The Intrusion

Thirty-Six

[Andy]

I had trouble getting to sleep tonight, but I'm asleep now.

Or, at least kind of.

The clock on my oven says it's quarter to midnight. The light flashes, bright red cutting through the darkness of the world around me, like there's been a power outage and it's waiting to be reset. Time is paused. Still. I think I'm asleep, but also, I don't think I'm asleep.

I'm in my kitchen.

I'm in my bed.

I'm in two places at once.

I walk through my apartment, everything covered in a fine film of ash—crumbling and melting around me. I push on my front door with just the tips of my fingers. Soundlessly, it swings open. The dark, empty hallway ahead silently calls to me, beckoning me to walk. I must listen. I don't have any control in the matter, but even if I did, I doubt I'd choose differently.

I want to go.

I leave my apartment and go down the stairs. It takes forever to get to the bottom, but also it takes no time at all. It's hard to keep track of time when time is frozen.

Jordan's elevator waits for me, its huge metallic doors reflecting back a shadow of who I am. It has no eyes, and it has no face.

I press the call button, and I wait. And I wait. And I wait.

Nothing happens.

Jordan's not asleep. I can't get in.

When I am about to give up, a door appears to my right. A force beyond my control pulls me towards it, and I step out into the heart of the city. The buildings around me reach the sky where stars twinkle around them.

I wander down the center of the road. There are no cars or people, just these buildings that reach on and on and on forever. Their windows are distorted and pulled like they've been stretched. Instead of being two-hundred feet off the ground, the 23rd floor may now be two-thousand or two-hundred-thousand or maybe even two-million feet above me.

As I walk, the street below me becomes a rushing river, and the buildings form a tunnel. I rush through them at a speed so great that if I had a body it would be crushed by the force of the acceleration, but my body is far away right now.

Finally, I reach the end of the tunnel and emerge from the river. Everything is still once again. How many dimensions have I moved in? I'm not in the city anymore, but also, I don't think I'm in 2018 anymore. I've moved not only through space, but also through time.

I'm at my house—the house where I grew up—in my front yard. Everything is dark— the sky, the grass, the house, the trees—but despite the darkness, it is day. The sun rests in the sky like an object. Like how a light would look if its brightness were somehow frozen and unable to shine. It reminds me of pictures I drew as a child, where the sun sat like a spiked orb in the sky above a house, and a family smiled inside.

I wander through my yard like a ghost. I remember everything. Every tree, every rock, every bit of ivy creeping up the brown shingled sides of the house, crawling up to the windows and tapping on the glass, trying to get in.

I reach the driveway and stand on the pavement in front of the shed. A boy stands on the roof, facing away from me and into the backyard. He's going to jump. I know he's going to jump because he thinks he can fly. I want to yell at him not to do it, but I don't. He needs to learn, and I know he won't get hurt.

But then, suddenly, the boy turns around and faces the driveway. He looks directly at me. He sees me. I know that he sees me because I remember seeing me. I remember that day so many years ago when I jumped from the shed. I was about to jump over the grass so I wouldn't get hurt, but then I felt a strange presence behind me, like I was being watched. So I turned, and I saw a dark shadow figure standing in our driveway.