2020-When Time Stood Still

Chapter one: 2017 Europe

Chapter One

2017 Europe

First there was the fire, then the floods and the pestilence.

No, this is not a biblical reference. These were the events that played out over a brief period, just as we were beginning our new life. Was something trying to prevent our new life plan? Or perhaps we had unconsciously decided to implement our own life changes to simultaneously coincide with unprecedented world events.

Anyone who knows me would expect nothing less.

At every attempt to board a flight, or flee a country, disaster had struck: The fire at the airport, the major floods causing catastrophic damage, the global pandemic which changed the world forever, in more ways than one.

If we had been atheists, we may have rethought our entire belief system by now. End of days, apocalyptic? Yes indeed.

This is the part where I should introduce myself: My name is Skye, single mother of one female, half human, half extraterrestrial, but that will become clear later.

I'm considered by some to be a hippy, free spirit, conspiracy theorist, though I prefer the term, conspiracy realist. But more importantly, I'm the kind of person you can rely on in an emergency: A fortunate trait indeed as we were about to enter into a prolonged period of global emergency, the likes of which we had never experienced before.

I don't know about you, but over the years I have learnt that a sense of humor is crucial to survival, particularly the dark and ironic kind. And yes, like all half human, half extraterrestrial beings, I occasionally get stressed, particularly when life as we know it seems to be falling apart at the seams; when suddenly people are dying rapidly in large numbers from an unknown cause, the global economy is crashing and we are entering into the huge abyss...

But even then, I will endeavor to find humor in the darkness. As Monty Python so accurately pointed out, always look on the bright side of life.

But first let's take a trip to the past to understand the future.

***

Dazzling lights, flashing neon signs, nonstop police sirens and of course the token drunken groups of shrieking stag and hen parties.

It truly was an assault on the senses. We seek refuge in the closest thing we can find to a quiet bar.

I sink into the comfortable chair and sigh loudly with relief.

"What's wrong?" He sips his beer slowly with great satisfaction. "A good end to a positive day. Things are on the up". He lets out a quiet burp and rubs his belly. "Time for some grub. But you still haven't told me what's wrong?" I attempt to stop frowning, mindful of my teenage daughter's constant scolding about wrinkles and frown lines. I don't think I'm the type for Botox, but one can never say never.

"I've got that dark feeling again, a feeling of foreboding, a heaviness. Like something's in the air but no idea what it is." He looks at me with a mixture of concern and slight frustration.

I get it: We've worked damn hard to get to this point so why put a dampener on it right now with my morose musings of an impending apocalypse?

These feelings I've had them all my life, even as a child. I've experienced prolonged periods of intensity and periods of barely detecting anything.

I've literally 'smelt' death before it's happened and had end of days dreams from around the age of nine.

Unfortunately, I'm not quite on the same level of Nostradamus as if I were, I could at least have made some money out of this, at best won the lottery, but unfortunately in my case it's not yet happened. But this dark heavy feeling of foreboding, it's the same as back in 2005.