Payton Klaer

Can I start?

…

Okay, I’ll try to tell this as quickly as I can. You probably have loved ones you need to say goodbye to.

…

Just trust me. You will.

Last week I had a dream I was standing at the edge of the ocean. The sun was setting and it filled the polluted sky with bright oranges and purples. It was a beautiful sunset – like something you’d see in a movie just before the credits roll. My bare feet were getting tickled by the coastline coming in and out. The water was cold. Every time it hit me my body tensed but I couldn’t quite get myself to move away from the water.

The beach was empty. Not a single umbrella or chair or even a footprint in the sand. Seagulls were nowhere to be seen and the water didn’t hold a single boat. The sky was vacant other than those oranges and purples. It was silent other than the waves crashing into the shore and I found that I couldn’t turn my head. I noticed the edges of my vision were fuzzy – like there was nothing beyond what was in front of me. But it was nice. Peaceful, even.

Then I woke up but I could perfectly picture the scene in my mind. My feet still held a whisper of the water. My hair still felt the breeze. I wanted to stay in that safe embrace of the sea until I couldn’t take it any longer.

Nothing out of the ordinary happened during the day. It was nearing evening when things started to get strange. After I returned home from classes, I found myself staring. I recognized something outside, in the distance, though I couldn’t place what. It was a tug in my memory. There was something that sat at the base of my stomach begging me to realize what I was looking at but my mind couldn’t place it.

I was pulled out when my phone started to buzz on my desk. It was my best friend [omitted]. She asked me why I hadn’t called her an hour ago, I was supposed to. I had to tear my eyes from the window to look at her face on my phone. She was worried. I told her I thought I was forgetting something, but I couldn’t remember what. She said she was sorry. We sat in silence for a while before she asked what I got up to that day.

Class. Homework. Another essay due Sunday that doesn’t matter.

I asked her the same.

Class. Homework. Applying for an internship she probably wouldn’t have gotten in the end.

She asked if I was okay. She said I kept zoning out and then asked what I had been looking at. I told her I was looking outside. The window next to my bed was pushing bright oranges into my room.

The memory came back to me then. I had mumbled some excuse about needing a second and I got up, throwing on the closest shoes to me. I ran down my building’s stairs two at a time, phone in hand, rushing outside. I remember panicking. I almost slipped down the stairwell. I thought I was going to miss what I had seen. The buildings outside were tall, they covered most of the sunset. I told myself that I just needed to see the sky. I ran a block. Or two. Maybe more. I kept going until I saw the full view. I heard whispers from my phone demanding answers to what was going on, where I was, and what I was seeing.

It was a sunset of oranges and purples.

…

I know. No, it’s not just a coincidence. You need to hear this out –

Just listen to me!

Give me two more minutes. That’s all I need.

…

Because this is important. And I need someone else to know about it. Then it doesn’t have to be my problem.

…

Thank you.

Next, I stood at the base of a mountain, looking at the landmass in front of me. It was cold. Too cold for the t-shirt and thin pants I had on. Snow covered the mountain and the ground around me. My bare feet were numb to the chills running up and down my body. Flowers around me were threatening to collapse under the weight of the snow, but they continued standing.

Then, it started to snow. My arms collected the snowflakes and I saw the intricate designs of each one. No two looked the same. The flowers started to become buried in white until that was all there was. White.

And I woke up again. The beautiful sunset was long gone from the night before. My blinds were wide open but the room stayed dark. The sky outside was filled with a continuous gray cloud and people on the street below were desperately clinging to their jackets.

It happened in the same way – I didn’t see it until that night. I walked along the sidewalk in some intense wind to meet some friends for dinner. I swore it was strong enough to be a storm. This dinner, though, seemed important at the time. Everyone was off in their own corners of life so this was our way of keeping up with each other, especially for [omitted] who needed to tell her entire life’s story to someone each week.

The wind apparently made most people stay home instead of going about their usual Thursday night outings, so the restaurant wasn’t busy. Everyone talked about the same things we always did.

Having too much homework.

Professors saying weird things.

Scheduling coming up.

Needing to get a job soon.

Near the end of the night, talk of everyone’s schedules for the next week broke out in a hopeless attempt to find another time for us to get together. I remember I had sat my phone down on the table with the calendar app open for everyone to cross-reference when I noticed it.

Snow.

See, now I’ve got your attention, don’t I? You remember the reports. Sure, sure – I could have made this up after seeing the news. Just stick with me for a little longer. You’ll believe me.

