It was Bunker Day. Everyone in town was in the bunker beneath town hall, enjoying the festivities.

Undoubtedly the baker was giving cookies to the kids, Mrs. Jordahl and Mrs. Olsen were about to get into a fight about whose alcoholic punch was best, the priest was getting drunk, and the mayor was giving a speech that no one was listening to.

That’s what happened every year. It was an all-day festival that I never questioned the origin of. It was just one of those things that we did every year, same as the Harvest Festival and the Rock Choosing Ceremony. Growing up, it was just another fun day.

Maybe the mayor explained why we held it in her speech. But ignoring the speech was a tradition of the day; no one bothered listening to a single word of it.

Maybe if I’d listened I would have been prepared for this.

Maybe I wouldn’t have been surprised at waking up in the middle of town square with prayers for protection written all over my bare arms.

I got slowly to my feet, listening. Other than the wind, there was no sound. Not a single bird sang. Even insects seemed to be in hiding.

Turning slowly, I didn’t see anything out of place. All the shops were closed, as they should be. The big iron doors that led underground were closed, securely barred on the inside by thick steel rods I’d tried and failed to lift as a child.

For several minutes I just stood there, not sure what I was supposed to be doing. Was something expected of me? Should I stay in the square? Should I run? What had the mayor said in her speech? Would I know why I was here if I’d paid attention?

The silence was unnerving. It amplified the sound of my breathing, making me want to scream.

I had to do something. I went to the bakery and looked in, seeing the ovens cold and the shelves bare. The window wasn’t locked, so I slid it open and climbed in, being sure to close it once I was in.

I’d been an apprentice to the baker for half a year. I wasn’t an expert on baking, but I knew how everything worked.

I started the oven. As it warmed up I went into the back room and pulled ingredients off the shelf. It was all routine work; things I’d done a hundred times before.

Pour, mix, add, mix again, knead, cover, shove out of the way, ignore for an hour.

I decided to make a batch of simple cookies while I waited for the bread to rise.

Pour, mix, add, mix again, oil tray, plop spoonfuls of batter onto tray, shove tray into oven, wait ten minutes.

While working I’d forgotten what day it was. I’d forgotten the silence.

I walked into the front room to pull the cookies out from the other side of the oven and froze.

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There was a… thing… in the middle of the square.

It vaguely had the shape of a fox, if a fox were seven feet tall. It wasn’t black so much as it looked like it was made out of shadows.

It was sniffing the air, each movement making the shadows around it blur. It turned slowly, deliberately, to face the bakery.

It turned to face me.

Its eyes were a golden orange, the color of the sun. They stood out against the darkness like stars, locking onto mine.

Slowly, ever so slowly, it walked towards the bakery.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I… Something you need to know about me is, I’m not very smart. I do stupid things. I make bad decisions when I’m stressed. My friends cheerfully tell me that, when under pressure, nothing I do makes sense.

And so, when faced with a giant fox made out of stars and the void of space, my only thought was “I wonder if it likes cookies!”

A small part of my mind retained sanity, running around in my skull and screaming while I found myself pulling the cookies out of the oven. The fox stood at the window and watched as I put the tray onto the cooling rack. And the single smart brain cell I own committed suicide as I picked up a cookie and walked to the window.

The fox seemed to smile as my hand slid the window open. It smelled like the forest after a fire. Rather than make sound it absorbed it, dampening the creak of the window and the thumping in my chest. As it watched me I felt in my bones that it could kill me and drag me away without leaving a trace. Its eyes told me I was trapped; I was about to die.

I shoved my hand out the window, the cookie sitting on my open palm. My mind went completely blank as the fox looked down at it. For a few seconds I felt no emotion, all my senses except sight died, and my thoughts consisted of nothing but a white noise.

A tongue made out of galaxies slipped out, touching the cookie. The cookie vanished. I withdrew my hand.

The fox sat down, clearly thinking.

“Want another one?” I asked, a note of hysteria in my voice.

Its ears, the length of my forearm, rotated to focus directly on me.

“I’ll get you another one,” I told it, closing the window again.

It watched with interest as I picked up a cookie, then set the cookie back down. I picked up the whole tray, still warm but not hot, and took it to the window. I slid the window open a crack, and pushed the tray through.

One by one, the fox made the cookies vanish by touching it with its tongue. When it was done I pulled the tray back in and shut the window.

We watched each other. I sent several brain cells over to revive the single smart brain cell so they could ask it what to do next. My sanity was huddled in a corner, softly crying to itself.

“Do… you want more?” I asked.

The fox licked its chops, showing obsidian teeth.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said, backing away. “It’ll be fifteen minutes, just wait there!”

I ran to the back room, wondering how many eggs were left. I hoped there were enough. I was cracking them into a bowl when the fox walked through the wall.

As I stared at it my sanity yeeted itself off a cliff.

“Yep, this is how cookies are made,” I told the fox, mixing a drop of vanilla into the eggs. “I mix these up, then measure out flour and sugar into a bowl, add a pinch of salt and a bigger pinch of baking soda, then mix them before pouring in the eggs. Oh, I almost forgot butter, they wouldn’t be very good without butter, would they? Nope! Now I mix everything together until it’s smooth. There, does it smell good?” I held the bowl out to the fox.

The fox, which had been watching me from the other side of the table, sniffed the batter politely. It stuck its tongue out, but I pulled the bowl back.

“No, don’t eat the batter raw, that’s unhealthy!”

The fox stared at me in surprise. My one smart brain cell came back to life to inform me that I had just done something incredibly stupid, and died again.

I nodded decisively at the giant fox. “You can’t eat them until they’re baked.”

It yawned. Some of those teeth were the size of my hand.

I oiled the tray, put spoonfuls of batter down, and slid the tray into the oven.

The fox watched me.

“So… what brings you here?”

It cocked its head.

“Do you have a family? Where do you live?”

It licked the spoon I’d been using. The spoon vanished.

“How about a name? I think I’ll call you Sunny, because your eyes are like stars, and the sun is a star, right?”

The fox blinked.

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The fox spent all day with me, eating batch after batch of cookies. Slightly after noon I ran out of eggs, so we went to the Olson’s house to get more from their chickens.

The fox ate all the chickens. It was fascinating, seeing them run around flapping only to vanish the moment the fox touched them.

At sunset the fox left. It walked out through the wall and by the time I got outside it was gone.

Half an hour later the big iron doors at the edge of the square opened. The mayor peered out.

I waved at her.

She stared at me like I was a ghost. “You’re still here? You’re alive?”

“Yep,” I answered.

“Did it come?” she asked. “What happened?”

“The big giant void fox thing?” I smiled. “Yeah, it came. I made it cookies.”