The permanent eclipse

It's what o'clock?

Day one:

The first thing I noticed was the silence. Stillsard Arms was never quiet, not really—not even at 3 a.m., when Danny's regulars finally gave up and staggered home. But now, lying on the couch in the dim light, I didn't hear so much as a footstep or a creak of wood. Just pure, unsettling silence, the kind that crawls over your skin and makes you feel like something's lurking around the corner.

My head was pounding, partly from the beers and partly from the weird dreams, which were all starting to blur together into one unsettling mess. Something about dark rooms, cold metal, and this strange feeling that I was supposed to be somewhere else. Whatever. I shook it off and stumbled up, pushing aside an empty bag of crisps as I sat up.

Leo and Nancy were somehow still asleep on the floor, limbs all tangled like a dodgy modern art piece, and Eli was curled up on a beanbag in the corner, snoring softly. Archie and Canny were sprawled out on the other couch, and I could hear Eli's phone buzzing faintly under him, probably another one of those pointless notifications he never remembered to turn off.

I rubbed my eyes, trying to make sense of the time. My phone was on the table, flashing 12:05 p.m., which meant it was well past morning. But the room was still half-dark, the dim light barely enough to make sense of the shapes around me.

"Guess it's time to hunt down some breakfast," I muttered to myself, dragging my legs off the couch and making my way toward the stairs.

The old wooden stairs creaked under my weight, and as I made my way down, I noticed a faint light coming from the kitchen. When I turned the corner, I saw her.

Elanise was standing by the window, arms wrapped around herself, staring outside. Her silhouette was tense, her usually calm expression replaced by something I couldn't quite read. It wasn't like her to look so... rattled.

"Morning," I said, trying not to sound too groggy as I rubbed the back of my neck. "Didn't expect you to be up this early after last night."

She jumped, whirling around with wide eyes. Her hair was slightly messy, like she'd been awake for a while. "Mikey," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. "Look."

She gestured toward the window, her hand trembling just slightly. For a second, I thought maybe she'd seen a fox or something, but the look in her eyes said this was something else. Something wrong.

I stepped up beside her, expecting to see the usual rundown buildings of Birmingham, grey and rainy maybe, but nothing unusual.

Except it was pitch black.

The kind of black you get at midnight, or the kind of black you see in a horror film right before something awful happens. There were no streetlights on, no dim morning sun trying to fight through clouds—just pure, unbroken darkness that stretched on like a thick, endless fog. The city lights we usually saw in the distance were nowhere to be found. It was like Birmingham had disappeared entirely.

"What the...?" I mumbled, pressing my face closer to the glass, like that would somehow make it make sense. "It's twelve. It should be bright outside. Even in this dump of a city."

Elanise just nodded, her face pale. "I thought maybe it was just the window—like, maybe it was something weird with the glass or something, but I checked the clock... It's past noon, Mikey."

I felt a chill settle over me, one that didn't come from the cold. I glanced back at her, then at the dark street outside, struggling to piece together what was happening. It felt like the world was playing a joke on us—some weird prank someone would set up for Halloween, where they blacked out all the lights in the city.