My friend discovered something reality-defying in his house

Until a few weeks ago I’ve been blissfully unaware of, well, almost everything. I went to work every day, loved movies and games and hang out with people, mostly my friend Greg.

Speaking of the devil, it’s because of him that all this changed. It was a couple of weeks ago when he called me after yet another long day at work.

“Yo, Steve, can you come over to my place? I gotta show you something.”

“Ugh, can’t it wait, dude? I was at the store all day today, like seriously, I’m exhausted.”

“No way man, get your ass over here right now! I even got us a couple of cold beers.”

Well, it was the last point that sold it for me. It was Saturday evening anyway, so why not have a bit of fun and a few drinks.

It was half an hour later that I arrived at his house and he ushered me into a storage room on the ground floor. What I saw was a large, dark hole on the ceiling.

“What in the…” I asked him.

“Haven’t gotten the slightest clue.”

I turned to him frowning.

“Okay man, don’t start with this shit, I’m not in the mood, what’s that thing?”

He shrugged. “I’m not fucking with you, really. It was just there one day, puff. Completely out of nowhere.”

“Really? Who’s going to believe that type of story? Can’t you at least try to be convincing?”

“Okay, hold on.”

With that, he rushed out of the room.

“What the hell are you doing?” I called after him, but he didn’t react.

Moments later I heard him on the stairs.

“You hear this?” he yelled from upstairs and soon I started to hear him stomp on the floor right above me… and above the hole.

“Freaking hell,” I pressed out and stepped a bit closer. If he was in the room above, shouldn’t I be able to see him? Shouldn’t I be able to see the room? How was everything just darkness? All the while I continued to hear his stomping above me. There had to be some stupid trick to this.

“So, how are you doing it?” I asked once he was back.

“What do you mean?”

I sighed. “This whole thing! How the hell did I not see you when you were up there? Where you even upstairs? Really, man, I’m not in the mood for-“

“There’s no trick,” he cut me off.

I looked at him and rolled my eyes.

“Come on man, at least hand me a freaking beer or something. Did you really invite me over to play this shitty joke on me?”

Five minutes later we sat in the living room, both holding a beer in our hands.

“So what you’re telling me is that this thing, this hole, was just there one day?” I asked in a monotonous, bored voice.

He took a sip of his beer, then nodded.

“And you just ignored it?”

Another sip, this time followed by a shrug.

I didn’t know what to say anymore. This was by far one of his dumbest attempts of… whatever this was.

“Well, I checked it out of course,” he started after a short while. “Used a lamp, but its plain dark, nothing to see at all. Used a stick, but it goes on forever.”

“What do you mean, it goes on forever?” I asked laughing. “You know, there’s something called the ceiling.”

“It’s gone, I guess.”

“So what you’re trying to tell me is that there’s a hole in your ceiling that leads upstairs, yet I’m not able to see-“

“No, that’s not how it works, dude. The stick’s just gone. There’s no hint of anything upstairs.”

“What the hell are you trying to say!?”

I was getting utterly frustrated with him.

“Exactly what I just said. I can push the stick in however far I want, but upstairs, you won’t see a thing.”

This was it. I was done. I had enough of this whole stupid topic.

“Ok, alright, fuck you asshole,” I cursed and got up, “Can’t believe this shit.”

I made my way to the stairs.

“Haha, Greg, you got me to go upstairs to check out this stupid hole, great job, you really got-“

I broke up. I’d entered the room upstairs right above the storage room, but there was not the slightest hint of a hole. Nothing. For a moment I tried the floor here and there to see if Greg had somehow hidden it, but nothing. Everything was as solid as it could be.

“How in the hell,” I wondered out loud.

“Told you there’s no trick,” Greg said from behind me suddenly.

“Jesus fuck, man,” I yelled at him, “don’t scare me like that!”

“Come on, I’ll show you something.”

