Acekirby wrote:
rly?
Yes.
The Cup of Coffee wrote:
Was I in it?
Yes.
Chapter 2 follows below. I will hopefully have Chapter 3 out later, and, if things turn out right, many more chapters in the coming weeks with the help of Spring Break.
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Chapter 2That damn alarm clock.
I awoke to a never-ending triple-bleep bursting from my laptop. My summertime allergies were kicking in, meaning that my dry head rattled greatly with each instance of the noise.
I finally worked up the will to turn off the alarm (along with the laptop) by holding down the power button for a few moments. Everything grew silent once more in my room. Relief.
Silence ended with a sudden spell of car horns outside. I guess that meant it was officially time to wake up.
I was somewhat chilled this morning; my body was drenched in sweat, yet the air conditioning’s sheer strength was keeping my sweat glands cool.
On occasion, opening my eyes in the morning was a great challenge. Whenever an instance of light appeared in my eyes, they’d involuntarily close shut despite any efforts on my part to open them. This was one of those occasions.
I rubbed them with great force to try and massage them into opening up, but all that did was wipe some tiny particles (“crust”, as some would call it) off my eyelids. I cursed, then lifted myself from my computer chair and waddled to the bathroom sink, sidestepping all of the junk on the floor of my apartment in the process.
After a few moments, I felt my way to the sink with the help of my walls. The walls were rather poor, with their off-white paint chipping in contact with my hands, but it still served as a great guide to the bathroom.
Once in the bathroom, I finally was able to rinse the warm, summer water from the rusted faucets over my face. My splashes were messy; the front of my oily hair was wet, my speckled undershirt was drenched, and even the opposing bathroom wall tiling was wet. My face was clean, though, and that was all that mattered.
Now that I was able to see, I did my standard series of cracks all around my body: my back, my neck, my toes, my feet, my knuckles…everything that could be cracked was cracked. I rubbed my hands together, noticed their dryness (which ended up sending a cold streak up my spine like most dry things did), and then quickly applied some aloe-based lotion to them. I now felt “clean”.
My television still appeared to be on, but its auto-mute feature had taken effect. I brushed off a few loose wrappers from my computer desk and grabbed the television remote, turning off the mute function with the press of a sticky button.
The news was, as usual, boring; the multiple tickers along the bottom of the screen weren’t even showing anything interesting. The meteors weren’t being mentioned, either. Meteors…
Boring news. “Bah…”
Breaking news. “Meh…”
Meteors…
The television feed starting collecting artifacts around several stale parts of the screen. The newscaster’s voice was starting to break up, and her face was starting to lose a quality image with the growing pixelation. With modern technology, satellite feeds shouldn’t have been interrupted on common days.
The sounds of a few fighter jets emanated overhead. Things seemed to be getting weird and cliché…
One of the meteors ended up colliding in a nearby wooded area at a miniscule size. A shaky camera shot of some fighter jets (which I assumed were the ones that I had just heard) appeared on the screen for a few seconds. They looked quite big and menacing—the “big daddies” of fighter jets.
My legs began to quiver, which was quite rare nowadays. The cold sweat started occupying my sweat glands once more.
“The United States government would like to make it clear that there should be no cause for alarm in this situation. The military is simply being sent to the scene in the rare event that it was not a meteor, but an attack of some sort.” Great. Terrorism.
The satellite feed cut out and back in perhaps a hundred times. In the end, the newscaster said that they were cutting to a commercial break due to technical difficulties.
I tried to remain calm—really, I did—but there was just that feeling in me that meant danger was coming. More bleeps came from my laptop, not from an alarm, but from instant messages.
“Joey, are you seeing what’s going on outside?” one message by my friend read.
“Joey, check outside!” read another.
Altogether, twenty messages by twenty friends appeared on my laptop’s screen, each having a message on the same subject as the others.
I briskly walked to my balcony, just to take a peek at what was happening.
The streets seemed fine, but the sky was a whole ‘nother story. Literally, thousands of shiny objects were roaring down from the air, some colliding with the Earth miles away. Tremors shook across Forumopolis seconds afterward. They were nothing major, but they were enough to cause concern. Meteors? Terrorism? Aw, hell…
More fighter jets appeared, all of which were scattered in tiny formations heading in every direction. I could see police cars, ambulances, and fire engines appearing in the streets below.
The tremors grew in magnitude, my balcony’s foundation seemed to be detaching from the rest of the apartment.
Then it hit. Then they hit.
A force of some sort threw me back into my apartment, though thankfully, my sliding glass door was open and out of the way from my fall. Hundreds of thunderous sounds, all of which seemed like sonic booms, sounded in all directions. Smoke filled the blue sky, causing a hazy red shade to appear near-instantly. Buildings in the distance appeared to be leveled, and nearby buildings either had major cracks down them or were starting to crumble.
Welcome to Hell…My eardrums started to rupture under the intensity of the noise, but under all of the explosions, earthquakes, and crashes, I could still hear the faint cries of human beings—humans, the apparently dominant race of the Earth, dying.
One of these objects crashed into the building across the street from me, throwing my body across my apartment and into my steel door. The bolts along the door rattled with my impact, and I could feel a large gash in the general vicinity of my head. It seemed as if time was ticking down for my life.
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