But today, the air felt… wrong.
Not dramatic wrong. Not “aliens descending from the sky” wrong. Just off. Like a house that’s too quiet after the kids go to school, or a road you’ve driven a thousand times suddenly missing a landmark. A thin, invisible pressure settled just behind Eric’s eyes, like the hangover was trying to upgrade itself.
Mike noticed it first.
He’d gone quiet about four steps into the walk—quiet enough that Eric, who wasn’t exactly chatty in the best of moods, actually looked over at him.
Mike’s posture had shifted. Subtle, but noticeable if you knew him. His shoulders had straightened, and his eyes moved not lazily, but systematically, scanning porches, driveways, windows, alleys. His fingers flexed around the neck of the bottle sticking out of the brown bag he carried, not enough to look suspicious, but enough for Eric to clock the change.
“You good?” Eric asked, trying to keep it casual.
Mike didn’t answer immediately. He tilted his head, listening to something Eric couldn’t hear.
“You hear that?” Mike murmured.
Eric blinked. “Hear what?”
Mike’s brows pulled together. “Exactly.”
Eric listened.
At first, he tried to identify something wrong—sirens, barking dogs, kids yelling, car radio, construction noise, wind through trees, the usual tapestry of small-town background life.
But as he tuned in, what hit him wasn’t sound.
It was silence.
Real silence.
No engine rumbling from the distant highway. No wind brushing past buildings. No birds overhead—no sparrows, no crows, no cooing from the telephone wires. Not even the metallic tick of cooling car hoods or some old AC unit rattling from a window unit.
Just a dead, heavy stillness that pressed inward from all sides.
Eric swallowed.
His headache, which had downgraded from murder to aggravated assault, crept back toward felony-level discomfort.
“Maybe it’s just—” Eric started.
“No,” Mike interrupted quietly, eyes narrowing. “I know this feeling.”
Eric felt a tug in his chest at that. “From overseas?”
Mike nodded once. “Before shit went sideways, everything would get real still. Like the world was holding its breath.”
Eric didn’t like that. Not because he doubted Mike’s experience—Mike didn’t bullshit about the serious stuff—but because something inside him agreed with the assessment.
Something deep.
Something old.
He shoved the thought down.
“It’s just weather,” Eric said. “Pressure shift or something.”
Mike gave him a look that said he didn’t buy it. Not fully.
Still, he let it go, because if Eric didn’t want to talk, arguing with him was like arguing with concrete—possible, but pointless.
They continued down the street. The silence followed.
***
A dog stood on a porch, staring rigidly at a patch of empty air, tail tucked so tight it almost touched its belly. Normally, that dog barked at everyone, including the mailman, the UPS guy, and probably its own reflection. Today, it didn’t make a sound.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Eric didn’t like the way it looked at nothing.
He didn’t like that he felt the urge to look there too.
He forced his eyes forward.
“You’re pale,” Mike muttered.
“You’re ugly, but you don’t hear me complaining.”
Mike exhaled sharply, a half-laugh, half-disbelieving sigh. “You’re deflecting.”
“Yup.”
“You’re bad at it.”
“Yup.”
Mike smirked but didn’t push. He knew better.
They turned onto Sycamore Street.
Halfway down the block, someone slammed a car door. The sound was so loud in the unnatural quiet that it made both men flinch.
A woman walked out of her apartment carrying groceries. She didn’t notice them—her focus locked on the sky, brows creased. She lingered only a few seconds before hurriedly going inside, shutting the door quickly behind her.
Mike watched her go. “People feel it,” he said under his breath.
“Yeah,” Eric admitted quietly, his defenses slipping an inch. “They do.”
A loose newspaper tumbled down the street—except it didn’t tumble. It skidded two feet and stopped, like the wind had forgotten what it was supposed to do halfway through the motion.
Eric’s heart picked up speed.
He couldn’t explain why, but every fiber of his being felt like it had been nudged awake. Like something under his skin was stretching after the longest sleep imaginable, remembering how to be again.
He hated that.
He didn’t want to feel awake. Being numb had its perks.
They kept walking until they reached the intersection near the old laundromat. Eric had seen that building abandoned for years. Nothing ever happened there except the occasional graffiti or some bored teenager smashing a bottle for fun.
Today, something was happening.
Eric stopped.
Mike stopped a half-step later.
***
Down the road, at the far end of the block, the air was… bending.
Not visibly, not like a movie effect or some dramatic warping of space. More like heat haze—except it wasn’t hot enough, and the wavering distortion had a shape.