With that, we went downstairs, and he brought out a sort of tripod-like contraption he’d built.

“What are you doing now?” I asked, but soon he brought in a long wooden stick and raised it towards the dark hole in the ceiling.

I watched and saw how the stick vanished inside the darkness. Further and further he pushed it inside before he mounted it on the contraption to fasten it in place.

“That should be at least a meter. You saw it, right?”

I nodded and followed as he led me upstairs. Once we reached the room, I saw that there was still nothing. No hint of any stick.

As I stood there, I started to believe that maybe, somehow, he really wasn’t trying to trick me. I mean it was Greg, he’d not be able to pull off a prank this elaborate. What this meant though was that this whole thing was… real?

Once we got down again, Greg showed me that the stick was still inside. He took the contraption away, lowered the stick and handed it to me. As I held it I turned it here and there, but there was nothing wrong with it, it was a completely normal, wooden stick.

Out of nowhere, an impulse overtook me, and I raised the stick into the hole myself. It vanished, unobstructed by the ceiling or the hard wooden floor that should be above.

For a moment the blood in my veins turned cold, and I felt goosebumps all over my body. If this was actually real, then what the hell was it?

In a second I lowered the stick again. As the shocking reality overtook me, I dropped it and retreated from the room.

Greg who’d been watching me started to grin.

“I reacted just as you did, shit’s pretty creepy.”

“Creepy? No dude, this is surreal. How the hell,” I broke up and stared at him.

“Like I said, it appeared a couple of days ago. Came out of nowhere, don’t know why or how. Everything was normal, and then one day, I walk in there, and it’s there.”

I said nothing.

“At first I was as crept out as you are. Didn’t sleep for two whole days, but nothing ever happened.”

“How’d you know that? You’ve been watching this thing all day, every day?”

“Nah,” he laughed, “I put up cameras, see,” with that he pointed at two webcams.

“Connected them to the computer and it’s been recording ever since. Put them up a couple days ago. Bet you’d do something similar, right?”

“To be honest, I’d probably burn the whole damned place down, no joke.”

At that, we both laughed. His laugh was genuine, mine more than a bit forced.

I was happy when we finally retreated to the living room. I wanted nothing more than to bring at least a bit of distance between me and this weird hole.

“So, did you call someone about it?” I asked hesitantly.

“Who’d you want me to call?” he asked me with not a bit of sarcasm in his voice, “Mulder and Scully? The Man in Black? The freaking Ghostbusters?”

“I don’t think the Ghostbusters would-“

“Oh yeah? So what about Agent Cooper?”

“Agent who?”

“Agent Cooper? Twin Peaks?

“The hell’s Twin Peaks?”

“Only one of the best shows of all time?”

“Why the fuck are you talking about a freaking TV show!? You’ve got a freaking reality-defying hole in your storage room!”

“I mean the show really is-“

“Goddamnit Greg, shut up!”

“Alright, alright. But come on, what do you think would happen? They’d probably kick me out of my house, detain me and turn this whole place into a freaking government facility and use it to build weapons and god knows what.”

“Wait, what?”

“You know, like in this one movie, the one about the conspiracy and the FBI.”

“You sure, you’re not talking about the X-Files again?”

“Fuck if I know,” he cursed and took another sip of his beer.

I did the same.

In the end, I stayed a bit longer. I had another beer, and after Greg annoyed me about it for a few minutes, we watched the pilot of Twin Peaks together.

I tried my hardest, but I couldn’t stay calm and concentrate. I was antsy. My eyes constantly wandered from the TV screen to the doorway of the storage room. Any moment I was expecting some weird and twisted thing to come barging out of there. How could Greg stay so calm? Hell, how could he stay here at all?

I was really relieved when I said goodbye to him and left the place behind. As I made my way home, I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder, again and again, to see if his house was still there. Every few meters I felt as if there was nothing but a giant, dark hole lurking behind me.

