Reposting my submission from the writing contest thread here, may as well!
Reality Crash
“David, David wake up!” A voice echoes in the dark room of the small bedroom shared by David Weiss & Bret Durham; a messy little room in this old apartment in the middle of Savannah, Georgia. David lets out an exhausted groan, slowly lifting his head up from his pillow as he turns his head over to Bret, unable to see him in the dark. “What is it, man?” He asks, following up his question with an exhausted yawn as he sits up, rubbing his hand over his eye. “You’ve got to come here, something’s happening!” Bret gasps out, his voice shaken. David spits out a curse as he stands up off of his bed, wearing only some shorts at the moment. He’s shaking his head as he keeps his gaze on Bret; questioning him further, “What?”
Bret doesn’t answer, simply motioning for David to follow him into the other room. David sighs, grabbing a dark blue shirt off of the ground as he steps around his bed and follows Bret into the living room, the dim lights on the ceiling flickering a bit. His mind is still hazy in its sleepy state as he hears the TV, a newscaster speaking about something, though the words don’t properly register in his mind. After he pulls his shirt on, he looks over at Bret, who’s speaking in a worried, frantic voice: “I was just watching the TV, when the news came on, and-- It’s happening everywhere!”
What’s happening everywhere? David wonders as he sits down on the couch, leaning forward and forcing his eyes to stay open as he listens to the man sitting behind the news desk.
“... California has just sunk, the casualties are possibly in the millions already as reports come in from Russia, Japan, England about the situations unfolding in those countries. Do not leave your home if there’s a grinding noise outside, or else--”
Static. For a brief few seconds, the TV shows live footage from the International Space Station as it flies over Russia. His mind freezes as the TV shows a massive canyon stretching across the entire continent, leading into a black void. The screen turns to static again before coming back to the news broadcaster; who’s eyeing something outside the view of the camera.
“O-oh god I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I--” The newscaster gasps before looking back at the camera, his eyes looking glassy as tears stream down his cheeks. “If you hear the voice of a family member or a friend who passed away recently, don’t listen to them. Don’t listen to them, don’t interact with them, they’re in your head, they’re not real.”
The wall crumbles behind the newscaster, and at that moment, the screen turns to static once again. The apartment rumbles all around David, forcing him back up onto his feet as he lets out a stiff curse, “Fuck!” He looks over at where Bret was standing, only to see that he’s completely vanished. “Bret?” He yells out, looking around frantically, only to see the front door is open. In-front of the front door is a hole the size of a man, one that reaches down into the endless expanse. In the blink of an eye, the hole vanishes, leaving behind only screaming, the stars above spinning endlessly around the planet, no moon to be seen.
David gawks at the chaotic mess before him, gasping as holes begin to tear their way through the walls. Acting quickly, he rushes towards the exit of the apartment; stopping to grab the keys that he has on a small table next to the door, then stepping out into the cold air on the second floor of the apartment complex he lives in. The ground rumbles again, with him speeding down the walkway, holding back a terrified scream as he watches the door to his neighbor’s apartment melt, as if hit with an intense burst of heat. He eventually manages to get to a stairway, rushing down it with quick steps before getting out and onto the parking lot.
Cracks spread across the ground, the concrete beginning to break apart with each second that passes. His hands shake intensely as he rushes towards his truck, an old lil’ thing that has definitely seen it’s better days, the color on it having faded over the years and has gotten covered in rust. Opening the door; and with him nearly dropping his keys to the floorboards, he sticks his key into the ignition and starts his truck up. The engine roars to life as he puts the pedal to the metal, slamming his foot down on the gas and pulling out of the parking lot, his eyes locked onto the road before him; quickly realizing that not even the road is safe.
Fire is spreading throughout the bunches of trees on both sides of the road as he speeds down it, thinking frantically as he recalls a specific destination. A shelter he used to hide out in when he was younger, an old-timey fallout shelter. Maybe he can hide there! He can feel his breathing getting shakier and shakier, heavier and heavier as the sky shifts from a gentle dark blue to an even darker red from all the fire surrounding him. Across the road in-front of him, he can see a deer running across, howling out in agony as it’s engulfed by the flames!
“Fuck… Fuck!” He’s shaking now, his hands gripping the steering wheel tightly as he sees the moon suddenly disappear in the sky. It doesn’t take long for him to notice the shape of something in the heavens above; blocking the moon. With him hitting the brakes, he stops his truck and gawks at what he’s seeing, frozen up in shock.
It looks human in its form, towering high, high above him and all of creation. He can’t make out any identifying features in the dark, even with the massive hellfire that is blazing all around him, but there is one thing he does notice. Three glowing eyes on it’s head, the third one being on its forehead, as it stared down at the land.
The ground rumbled around him once again, knocking him around in the truck’s cab! As his head hits the steering wheel, he can feel the vibrations underneath him growing louder and louder. He brings his head up; seeing a massive wave of debris flying towards him, and everything else in the large area around the massive creature. He cries out, sharply yanking the steering wheel to the side as the car sharply turns; with him driving away from the massive wall of death and destruction as fast as his car can manage!
The car swerves and turns as he drives frantically down the road, the truck hitting a few bumps and cracks that are tearing their way through the concrete. In the distance, he can see a large plume of light shooting high up into the sky, and as he passes by the apartment building he once called his home, the entire place has fallen into the ground, leaving only a massive hole in its wake. He gawks at the destruction, turning his head over to the large crater…
… And crashes into someone who was running across the road, lit aflame. David screams out, the windshield cracking into thousands of pieces and glass digging into his flesh, his grip on the steering wheel being lost. The truck veers around, swerving out of control as he screams, his hands quickly gripping back into the wheel; but it’s too late as he feels himself turning over, the truck losing its speed immensely and beginning to roll, each rotation giving David a brief flash of the oncoming debris cloud; the stars twinkling out of existence.
And then, there was darkness.