Carl Damen [Damen - Apocalypse’s Prelude

It began with a ceramic mug suspended in mid-air, a parabola of tea frozen curling away behind it. Shara Chuskus lay on the stairs, her elbows and knees chaffed from the carpet, staring at the apparition at the end of her outstretched hand. She spent a moment wondering at it, then yelped and pushed back as the whole mess succumbed to gravity.

She edged away from the stairs, breathing hard as she fought to disbelieve what she had just seen. A few minutes passed, the memory faded, and she was able to tell herself that it had all been a quirk of perception; her mind stretching out a single moment into a feat of magic.

That was what she told herself through the rest of the day, what she told herself as she went to bed, what she told herself when she awoke the next morning.

Then, she went into the bathroom, looked out the window, and saw the man and woman on the street corner. They were staring at her.

There was the cup, just past her reach, two or three inches off the ground

The watchers turned to face each other, huddled for a moment in concentration, then left, walking down the street in the direction of the Metro station.

Shara sat on the edge of her bed, trying to convince herself that it was all coincidence, that it was just a couple of lost tourists looking up at the very same moment she had been looking down. No one was watching her.

Today was Saturday. She decided not to leave the house.

Sunday morning, awake again, in the bathroom. On a whim, she looked out. There they were.

This time there was no talking herself out of it. Something was happening. The simplest explanation, the least interesting explanation, was that she was suffering from paranoid hallucinations. She discarded this interpretation almost immediately. Her family had no history of mental illness. Besides, who wanted to accept insanity when it seemed something exciting was about to happen?

By Sunday evening, she had almost convinced herself that she had developed super powers, that her watchers were part of a secret organization, out to recruit her to fight evil. Just before she went to bed, she realized how crazy that sounded, and decided to schedule a screening with her doctor.

Monday morning, and the watchers were there again. They stood on the sidewalk, dressed in light windbreakers, their faces obscured by hoods. Today they didn't take their gaze away from Shara's window, didn't turn away in conversation. Shara waved at them experimentally. Maybe if she acknowledged them, they would prove themselves to illusory. Didn't work; they kept right on looking.

She sighed and jerked the curtain closed. They were real... Maybe the rest was, too.

She needed something small for a test, something not much bigger than the mug... there. Her toothbrush hung limply in a metal ring above the sink, practically begging to be levitated. She widened her stance, gritted her teeth, and glared at the toothbrush. Nothing.

What did they always do in movies? Arm out, fingers splayed, gentle waving motions... Nothing. Did she need to be expressing strong emotion? Feel danger, maybe? She wasn't about to fling herself down the stairs, but maybe falling backwards onto the bed would

A gentle ringing focused her attention back on the toothbrush. It stood erect, floating an inch or two in the air, the bottom wavering and occasionally contacting the metal ring. She gasped, and the toothbrush fell back to its original position.

"Shit."

She took a few steps backwards, felt something cold against the back of her knees, and dropped down onto the toilet. This wasn't real, couldn't be happening, had to be-

Verification. She needed to film it, see if others saw it, or if they only saw a toothbrush. She snorted at that. If they saw anything, they would see off-the-shelf special effects.

No, the only thing to do was to ignore this, at least for a few more hours until she could see the doctor. Until then, she would go to work, play it cool, hope she wasn't losing her mind...

Back to the window, tearing the curtain aside The watchers were gone. Somehow, they had sensed what she had done, had gone back to tell the leaders of the conspiracy that a new convert was ready... Probably wasn't a good idea to think that way...

She showered, dressed, tried to brush her teeth through supernatural means, gave up, did it the old fashioned way, and was out the door by seven. Down the sidewalk, surreptitiously looking for hooded figures hiding in the hedges.

A hole gaped open in the sidewalk in front of her, and she dropped down into the great concrete cavity of the Washington, D.C. Metro system. There was the usual Monday morning crunch at the security gate, but before too long she had been scanned, approved, and electronically billed for her upcoming ride. She pushed into the crowd milling around the precipice of the platform, finally giving up and stopping next to a support column some fifteen feet from the edge.

Shara...

Despite the noise echoing through the tube, she heard her name clearly, too clearly. A quick look around showed that no one was paying attention to her. "Hello?"

No one took notice.

Shara...

This time she noticed the smoothness of the word, the lack of acoustic distortion; a word spoken directly into her mind. She felt excitement bubbling through her; the watchers were here, were communicating with her. "Who's there?"

Instead of a voiceless word, the answer came as an all encompassing vision. Sound died, everything around her began to fade, commuters becoming translucent and popping out of existence in rapid succession until she was alone on the platform. The hallucination theory was suddenly seeming a lot more inviting.

The concrete of the station suddenly began to soften and run, changing from its normal vault into a dark cube of some kind, devoid of decoration or complex architecture, fading into shadow all around. She was so caught up in watching her location melt away that it took her a moment to realize her clothes were fading, too. She watched as her outfit went through a reversed dressing process, disappearing layer by layer until she stood naked and alone in the great chamber.

She whirled around in panic for a moment, trying to cover herself, then realized it was a fruitless gesture in the face of someonesomethingthat could apparently speak into her mind, play with her perceptions.

"Hello?"

"-ello?"

"-lo?"

"-o?"

Pretty detailed perceptions. She stamped down on the ground, felt the rough surface digging into her feet. Whatever was going on, it seemed pretty real.

A low flurry of echoes sprung into existence, drawing her attention behind, to where two human forms stepped out of the shadows. A man and a woman, naked as she was, skeletally thin, bald and pasty. They looked as though they had been through hell.

Instinctively, she knew they were her watchers.

She folded her arms over her breasts, realized how ridiculous the gesture was, dropped her arms, and tried to stand a little taller. "Um... Hello? I, I don't mean to nag, but... what's going on?"

Neither watcher visibly reacted, even seemed to have heard her, but within a few seconds a voice, crisp and echoless, spoke into her mind. You slipped, just as we did... Your body has remembered what your mind has not...

Another thrill of excitement. Her delusions of grandeur, her fantasies of adventure returned, pushing away that still small voice that told her, You need professional help.

Shara tried to respond to them, to push her words out of her mind and into theirs, but could only muster the mental equivalent of a nervous chuckle. "What do you want me to do?"

A mixture of regret and anger washed over her. Remember...

People suddenly burst into being, as dead and naked looking as the watchers, moving at a hugely exaggerated pace, jumping corporately from place to place, individually milling about like streams of ants. Every once in a while they'd suddenly drop down, lay prone for several seconds, then stand and repeat the cycle. As this happened, two men moved among them, both dressed in simple, military-like fatigues. They seemed to be in charge.