Through The Fog

Prolouge

I can tell you about the day life as we knew it ended. It wasn't like they say it would be like in all those post apocalyptic stories you read. It wasn't sudden and dramatic and maybe that's what makes it so scary.

It started months before everything went to chaos. you could just feel something bad coming. It was like the whole earth was holding it's breath. Animals were panicked and crazed and the wind stopped blowing all together. Even the birds were too afraid to sing their songs.

Then came the fog. Every night without fail it would come rolling in at exactly 7:50 pm, thick and humid. A dangerous white wall that blinded and confused anything it consumed. The roads were closed early and every person was given a curfew. Be at home by 6 or be caught blind. School was still in session, a little fog wasn't enough to cancel. Typical.

Next came the big lights. They would sweep the streets until morning light and then disappear without a trace. At first we thought it was the police checking to see if everyone was home safe but we couldn't have been more wrong.

My neighbor, Mr. Steven's, a brave ex marine in his late fifties went out one night to see what it was. I'll never forget his screams as we heard the sickening crunch of his bones and the sound of rain right after. Except it wasn't rain. The next morning half the street was stained red and his body was nowhere to be found. We were scared but we learned.

But it seems people thought it was just a story. A local urban legend to keep everyone inside when the fog rolled in.

A couple weeks went by without incident. We adapted and got on with our lives, though the fear was still lingering in the back of our consciousness. But life goes on. We couldn't stop living. It was just a story, right?

School continued though all extracurriculars were cancelled. No more high school football or mock trials. That hit my boyfriend pretty hard. He was captain of the football team and a good one at that. He thrived in the role of leadership and had plenty of scholarships for it. But the world was changing and we had no choice but to accept it. The stories of the fog and the lights made people too nervous to ignore the warnings.

Another months passed and things changed again. I started to notice the adults getting twitchy. It was subtle at first. It would be little flinches from my mom while she was cooking dinner or the teacher would stop mid lecture and stare off blankly for a minute before their face fills with dread and horror. The mailman would freeze on his walk to deliver before dropping everything in his hands and running for his truck.

I didn't understand it until one day I heard my father muttering to himself frantically. They could hear something that we couldn't. It was driving them mad but most of them put up a front for the sake of our sanity.

But at that point I knew something was really wrong. I pointed it out to Justin, my boyfriend, and his friends and they thought I was crazy. But then they started to notice it too. naturally, us being teenagers and not being able to take the world too seriously, we turned into a meme.

Adults losing their minds was suddenly the funniest thing in the world and it was trending. That's how we found out that the fog wasn't just affecting our small little town. It was happening everywhere. All different time zones at exactly 7:50 like literal clockwork.

A year passed and we just accepted it. We got used to it. Once you turn thirty five you would lose your mind and start hearing and seeing whatever it was that they heard and saw. Nobody would tell but it had to have been something bad.

Then it finally happened. It was the sixth of September, 2:00 on a Thursday afternoon. I was sitting by the window in my AP English and Literature class when my teacher stopped talking. At first we thought it was another frozen freak out so the kids readied their cameras but this time was different.