There was something else though. All this anxiety and fear was more and more pushed aside by a burning fascination and curiosity.

Throughout the next week, I didn’t hear much from Greg. We kept in touch via WhatsApp, but we mostly sent each other silly jokes, memes and other nonsense. I kept asking him about the hole, but he said it was all the same. Nothing had happened.

He told me he threw a few things in to see what would happen: Some returned, others didn’t.

When I read this, I was about to protest, but knowing him, he’d not care. I closed the chat window and left it at that.

It was shortly after noon on Saturday when he asked me if I was interested in doing a few experiments. He wanted to figure out more about this weird hole.

I was already on my way to his place when I answered that I was in.

I couldn’t say why myself, but over the past week I’d grown more and more fascinated. I definitely wanted to know more about this thing. It was as if it had a power over me and was able to drown out the voice of reason or push it to the back of my mind.

When I arrived at Greg’s place, he greeted me with a beer in his hand and handed me another one.

I stared at him, then at the beer and sighed before I took it.

“How are you so goddamn calm?”

“Guess it’s because I got used to it.”

“You got used to a reality-defying hole in your own, freaking house?”

“Yeah, guess so.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but then closed it again. I had to fight the impulse to throw my arms up in frustration if only to not spill my beer.

Greg led me back to the storage room. Without saying a word, he threw the bottle cap of his beer into the hole. It vanished and didn’t return.

“What the hell man? What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, what if something weird happens? You’ve got no clue what this thing is, right?”

“Nah man, been doing this all week, beats the garbage can any day.”

I was again, at an utter loss of words and could only watch as he left the room.

“Hold on,” he called out to me from somewhere.

He came back about a minute later with a camera mounted on a stick. When I saw what he was holding, I couldn’t help but grin.

“Wait, is that a freaking selfie-stick, Greg?”

“Oh fuck off, it used to be Karen’s,” he replied.

“Of course. That’s your get to answer for everything these days, isn’t it? ‘Is that your lingerie over there, Greg? No, that was Karen’s’ ‘What about this make-up, Greg? Karen forgot it here.'”

“Just shut up, dude,” he yelled at me when I started to laugh.

The moment he lifted the camera, the mood in the room changed. I was quiet in an instant, and all thoughts of jokes and silly remarks were banished from my mind.

My whole body tensed up as I watched Greg lift the camera to the edge of the hole. Nothing. After a few more seconds, he pushed it into the hole. Higher and higher he raised it, and I was again reminded of how surreal all of it was.

Greg held the camera up for a good half minute before he lowered it. Once he had it in his hand again, I came over to his side to catch a look at it.

Everything was alright. The power was still on, it was still recording, and it was completely undamaged.

Greg stopped the recording, and the two of us sat down on the couch to watch it.

On the one hand, I was filled with anticipation on the other I was more than a bit afraid of what we’d see. We were both quiet and watched as the camera view moved closer to the hole. Finally, darkness engulfed the screen, and all sounds stopped.

Second after second passed in complete and utter silence.

Every moment I expected the darkness to open up and reveal an impossible alien landscape or to see some sort of creature jump up in front of the camera. There was nothing though, only darkness. I was on edge nonetheless until the camera returned to our world.

“Well, that was exciting,” I mumbled. Greg next to me said nothing.

We did a couple other tests after this. We mounted a thermometer on Greg’s selfie-stick. The hole didn’t seem to have any effect on it at all, or the temperature was the same as it was here.

We also tried a night vision camera, but again, there was nothing to see. The only change was the slightly green hue of the recording.

Greg even mounted a piece of meat on the stick and let it rest in the hole for five minutes or so. I’d no idea what he expected, but I was happy when the meat returned completely unscathed.

It was early evening when the two of us heard a ‘meow’ and saw a tabby walk into the room.

“Karen left the cat behind as well?”

“Really dude? Really?” he asked with an annoyed expression on his face.

“What?”

