into the sidewalk. When I went to pick it up my body got closer to the ground and touched the rock but then just went through it. I couldn’t pick it up.
Well this was a setback. I realized that I should probably have felt annoyed by that, but I just didn’t. Giving up on the idea I floated back up to ‘normal’ height.
Mary had come over but she didn’t seem to have an idea of what to do either. We sat there in silence. I just couldn’t think of anything to do, I clearly wasn’t entirely corporeal. If I couldn’t interact with things what was there to do?
My thoughts were interrupted when I saw another translucent slightly red wave approaching us in the distance. It was moving fast. I saw it hit the Seattle skyline only for it to make the buildings just disappear. One moment a skyscraper, the next nothing at all. Spirits littered the area where the skyscrapers had been, a blue sea that contrasted with the wave of red.
A few seconds later the wave passed through us faster than a blink of an eye. In its wake everything was gone. Well not everything I corrected. Everything manmade was gone. Cars, houses, sidewalk, light poles, everything. However the trees remained behind entirely untouched. I was now floating over packed dirt, cleaned of the concrete that had been on it a moment ago.
Well if we were fucked before this just brought home that this was undoubtedly the end of the world. I looked around to see no sign of human civilization at all. It was done, if this was localized then all of Seattle was just gone. If this was global then humanity and everything we had built had been wiped out in mere minutes.
As if to finalize some strange godly spring cleaning ritual I saw a set of massive holes fill the sky above us. The dusk sky was entirely replaced by uncountable circles pushed up against each other. They began to suck, not air, but spirits. I began to fly upward toward the huge tubes. I moved close to Mary as she seemed to have the same idea.
We did our best to stay together which seemed to slow us down a bit. That allowed me to see hundreds of thousands of spirits going up into the air and being sucked toward the sky.
Nothing else was sucked toward the holes, only all the spirits that were once humans. I now knew that whatever had happened only seemed to affect humans, as I could see other animals meandering around the suddenly cleared land.
Once I had gotten high enough I checked the surrounding area only to see that everything had been cleared. There was not a speck of humanity remaining on anything all the way into the distance.
Mary and I did our best to cling to each other until finally we too entered into one of the holes. For a brief moment I couldn’t see anything at all. Then I was staring at nothing but spirits packed around each other. Only one of those spirits was moving at all and I immediately knew it was Mary.
I got as close to her as possible. We got right next to each other and just waited. Nothing happened for several minutes. Then I felt something affecting me. It made… my… thoughts… slow. I looked at Mary one last time then everything stopped.