A tall, vertical shape.
Like someone had drawn a line in the air and reality hadn’t agreed on which side belonged to which.
“What the hell…” Mike whispered.
Eric’s throat tightened.
His headache spiked. A sudden pressure throbbed behind his eyes, cascading down his spine like a shockwave without sound. His breath hitched. For a second, his vision flickered—dark, light, dark again.
He staggered.
Mike grabbed his arm. “Eric!”
“I’m fine,” Eric said automatically, even though he clearly wasn’t.
The distortion shimmered like a sheet being lifted by invisible hands, then folded inward.
Eric’s heart hammered.
His legs felt rooted.
Somewhere buried under years of booze, exhaustion, and deliberate forgetting, a reflex clawed upward—
Move.
Get ready.
It’s opening.
His breathing quickened.
Not fear. Not exactly.
Recognition.
He knew this feeling.
He desperately wished he didn’t.
The shimmer warped, collapsing inward, then snapping open in a clean vertical seam. It lasted less than a second, but in that moment, Eric saw—
Black.
Not darkness.
Blackness.
An absence of light so complete it felt alive. The edges rippled like torn fabric, fluttering in a breeze that didn’t exist.
For one frozen moment, the world balanced on a knife’s edge.
Then—
FWIP
The seam snapped shut.
Eric stumbled forward a half-step, like something had been pulling at him and suddenly let go.
The silence deepened.
Mike pushed Eric behind him without thinking, posture shifting into combat stance, eyes locked on where the anomaly had been. “What was that?”
Eric didn’t answer.
Couldn’t.
He stared at the spot, chest tight, pulse hammering wildly.
What he saw.
What he didn’t see.
What he almost remembered.
Something deep inside him rattled like a chain pulled taut.
Mike’s voice cut through the haze. “Eric. Talk to me. What was that?”
“I…” Eric swallowed. “I don’t know.”
Mike’s stare sharpened. “Bullshit.”
Eric dragged a hand through his hair, fingers shaking. “I don’t know, Mike. I swear. I just—”
His voice cracked. “I don’t know.”
Mike didn’t like that answer, but he recognized the panic hiding behind Eric’s eyes.
The veteran in him shut up.
The friend in him stepped forward.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Okay. Let’s go. Slowly. No sudden shit.”
Eric nodded mutely.
They began walking again, every sense on high alert. Mike’s eyes flicked everywhere. Eric’s gaze kept returning to the empty space where the seam had opened. Even though it was gone, he could still feel something lingering—like standing in a room someone had just left, their warmth still clinging to the air.
A curtain rustled in a window nearby. Someone was watching them.
Eric didn’t look directly.
Mike didn’t either.
They just kept walking.
Halfway back, a crow finally cawed overhead.
The single sound cracked through the silence like a hammer blow, and the world seemed to breathe again. The wind picked up. Leaves rustled. A distant engine revved. Somewhere, a dog barked with manic relief.
But the normalcy didn’t feel comforting.
It felt staged.
Like the world had scrambled to put itself back together before anyone noticed the seam.
Eric exhaled shakily.
Mike slid him a sideways look. “You sure you’re good?”
“Define good.”
“Alive.”
Eric gave a humorless laugh. “Barely qualifies, but yeah.”
Mike didn’t smile. “You’ve seen crap like that before.”
Eric froze.
Just long enough for Mike to notice.
Then Eric forced himself to keep walking. “Didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
Eric clenched his jaw. “Mike. Drop it.”
Mike hesitated.
Then: “…Alright.”
Not because he believed Eric.
But because he knew pushing now would only make things worse.
***
They reached the apartment building without speaking. Mike unlocked the door and gestured for Eric to go in first.
Eric stepped inside, then paused on the threshold.
The air inside felt normal.
Normal enough.
But deep inside him, under all the numbness and tiredness and alcohol residue… something had begun to pace.
A memory without shape.
A fear without name.
A truth he’d buried so deep it took an impossible tear in the sky to stir it.
He closed the door behind them.
The lock clicked.
It sounded far too loud.
?? Today:
-
-
Chapter 3 drops later today — because cliffhangers are a war crime and I refuse to commit them this early.
?? This Week:
-
1 chapter every day for the rest of the week
(yes, daily — yes, I drink water, no, I’m not okay)
?? Starting Next Week:
-
New chapters every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday
Because your boy is aiming for consistency without accidentally dying in the process.
See you in Chapter 3.
— The Plague Doctor