“Just forget it,” he said in frustration.

He got up and walked over to the cat to pick it up.

“Well hello there, little guy, you wanna see something cool?”

“Dude, what are you doing?”

He didn’t say anything. Instead, he held the cat in his hands and walked over with it to the storage room.

“Hey man, you aren’t thinking of anything weird, are you?”

He looked at the cat in his hands for a moment before he turned to me and smiled.

“No, no, of course not,” he said and put the cat down gently.

Then he ran off to somewhere and got a step ladder. He put it right below the hole before he went to grab the cat again.

“Why’d I ever do anything weird with my ex’s cat?”

With that, he stepped on the ladder.

“Ok man, come on, stop it. We’ve got no idea if this is safe!” I said as he continued up the ladder.

“Yeah, but I guess I’ve just found a way on how to figure it out.”

“Greg, seriously? Are you freaking kidding me? What if something happens? Fuck man, it might suffocate or, I don’t know, burst into flames!”

“Shut up, I don’t give a shit about this stupid cat. We’ve spent this whole day, and we haven’t found out a damn thing! So maybe, this way, we can at least figure out something.”

I said nothing. He had a point about figuring out what this thing was, but still, using the cat… that’s just wrong.

“Well do what you want, but I’ll have no part in it.”

“Whatever.”

I watched from beside the doorframe as he stepped up higher on the ladder. The cat, not understanding what was going on, stayed quiet, but not for long. The closer it got to the strange hole, the more restless it grew. It was as if the animal’s instincts told it that something was wrong.

I could see how the cat’s fur stood up and how it started to twist in Greg’s hands. Then it meowed once before Greg pushed its head into the darkness above.

It was no more than a couple of seconds before he lowered the cat again. The animal was furious and struggled against his grip. When the cat bit him, he quickly put it down and yelled after it as it ran away.

“Always hated that beast,” he said looking at his hand.

“You can be such an asshole, you know that?”

“Well fuck you, too!”

We ended up watching the cat for the next twenty minutes or so. There was apparently nothing wrong with it. It looked at the two of us skeptically, especially Greg. After a while though, it stopped being apprehensive and came over to us and let us pet it.

With that, we were back at square one. Nothing had happened at all. Whatever we tried had proven to do nothing. For all we knew, this was simply an empty hole. A reality-defying one, sure, but that’s about it.

In the end, we sat on the couch, quietly drinking another beer.

“Not much else we can do about it,” Greg mumbled to himself after a few minutes had passed.

“What are you going on about?”

“Well, someone’s gotta give it a try.”

I almost spat out all my beer as I heard him say that.

“Alright, I’m out. No way man. I’m not going near that thing.”

Sure, nothing had happened until now, but that didn’t mean it was harmless. What if that thing or whatever was hiding inside of it was waiting for us to put our hands in, or hell, crawl inside?

“Well isn’t that great Steve? You stay here all day with me, but once it’s about showing some balls, you pussy out. That’s so typically you.”

“Oh yeah? So why don’t you do it? It’s your house and your hole.”

We both looked at each other and were quiet.

“Lots?” Greg finally asked.

“Fuck no!” I yelled.

It was about a quarter of an hour later that we both stood on the small step ladder. Him on one side, me on the other.

“Okay dude, you’ve got to hold on to me and make sure that, well… fuck just make sure nothing happens,” Greg said in a voice more than a bit anxious.

“This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done,” I replied shaking my head.

Greg said nothing.

Finally, he started to raise his left arm towards the hole but stopped a hand’s breadth below.

“You gotta hold on to my arm, asshole!” he yelled at me when I just stood there, watching.

“What? Fine, alright.”

With that, I raised my hands as well to put them around his arm. I wondered what this was supposed to do if some inter-dimensional horror grabbed onto him and dragged him away.

While I was still making up scenarios in my mind, he put his right hand under one of my elbows. Before I could even react, he pushed my left arm upwards with as much force as he could muster.