Anyway, I saw a couple staring up in awe through the windows facing the street. Large snowflakes fell from the sky landing on their thin jackets. I stood, shoving my chair back so far it almost fell over. Everyone looked outside.

People started muttering questions about why it was snowing in early September. It wasn’t normal – the latest snow was usually back in March, maybe April. It shouldn’t have started until at least October. Someone else spoke up and said it wasn’t even supposed to rain that day. I could see the complexity of the snowflakes from inside. The image of frozen water landing on my arms resurfaced. There was a subtle feeling of winter throughout my body. It was like when you’re outside in the cold for too long and, for the rest of the day, you can feel that chill in your bones. I thought I was back in the dream.

I put off going to sleep that night. I shut all of the blinds in the apartment as soon as I stepped through the door in a desperate attempt to ignore whatever was happening. It had to be a coincidence. Global warming. The poles melting. Something explainable. Something that wasn’t in my dreams. That’s what the media said, right? It couldn’t have just been me.

I stayed in my kitchen playing music loudly as I cleaned. Then I found myself pacing the room and rinsing cold water on my face anytime I yawned. I brewed a cup of coffee. Then another. And a third. Anything to stay awake. For hours I convinced myself that if I didn’t go to sleep, then nothing strange could happen. If I was the one causing this, I just would stop allowing it to happen. But I couldn’t stop myself hours later from sitting on a barstool, arms crossed on the counter, eyes closed.

The next time I was underwater. Deep, from what I could tell. So far down that the sun appeared as a speck far above me, distorted by the waves. My breaths came out in large bubbles, but I never found myself needing to take in air. My clothes moved with the water around me, slowly. When I looked down, I saw darkness.

There was something in the darkness –

Can I finish before you ask questions?

…

I couldn’t tell. There was no face. It had no body. It was saying things I couldn’t understand. It’s… it’s something I can’t describe. I don’t have the words to tell you what I saw.

…

No, I can’t draw it either. It was something so large, so profound that I can’t recreate it. There’s just no way. But it spoke in a way that I couldn’t recognize a single sound coming from whatever mouth it had. If anything, it sounded like a vacuum. Like everything and nothing colliding. But there was something there. It had something to tell me but I couldn’t make sense of it.

That morning I woke up with an all-too-familiar feeling in my chest. The feeling of dread. The same feeling I used to get when I thought too hard about the end of it all. I’m not worried about it anymore. It’s just inevitable and there’s nothing I can do.

I used to be terrified of that – the end. Not death, no that’s such a universal experience that fearing it does nothing. No, I feared the end of everything. When the sun explodes, or global warming is too drastic to stop. The time when nothing exists anymore. The idea that everything is going to end and that no one will be around to see it because it will be the end. They will be gone. I will be gone. Everything will be gone.

…

Yeah. I’m almost finished.

After that, the dreams pretty much stayed consistent. Different places but the same feeling of something being there. Something trying to tell me about an event they didn’t know the words for. The feeling got more and more urgent as the days went on. I saw a tornado wiping out a desolate town in my dream before waking up and hearing news reports of tornadoes across the country the following day. Then I saw hundreds of flocks of birds all flying toward the horizon before reading all species of birds were migrating earlier than usual.

Everyone’s blaming it on global warming – you’ve seen it.
They are clinging to scientific proof.

I don’t believe any of it. I know what is really happening. And I know we can’t stop it. Something wants us gone. They want to wipe us out of whatever world we now have and leave no trace of us behind. They crave the end.

…

This morning I understood what this thing was trying to say. I saw its face. And I heard what it was telling me.

In the dream, I was floating in darkness. Faint hints of purple and blue swirled around me in the distance. There were spots of yellow scattered throughout the vast area. I didn’t need to breathe. I think I was in space, but I didn’t see any planets or signs of life. But the thing was right in front of me. Like it had always been, but I could only now see its face. Like it had opened my eyes. A collection of the entire universe and a black hole. Everything and nothing. It had eyes that did not blink. It had a mouth that did not open. It repeated the same line: “you can do nothing.” It told me over and over again. Even sitting here, I can hear it. I found myself nodding. I realized that I knew. I always had, deep down.

That dream was last night. Nothing has happened yet today, but it will.

…

That’s what I’m assuming. I don’t think I’ll have another dream. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again – at least in the normal sense.

…

Stop crying.

I could have made this up. I didn’t, but I could have. You’ve seen the statements. You can’t risk me being wrong.

You should probably go. Say goodbye to whoever you need to. Deny it. Pray to whatever god you believe in. I don’t care. It’s not my problem anymore.