For the longest time, there was only darkness.

I don't how long I've been inside it. But the world eventually returns to me in flashes of light.

Blinking away stars, the first thing I see is the sky. It's awash in the sunset, painted with strokes of red, yellow, purple, and all the nameless shades in between. My fingers itch to capture them on canvas, but I know I'd ultimately fail. I was never an artist. I was more of a writer.

Eventually, I manage to tear my eyes way from the dusk. I realize that I'm on a sidewalk. I sit up, and I can feel an ache settling into my bones. I must've been out here for a long time. I don't remember how I got here. I don't even know where I am.

Wait. I do. The sidewalk I'm on belongs to a side street branching off from the main road, sloping slightly downwards. The side street branches out into three more directions. The houses here are scrunched up together to fit every block and corner. All of the roads are empty. This is how I realize something is wrong.

I know this place. My house is just down the way. The street I'm on is never quiet during this time of the day. There is a bakery right across from where I'm sitting. And behind them is a hardware store. There are always people there: middle-aged men with their shirts pulled back to their shoulders, exposing round bellies and dark nipples; thin children with skin darkened by smoke and the tropical sun; women smiling with crooked teeth, shouting amicably to each other over the roar of trucks and jeepneys.

There are no trucks and jeepneys now. The main road is devoid of cars. The bakery is open, but no one is manning the counter. The women are gone. The middle-aged men and the children have disappeared.

"Miguel!"

The voice is unfamiliar. But that's my name. I turn around. Cresting the soft slope is an unfamiliar girl with black hair pulled up in a high ponytail. She's alone.

"Oh, my God! I can't believe you're here!" She pulls me into a tight hug. Before I can even think of shoving her off, she's already pulling away. She presses something sleek and cool in my hand. "Here, I found your iPhone in Antique, but it was pretty banged up. Whoever scavenged it must've sucked at taking care of it."

The iPhone she gave me has myriads of cracks on the screen, but when I pressed the home button the screen still managed to light up. I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to do with it, so I pocket it.

"How did you get here?" she presses. "We saw you fall."

I have no idea what she's talking about.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." I step away from her. "Who are you? Where am I? Why is everything so quiet?"

Her face falls.

"I'm Jessica," she says. Her eyes look at me as if they're begging me to attach meaning to that name. But I can't. I notice the bags under her eyes, so dark they're almost purple. Her pale skin makes her look ghostly under the black clothes she's wearing.

"You really don't know where you are?" she asks when I don't say anything. She leans her weight on one foot, checking her hip. Her free hand went behind her back. What a weird resting pose.

"My house is nearby," I tell her. "But why is everything so quiet? At this hour, people are still flocking around and shit. There are still cars and trucks. Where's the background noise? It's usually only like this in the middle of the night."

Jessica looks at me as if I'd just said something very important. But I don't know what.

"What?"

A low rumbling sound erupts seemingly from all around us. Jessica's eyes widen.

"Shit, we've been out here too long." She grabs my hand. I'm too shocked to step away a second time. "We have to get back inside."

The low rumbling sound breaks into a siren. It sounds a lot like the siren that would ring at my high school every time we'd have earthquake drills. Hearing the sound so close to my house gives me chills.

"Where are we going?" I ask her. She pulls me further down the side street and then to the right, down a narrow way. It's barely wide enough for a car to fit through. Jessica keeps looking up at the sky. The canvas of the dusk doesn't change. There's something fearful in her eyes, magnified by her deep bags and her pale skin. The sky suddenly doesn't seem so pretty anymore.

"To shelter," she eventually replies. She lets go of my hand. We've stopped in front of a door. Calling it a door would be generous. It's a slab of wood closing a narrow alley between two small houses. I can't even see the door's hinges.

Jessica hands me a flashlight and a handgun. They almost slip out of my hands in my shock. The flashlight is black and compact with a rubber grip: a tactical flashlight. I don't know much about guns. I only know the things I see on TV. I tell Jessica as such.