I didn’t have time to react. I watched in horror as my arm shot upwards towards the hole. In an instant, my hand, as well as lower arm, vanished in the darkness above. For a short moment, I could only stare at what Greg had done in disbelief. Then I screamed up in surprise and stumbled back down the ladder. I lost my balance and fell to the ground.

“ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE!?” I screamed at him. “What the fuck did you do!?”

“How’s your hand?” Greg asked in a low, matter-of-factly voice.

I raised it and saw that I’d instinctively clenched it. For a moment I just stared at it.

“Prickles a bit, but that’s about-” I broke up when my hand started to glow slightly.

I yelled up once more and held the hand away from me, unclenching it in shock. The moment I did, something fell to the ground. It was a small, dimly glowing orb that now rolled through the room.

As I looked from the orb back to my hand, I saw that the glow had vanished. Putting two and two together, I realized that it must’ve been the orb and not my hand that had been glowing.

I clenched and unclenched my hand, moved the fingers and then rubbed it with the other one. Nothing seemed to be wrong with it.

“Did you get this from..?” Greg asked and picked up the orb.

I stared at him as he held it in his hand, rolling it around while looking at it.

“It’s kinda heavy. How did you get it to glow like that?”

When I saw his face and his nonchalant behavior after what he’d just done, I exploded.

I walked over to him and pushed him against the wall of the storage room, hard.

“What the fuck did you just do you fucking asshole? We had no freaking idea what would happen! What if I’d lost my freaking hand or my whole arm? What if, I don’t know, that shit’s radioactive, and I’ll get cancer!?”

“Well, but nothing-” he tried to start.

“No. Shut the fuck up! Don’t you dare give me the ‘Nothing happened, so it’s fine!’.”

“You tricked me, asshole!” I screamed at him and pushed him against the wall once more. The orb he’d been holding fell from his hand and landed on the floor with a thump. It started to glow once more, this time a bit stronger.

Greg picked it up and brought it closer to his face.

“There seems to be something inside of it,” he said holding it up towards me.

“Gimme that,” I yelled and ripped it from his hand.

I stared at it for a moment, and I understood what he was saying. I thought I saw something inside as well. It pulsated again while I stared into it and it felt as if some sort of presence was staring back at me. No, that wasn’t it, it felt as if it was preying on me.

A wave of heat washed over me, and I was sweaty in an instant. In a surge of fear, I let go of the orb. Greg almost jumped forward to catch it and get it back.

“You know what Greg?” I started as I saw him like that, “Fuck this. Fuck you, fuck this hole and fuck this whole damn thing!”

With that, I gathered my things, put on my shoes and left his place. I was still fuming about what he’d done.

On the way home, I felt the urge to rub my hand once again.

Even when I was home, I was still mad at him. I thought about telling someone else about everything that had happened, but who’d believe me? ‘Oh hey, Greg and I found a freaking reality-defying hole at his place.” Yeah, no one, that’s who.

As I sat in front of my computer, my thoughts drifted to the mysterious orb again. I couldn’t help but feel the same surge of fear when I thought about that presence. What the hell had I pulled out of this hole?

That night I didn’t sleep well. I was haunted by surreal nightmares. In some, I was dragged into endless darkness by lurking shadows. In others, I saw glowing, golden skies above alien landscapes. The worst one was about preying evils who freed themselves from cubic prisons.

When I woke up, I was wet with sweat and more tired than before I’d gone to bed.

I decided then and there, sitting in my bed, shaking with fear, that I’d have nothing to do with this thing anymore. Whatever this thing was, it was in Greg’s house, and there it could stay for all I cared. If Greg called me again, I’d tell him to go fuck himself and that I wanted nothing to do with it anymore.

I was surprised when I didn’t have to do any of this. Greg didn’t contact me at all. A week went by and then another. After that much time, I grew a bit concerned. I usually couldn’t go a day or two without a stupid message by him. It was two weeks by now.

