A Disturbance in Boston

BOOM! I'm startled awake; the dim glow of early morning sun creeping through the windows of the small studio apartment. Was the sound real or dreamed? It sounded like a sonic boom. But over downtown Boston? I've never heard such a thing! The unprecedented quality of the sound piques my curiosity.

The drowsiness fading away, I roll out of bed. Whatever event caused such sound as to stir me out of bed must surely be gone, but my curiosity screams regardless. Maybe it wasn't a jet? Maybe a pipe burst outside in the street. Ah, now we're approaching reason. Stumbling over the dirty clothes littered carelessly about my floor, I come to my solitary window. My brain is tingling with the excitement of discovery. What's on the other side of this shade?

I pull the shade. It quickly rolls to the top of the window, exposing the world. But... strange. Not a single one of the expected sights is realized! Instead, this bizarre vision in front of me! No cars. No people. The day is early, yes, but surely there must be cars lining the streets. Legal parking in the middle of the city is something most would kill for! At any time of day, I might add. But not one car. The strip mall across the road... empty. The street bare. The windows all dark. Strange. Furthermore, another feature of the world outside strikes me! Not a sound! It occurs to me now that beyond the sonic boom that stirred me, not a single sound has reached me. Not a horn honking, not a bird chirping, not a drunk raving, not a single sound.

My heart flutters. I feel increasingly cautious and confused. I quickly dig through my dirty clothes for anything to dress myself. With clothes on my back and keys stuffed in my pocket, I'm ready to explore. I don't know where I plan to go just yet. Perhaps just a walk around town. Maybe a coffee will make me feel better. Yeah. My heart's aflutter, but it's still too slow. I can feel it sluggishly beating and my brain struggling to produce. Coffee will put me right.

Leaving the apartment, another feature strikes me now. One that couldn't be discerned from my third floor window. It's on the sidewalk... strange. Alarming. Speckles of a freshly wet, dark red substance. Just spots here and there. Sporadically visible up and down the street. But every twenty feet or so, I see more! My God, is it blood? No, it couldn't be. Could it?

Coffee. My focus shifts back to my goal. I'll walk to the cafe. Just ten minutes down the road. The fresh air will do me good too, won't it? Reaching the corner and turning on to Mass Ave, I'm stopped in my tracks again. It's that same damned sight! No cars! On Mass Ave? Surely somebody must be parked along the street, but I see nothing! Not one! It's as if there was some mass exodus from the city in the middle of the night, and I wasn't informed. Deep breath. Reorganize my thoughts. Ready? I continue down the road.

Not a minute later, I'm stopped again. A dead halt. No muscle moves. It's a sound this time. A horrible sound. God in heaven, I'd give anything for the irritating bleat of an angry car horn...but this? An intense almost-grinding sound. Difficult to explain proper. Like ruined cement scraping against sand paper... but magnified! So loud... nearly as booming as the jet sound that awoke me. Construction. It must be. Some sort of construction over in Copley Square perhaps? Yeah that sounds right. There's always work going on there. Just a twenty minute walk too... perhaps I should fetch my coffee there? I need to know now, don't I?

But still the panic bells violating my brain continue to sound. No cars. No people. No sound... almost. But surely an explanation isn't far off! I'll just find that sound. I'll see the dangerous construction. A nice man in a uniform will inform me the entire back bay is closed off because a building is being imploded perhaps. Ah, the bliss of reason. But my thoughts are interrupted all at once. Another single deafening sound. But this time different. The difference is terrible... The flutter of enormous wings! Could I have heard correctly? Like the flapping of a bat; a thousand times louder than just a single one though... But the sound was so crisp and clear, I couldn't possibly imagine more than one beast making such a sound! No, this was the flutter of two bodily wings, of one solitary beast.

Should my ear be true, the location was the same. That awakening boom though! I'd swear that came from above. These other sounds, no, these came from just several blocks away, and they came from the ground. My mind betraying me, it begins spraying me with fleeting images of fantastic beasts standing alone in the center of Copley Square. Any sense of reason is quickly drained and replaced by the bizarre and macabre. And in this new dawn of confusion, my eyes register what they did not before. As my ears overwhelmed my thought, the sights right in front of me went unnoticed. Yes, I swear what I saw was true. There on the corner of Boylston and Mass Ave, I saw the streaks of red. Pools and puddles of it. Nearly lakes. No, this was no mistake. This was blood. Everywhere. Stained across the street in all directions, plastered against walls and windows, painted against everything in sight! And in that moment, my sanity departed and my eyes forsook me. My senses departed. The world went black. Silent. I lay, crumbled in the street, blind in hysteria. There I waited and prayed in my insanity. Waited for the unseen beast to finally see ME.