BLOT

                                                  BLOT

          He called me at about six in the morning the phone’s at first seeming to be in my blood drenched dream. Even as I opened my eyes I wanted to pick the phone not, it was my day of rest; though I usually dedicated my ‘extra time’ to charity, I was feeling particularly lazy. The ringing wouldn’t stop though; it just wouldn’t.
         “Hallo” I had grunted into the mouth piece sleepily wishing the caller banished from the earth’s surface but regretting it when I heard his voice. His name was Pat, Patrick actually. I only called him Pat when we were alone lest someone think we were having a middle age crisis. He’d call me Ritchie. He had been my friend since child hood and that hadn’t changed, not even after I got rich and went urban changing states too. He had decided to stay in the country side and start a farm. The money to start it I would have gladly given but he had insisted I loan it to him. He was that self-assured. That’s the farm he called me from. That was where he lived; his home.
         He had sounded worried; scared actually for at a certain point during the conversation he had dropped the phone at which I had leapt out of bed wondering what might have happened. When he came back on he said it had gotten worse; it was bigger and was swallowing up everything. I understood. He also told me he had sent Mary and the kids to the city to escape that madness adding that he was waiting for me to assess the situation and advice him on what to do. He had also said I hurry. Without another word he had hanged up, the dial tone to me sounding like a death knell.
             He usually was courteous and jolly but these tend to desert one when faced with the blunt truth of losing something dear to one’s heart. Hurry I did, booked the 11.30 flight to Pat’s state, bid my family good bye and left. Landing in the city, I rented a jeep and started the three hundred miles journey to his farm not bothering to look for his family. He had stressed I hurry up, so I did. With five speeding tickets in the glove compartment, I got to the farm at 5.00 as the sun set far behind his barn; the barn at which’s door he stood. One door slightly pulled back, it made a huge slit with the other through which he stared into the barn.
         He didn’t seem disturbed by the engines roar and so didn’t turn even when I turned it off; he was simply glued to the barn’s inside looking dead stiff. Halting beside him, I understood why. More than being scary, it was intriguing in a very nauseating kind of way; it couldn’t help being; especially if you knew what it was capable of.
         A tight firm hug and a ‘thanks for being my friend’ turned me from the burns belly for a good ten seconds as a tear ran down the man’s right cheek and onto my shoulder. I nodded as we silently turned to the barn’s inside, I couldn’t help noting how big it had gotten; it was about six meters high. It completely rattled my bones. This was really bad. It was I who had accidentally discovered it a week earlier but though we had brushed it off, shut it from our minds we couldn’t quite.
         I usually visited him, twice a month actually. When I did he’d give me tours of his farm to update me on the going ons on the farm and it was during such a tour that I came upon this thing; literally. He had just finished showing off his latest purchase; two very powerful tractors parked at the far side of the barn and it were as we headed for the door that it had happened. My left boot had got stuck on the burn’s earthen floor – strange enough when thought about- and I had to apply every once of energy in my leg to free it. The dust got free and I crushed onto the floor at which we had laughed heartily. It was then that Pat noted that part of my boot’s sole was missing right before he pointed to a small hole on the ground where my foot had been stuck. After inspecting it we had declared that a mischievous worm was living there in and had walked off charting merrily; that’s what we had lied to each other. The worry in my chest was unexplained but noticing how had definitely shaped the dusty but clean area around the hole was, I couldn’t help feeling it was warranted.
         That was the first place I had visited the following day and the option of not noticing that the hole and the clean area around it had enlarged I hadn’t. The hole was about the size of a bottle top ad the clean area around it about the size of a tennis ball. It would get bigger we knew but what we knew not then was what was in there and how we could stop it. It worried us so.
         Looking at it now, I wished I had known that starting it was the only way it’d have been stopped; that just wouldn’t work now. The selfish force in the hole couldn’t be stopped now, it had already taken in too much; everything tat had been in the barn, the hay the new tractors, everything. The animals had run off the week it appeared they had known. The flashlight in my hand I did switch on but the strong beam couldn’t hurt the thick darkness above the hole: it was as if it eat up the light. It was just like a blot. No matter how much light you’d shed on it you couldn’t see through it; see the letters and beneath it. It was pitch black. This blot was spreading slowly like a drop of viscous ink would down an inclined paper blotting not but wiping everything off the earth’s surface leaving behind nothing but bare hollow, silent, dusty cleanliness. The flashlight tagged towards the darkness then from my hand it flew, headed for the pillar of darkness where I saw it no more. I hadn’t noticed the clean area’s boundary; that being where the pull extended to. If this was one of the black holes scientists claimed existed, then the one who had said they were dead stars would before the whole world be proven wrong.
          The doors we had leant on clicked along to the rest of the barn’s rhythm as we moved back then all at once buckled towards the hole. Within seconds of defining noise the barn was gone; pulled into the hole. In its place a hollowing cleanliness and a pillar which not eve the setting sun’s rays could penetrate nor could be seen stretching towards the setting bulb. At the holes accelerating rate of expansion these would all be gone soon.
         To the jeep we dashed then reversed to get away from the growing cleanliness. At the rate it grew, we knew it would be futile to try to get anything from the house but it seemed Pat had had other ideas. Just before I turned the jeep towards the drive way, he had hopped out and dashed towards the cleanliness shouting obscenities at the darkness at the centre. I had known him all my life and those words I didn’t know him to use. I got him on time but his right foot not quite.
         All that happened yesterday. Pat is in the jeep now a caution we have to take since he can’t walk fast enough. Today we warned some airlines to divert their airplanes to another route but they didn’t listen; guess you wouldn’t either if the only reason given was impending danger. We are about fifty miles from where Pat's home was and watching through our binoculars as the eighth plane is being helplessly drawn towards the now very tall and wide pillar of darkness the passengers probably screaming themselves deaf. We are some meters from a river and earlier I could have swore – as the cleanliness cut across it- that I heard someone scream downstream after jumping off a high point just to find the water supply to his landing cut off. A weed some meters away has just uprooted itself and flown towards the far away darkness. The tree providing me with shade will follow soon. I know we’ll have to move but still I’ll write why I sent this letter.
         At a certain point you’ll see these cleanliness approaching. Nobody wants to die and you’ll probably be forced to run from your homes like Pat, forced from your offices, vacation spots etc. This thing is expanding along a circumference which means there’s a certain point on the earth where all those who’ll be running will meet. We have already started our journey and I hope to make out of you a friend for whatever time we’ll have left if we do meet. What I pray of you is the main reason I wrote this. I pray that when we do meet whatever you are Muslim, Christian, and Buddhists, black, white, Asian or whatever, please, let’s not fights. For the time that’ll be left lets uphold what we never did have; the brother hood of all mankind; lets not fight. If to you this does sound like a death wish, it’s because it is. We are all going to die have no doubt about that. 
                The tree has started shaking with its leaves getting impatient and leaving it hence. The bark has also left its ripping sound reminding me I should be leaving. Exposed to the sun, I am leaving. Hope to see you.