Sure he could be a goddamn asshole at times, but he was still my friend. What if something happened? What if that thing, that hole, had swallowed up his house? Was he even still-?

Wait no, that’s ridiculous. If anything like that had happened, I’d heard it on the local news or hell, read about it on Facebook.

In the end, I decided to drive by his house after work and see if everything was alright with him. I told myself once more that I’d have nothing to do with this whole thing, but I knew that wasn’t true.

Was it really concern for my friend or was it curiosity that drove me on again? I couldn’t tell.

When I found his house, as well as the neighborhood, still standing, I was relieved after all.

The relief vanished the moment I actually looked at his house. As I walked up towards it, I saw how a neighbor watched me with concern visible on his face. When he realized I’d seen him, he was quick to hurry off.

At first, I thought Greg had closed all his curtains, but when I got closer, I saw that it was something else. Had he boarded up his windows? Why?

I walked up to the front door, rang the bell and waited. I listened for a while, but there was nothing.

“Greg? You there? Hello?” I asked in a loud voice before I rang again, and then twice more.

Finally, I heard something inside and shortly after the door was unbolted.

It opened only slightly, and through the crack, I saw Greg’s face.

“Steve? That you?”

“Yeah what the hell’s the ma-?”

“Shush, get in!” he cut me off and almost pulled me inside.

Once I was in, he bolted the door again. For a few moments he kept listening, then he went to one of the boarded up windows and watched the outside.

After a few moments, I heard a sigh of relief. When he came back towards me, I could see how haggard and exhausted he looked.

“What’s the matter with you?”

Instead of answering, he grinned and led me to the living room.

My mouth hung open as I looked at the hundreds, if not thousands of dark, glowing orbs. I didn’t know what to say. Many times I opened my mouth, but no words came out. I was at a complete loss.

“Are those all…?” I was finally able to ask after almost a minute had passed.

“Yeah, there’s no end to them. I can just reach in and take them, one after another, again and again, and again.”

“Wait you did it too? Why?”

“Curiosity. I mean you were fine, right? And you found this glowing thing. It was fascinating, you know?”

“Yeah, but weren’t you worried? I mean, you pushed my hand in and-“

“Well no shit, of course I was. It’s just you get more curious. This thing is here. Every day it’s here, in the storage room. And every day I found myself there, looking at it, wondering what would happen. For days I could think of nothing else. I wondered if I’d find something as well. It was eating at me. I couldn’t sleep. And then, one day, I was finally ready to do it. And guess what, I found one of these orbs as well.”

“I get this, but why are you gathering them?”

He shrugged.

“Can’t really say. I mean I wanted to see if I’d find something else or… if something else would happen, but it never did. So I kept at it, and soon I had dozens of orbs lying around. After a while, I started to look at them and wonder about them. What are those things? Where do they come from? And most important of all, what’s inside of them. If you look close enough, you can see it. I think in some of them there’s even something moving.”

He went away and came back with something. I knew what it was before he even showed it to me. It was this weird, light prickling in my hand that told me.

“That’s the one you pulled out,” he said and held it up to me.

“Dude, I don’t really,” I started but broke up. I knew what I’d said, but now, seeing it in front of me like that I grabbed it instantly. I held it up in front of my eyes and stared into it. Oh yes, I thought, there’s something inside of it.

As I stared, I thought I saw a form inside. Then, I felt the same thing I’d felt before. Something inside this thing was looking back at me, and it recognized me. I felt as if the consciousness inside was probing me, scanning me. Fear came over me as I realized that whatever was inside was not only staring at me but also into me. I felt it call out to me inside my head in cryptic sounds and unnatural noises, all because I’d touched it. Or, I thought, because I brought it here.

I inched away and pushed the thing back into’ Greg’s hand.