"If you see something move that isn't me: shoot it." She replies grimly. She's knocking a complicated rhythm on the wood. It doesn't look like she would be stopping anytime soon.

A part of me cringes at her seriousness. Surely the gun isn't real? What's there to shoot at? She's overreacting.

But another part of me, the part of me that was shaken by the silence of the streets, the absence of the noise and the people, listened to her. Something was going on. And from the way Jessica is acting, it's definitely not good.

The blaring siren is cut off. Jessica curses under her breath. I'm just about ready to scream at her. What the fuck is happening? The silence after the siren has my veins running cold, though I don't know why. I adjust my grip on the gun.

The low rumbling noise starts up again. Beside me, I can hear Jessica's breathing quicken. I quickly feel for the flashlight button. When I find it, I click it once. Twice. It still has juice.

"Is the safety on?" I ask her. She shakes her head. She's breathing through her mouth. Her panic is infectious. What's coming?

I get my answer a few minutes later. The rumbling noise grows louder, tearing a scream from my throat. Above me, the canvas of the dusk is peeled back. It's amazing and terrifying in equal measure. It looks as if an invisible hand is rolling back the painted clouds, the strokes of red and yellow and purple and all the nameless shades in between as if it was just a band-aid. Or dead skin.

Beneath the layer of color, there was only darkness. The scream dies in my throat. It's a horrible kind of darkness. It reminds me of the moments when the power would go out; that indescribable moment when all I could see was where the light used to be.

The darkness from the sky floods the world in a singular bone-chilling moment. I almost drop my flashlight in my haste to turn it on. I draw my finger away from the trigger of the gun. The flashlight won't turn on.

"Jessica!" I scream in the dark.

"Miguel! It's open! Follow my voice!" Her voice rings from my left. I swing to look in her direction, but in the darkness, I feel as if I've turned full circle. There's nothing to distinguish right from left. The black feels absolute.

"Turn on the flashlight!" she yells. Her voice came from behind me. I click the flashlight on. The beam cuts a solid path through the darkness. Somehow, I've ended up at the mouth of the side street she turned us right on just a few minutes ago. How did I end up here? The flashlight beam quivers in my grip. Jessica has one hand on the door, her pale face terrified.

Something brushes past me. Its touch is feather light, trailing up my exposed arms.

"DON'T LOOK AT IT!" Jessica screams. I feel breath on my left arm, the one holding the flashlight.

"RUN!" Jessica screams. I run. Hoarse screaming echoes behind me, but I don't turn to look. The flashlight beam flies all over the place. I do my best to keep it trained on her. She looks more like a ghost now, with her black clothes covering up her arms and legs. Her head and the hollow of her throat are all I can see, floating in the darkness.

"Hold on to me." She doesn't scream anymore, but her tone brooked no argument. She tears the gun and flashlight from my grip and points the flashlight in the darkness. I grab onto her shirt. Its material is thick and rough.

The flashlight beam cuts a path all the way to the mouth of the street. There's nothing there. Jessica fires two shots into the emptiness.

Or what I thought was the emptiness. The air shimmers at the mouth of the street. I didn't think it possible--but a darker darkness tears itself away from the abyss beyond the path of Jessica's flashlight. Its head had three horns jutting from its hulking body, each horn had an appendage that darted around its form. But other than that, the creature had no other defining feature. It looked like darkness molded into abstract shape. Nothing more.

It is the most terrifying thing I have ever seen.

And then Jessica is taking my hand and bolting through the mouth of the alley. Her flashlight cuts a path through the narrow way, illuminating damp bricks and tangled rubber hoses connected to faucets, which jutted from the walls. At one point she jumped over an upturned pail that I didn't see. I ended up tripping over it, my grip on Jessica breaking. I used my momentum to roll back on my feet and keep running. I'm afraid that if I fall, I wouldn't be able to get back up again. Jessica runs ahead, but she flicks her flashlight to me every few steps.

At the end of the way is a gate. She unlocks it, unlocks the door behind it, and pulls me inside.

* * *

Terms and Definitions:

Antique - a province of the Philippines located in the region of Western Visayas