Chaos of the Blue Sky

Chaos of the Blue Sky

Fourteen hours. Nine minutes. Two seconds. That’s how long the storm lasted.

Before that day arrived, I could not trust anything I saw, or at the very least, I was unable to grasp what was real and unreal. They were hallucinations lacking any clear motivations or catalysts, nonsensical visions randomly conjured up by an increasingly unstable mind.  If I was able to pinpoint the source of my madness, then I’d be on the right path of reason. All I know is that I was once able to see the sunset and embrace the moonlight,  but then suddenly, I started noticing that...the sunshine never left me. The sky was still bright blue and that damn ball of fire remained stationary, hesitant to transition into the dark. And yes, I wish I was just being as obnoxiously metaphorical as I currently seem.

Everywhere I went, no matter what time it was, daylight literally engulfed my surroundings. Days began to feel endless, inseparable, sometimes to an excruciating degree. I remember being stuck in a traffic jam that went on from 8:30 PM to 11:00 PM, and as I was finally reaching home, I could see my empty neighborhood under the light of day. It’s unnerving to see the lonely streets of the night appear so shiny and luminous.

After this went on for a couple days, I sought out medical assistance. I performed tests, took medication, and often visited a psychiatrist. She would ask me things like: “Elle, do you feel that perhaps your current mental state is a result of some trauma from the past? Was there an incident that could have caused your brain to go to such a prolonged delusion?” As much as I wanted to answer those kinds of questions, there was no explanation for any of them. I had never sustained a head injury or experimented with heavy drugs or hallucinogens. My childhood was relatively bland and ordinary, lacking any sort of significant life-changing experiences. There was no reason for the sun to remain active so long, just like there was no reason for the mind to even fabricate the scenario in the first place.

Yet there I was, perceiving endless sunshine for a whole month, an ant being slowly burned by a magnifying glass.

And on one particular sleepless day where I searched desperately for some sort of effective treatment, something peculiar occurred: Raindrops started to fall on my bedroom window, at first gracefully but then at a relentless pace. As I witnessed the flooding of all life around me...snowflakes accompanied the rain, almost merging with it. All the while, the boiling sun remained uncovered by the clouds. When I opened the window to feel the air, it wasn’t cold, but it wasn’t hot either. The sun started to melt the snow off my car while snowy raindrops froze the windshield at the same time. At that point, my sanity had evaporated, gone forever and never to be recovered.

Then my neighbor stepped out into the storm. He reacted to it, felt the rain, and struggled to get into his car as his face was pummeled by the weather. Then his neighbor did the same. Then her neighbors. They all just stepped into a meteorological hellscape, with no signs of hesitation. They were that determined to get wherever they needed to go, and if that meant risking their survival, it was clear that the popular mindset was simply: “So be it.”

Now the way I see it, there are two possibilities for what happened during that haunting occasion: Either my madness had evolved to the point that it could create false versions of my neighbors entering a land of havoc. Or, the way I prefer seeing it... the whole world had gone insane, not just me. Nothing made sense anymore, clocks didn’t seem to work, electric signals came and went arbitrarily. But now, it wasn’t just me experiencing it anymore. Everyone felt the storm. And even if they couldn’t explain the reason for why it happened, or whether it could even be scientifically plausible...they still couldn’t deny that it really happened. A vulnerable, helpless community stuck in the midst of a cataclysmic event, one which would unquestionably end up in the history books.

I was alone for the last time...surely.

Fourteen hours. Nine minutes. Two seconds. That’s how long the bond lasted.