“Jesus Christ,” I brought out and absentmindedly started rubbing my hand.

“It’s quite something, isn’t it?”

“It’s freaking scary, that’s what it is!”

“Scary? Maybe at first, but now, it’s nothing short of exhilarating.”

I glanced over at all those orbs in the living room as he talked. Some were glowing brighter than others, some seemed to be pulsating. The longer I looked at them, the more crept out I was. Were all of them the same? Was there something inside of every single one?

And then my mind realized the most important thing of all. This was not normal, none of it was. These things didn’t belong here. This was all wrong, surreal, and unnatural.

“I wonder what’s inside of them,” he finally said with a curious expression on his face. “You saw it too, didn’t you Steve? Those things inside? I can’t wait to find out what they are.”

As he said this his face contorted into an even stranger expression. I saw him walk back to the rest of the orbs, looking at them, touching them, caressing them. Then he picked up a few more and came over to me.

“Here have a look at those five, they are something else!”

With that, he tried to hand them over to me. I raised my hands in front of my chest and took a step forward.

“N-no way man, I’m good.”

For a second it seemed as if he didn’t know what to do, then he shrugged and started to stare into them himself. For a while he was quiet.

“I really don’t know how to do it, you know? I tried some things, but nothing has worked. Maybe we could do something together. What if there’s something valuable inside? We might be able to sell it off and-“

“Wait, hold on, you want to open these things? Are you freaking serious?”

How was he not scared of what’s inside? Did he not notice it?

“What if there’s some sort of creature inside? What if it’s dangerous? You’ve got no freaking clue! Did you ever think about any of that? Did you ever actually feel this, this, thing looking at you?”

“Of course I did, that’s the reason why I want to open them up! I, no, we have to. We won’t know what it actually is if we don’t do it. I’m sure there’s a way, and I’m sure whatever we find will be awesome!”

For a second I actually felt as curious about it as he was. I felt my mouth contort into a smile, and I was about to agree when I remembered what I’d told myself.

Don’t get involved.

I looked over at Greg again. I saw the glow in his eyes that was nothing short of an insane obsession. I looked at the surreal place his apartment had become. Then I gave him my answer.

“No way man, not this time. I’m not getting involved again.”

For a few seconds he stared at me, and I thought he was about to freak out or hell, jump me, but then he shrugged.

“Fine, suit yourself, but don’t come back crying if I find something great.”

“No worries,” I said and turned to leave.

Before I could make one more step, I felt as if a thousand eyes were watching me. I trembled with fear when I heard Greg’s voice once more.

“Not a word, to anyone, alright?”

It didn’t sound like him. It was contorted, emotionless, weird. It was not his voice, I realized.

I couldn’t turn around. There was no way I wanted to face him or these orbs again.

“Alright man, I keep quiet.” I said with a shaky voice.

He didn’t say another word as I stepped outside.

I didn’t get to see my friend Greg again. The next time I heard about him was a week later on the local news. At first, I didn’t know it was his house since the news segment only depicted the burnt down remains of a building. Only when they mentioned the address did I realize it must have been Greg’s.

As I listened, I found out that there had been an explosion in the middle of the night. It was of such magnitude that even some of the surrounding buildings were heavily damaged. Everything around the epicenter of the explosion seemed to have been evaporated. There was no hint of Greg, and no remains of his had been found.

The case is yet unknown. It might have been a gas leak, but some neighbors believe that Greg was up to something else, something as sinister and weird as his recent behavior. As an interview with one of his neighbors started, I turned off the TV.

I knew what really happened. I was sure that Greg must’ve succeeded in opening one of those orbs.

Ever since then, I’ve been wondering if this explosion did evaporate what was inside of these orbs as well. No, I’ve been praying it did.

Now, as I am sitting here though, rubbing my hand and trying to ignore those cryptic and unnatural sounds in my head, I know the answer:

The explosion released whatever was inside of those orbs into our world.


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