The Fissure

 We were walking down the street when the world fractured.

It seemed to be a normal summer day, bright and shining. Chris, Jen and I walking toward the bookstore across from the green in our quiet town. The morning had been full of card games and TV, we were enjoying the last few days of summer vacation. The leaves fluttered in the wind, birds dashed from branch to branch, and the bricks in the old buildings of town were warm and rough to the touch. It was hard to tell anything was wrong at first, but then a car blew out two tires, slid over the curb into a tree, and came to rest smashed on the sidewalk in front of us. 

Jen screamed, and stumbled into me. I would have appreciated it more if I wasn’t so surprised myself; the blasts of the tires had torn a hole in my mind, muddled with the summer heat. I quickly tensed, the electricity of adrenaline spreading from my heart to my limbs, my senses sharpening, and at once I felt her soft body pressed into mine, and I put an arm around her. 

Chris, who had simply leapt sideways and muttered “Jesus!” stepped toward the car inquisitively. He blinked and wiped his black hair from his eyes, his face was starting to show the first sheen of sweat. It was odd; the tires had been blown to shreds, the hubcaps both had broken strangely, but still were bolted to the wheels. Chris jumped when the driver struggled to kick open the passenger side door, the other one still crumpled against the tree. The man clambered out clutching a red hand crisscrossed with cuts, his suit rumpled and bloody.

Chris started towards him to help, calling out “Are you alright-“

Then another car blew all four of its tires at once in a screaming cacophony, and we all turned to watch it. I clutched Jen’s shoulder closer as the car slid across the centerline into a frightened Honda Civic, its wheels bent out at odd angles, metal twisted, and both of them screeched to a crumpled stop in the road. That’s when we noticed the rupture.

It was odd, like a fissure in the air, a line that had no dimensions. It was there, but it looked almost like a crack through glass, immaterial, and it disappeared at odd angles. But it existed, hanging over the road as if the air itself was flawed.

I blinked and rubbed my eyes. It was a one-dimensional line, twisting through the air. Chris saw it too, blinked.

“What is it?” he asked.

“That doesn’t make sense!” said Jen, leaning into me. Her hair smelled like summer roses. “Chris, call nine one one!” she said hesitantly.

Chris turned towards me, made eye contact. His green eyes were wide with fear, his face blank with nervousness. He shook his head as if he didn’t believe this moment could exist. 

“I…” I started. Jen looked up into my face, her body wonderfully positioned into mine. I blinked trying to clear my mind; my vision blurring one instant and then becoming wonderfully crisp the next. “I don’t know. Yeah, we should call.”

“I’ve got it,” the man from the first car said in a strained voice. He had taken off his jacket and wrapped some sort of handkerchief around his bleeding hand.

Chris stepped forward to look at the Fissure. Jen tensed. “Careful!” she said, stepping away from me towards the man with the phone. The two cars in the road were steaming and still, people inside them beginning to move around.

The man from the first car was blinking in the sunlight, leaning against the wall of the bookstore. He had pulled out a Blackberry and was punching in numbers, and Chris stepped into the street towards the cars.

Then, with a bang, the fissure spread. It spiderwebbed through the air, splitting and branching through nothingness. It seemed that nothing had changed and yet the impossible lines shot through the air like bullets. Oddly, I saw a tendril split through the window of the Civic first, and the person behind the window struggled strangely, something threateningly wrong. The reflection from the sun made it impossible to see through the window, but my stomach dropped. 

Then Jen stumbled back into me and gasped, and I noticed the tendril that had gone through Chris.

He stood still, his back too us, his pose awkward. Then he shuddered, convulsed oddly, and turned, and red blood blossomed through his yellow t-shirt at a frightening rate, and he collapsed.

I stood perfectly still, watching him, my mind refusing to panic. I didn’t understand what was going on, I couldn’t comprehend what had happened to him. My limbs went slack and I stared, and it was Jen who stumbled away. I realized then that the fissure had nearly cut him in half.

Then the world shattered.

The man leaning against the bookstore dropped his phone and turned and ran, but was caught and fell to pieces. A scream from the Civic and someone opened a door only to have the glass shatter and the door skewer itself on the crack. 

“Come on!” Jen screamed, starting to run, but she stopped as the cracks split around in front of her, and she cried and backed away into me. She sobbed in fear and when I saw her wide eyes my mind finally caught up with itself, and I ducked down, holding her face to my chest. The splinters of the world were separating, my vision was splitting and we crouched down as the world was destroyed around us. The cracks spread like clutching fingers around and around us and we held each other, and Jen cried and held on to me as if I could help her.

And so here we are, and I feel the odd pain of the first fissure passing through my chest, digging it’s way through me inextricably, and for some reason all I can think about is how damned good her hair smells.

By Ben Chamberlain
Written February 5, 2010, 9:20 PM
Revised March 9, 2010, 11:15 PM