There is only more darkness inside the room she pulled me into. She turns her back on me to lock the doors. For a long while, the flashlight is trained only on the gate, which I see is painted a dull red. I only have time to notice that the paint has started to flake off before the door is shut. It's much more deserving of its title now, with its ornate carvings of flowers and fruit enclosed in curlicued frames at its center.

When the last lock slides into place, Jessica turns off the flashlight. The world plunges once more into darkness. Only our harsh breaths punctuate the silence. The screams are gone. A few feet away, Jessica takes a deep breath. She whispers: "Miguel, it's only me. I'm going to lead you to the bench, okay?"

I nod. But it takes me a moment to realize that she wouldn't be able to see it.

"Okay," I whisper. Her hand pushes at my chest with surprising force. My breath rushes out of me in a wheeze.

"Sorry!" she whispers. I take her hand in mine and let her lead me further into the room. Her palms are rough. My grip on hers is sweaty.

She leads with an even pace as if she's memorized the layout of the room, even in this total darkness. More than once, she maneuvers me around a table or a chair or even a stray pile of books. "Be careful around this part," she'd whisper. The books would sometimes be manuscripts or encyclopedias, organized by date or author or title. At least that's what she'd say. 

Finally, after what felt like forever in the dark, we stop. Paper rustles somewhere in front of me, and a hand guides me gently to sit down on a hard surface that gives just where my butt is. The bench is probably polished wood, with the butt-rest woven out of rattan. It's a common enough design in this country.

"Thank you." I meant it. Jessica has been so far the first and only person I've met in this hellish version of my home. And she's proven herself to be a nice enough person to save me from the darkness. I'm too tired to scream or be angry. Now, I'm just confused.

"Do you need water?" she whispers from in front of me. I'm suddenly aware of the raw column of my throat. Probably from all the screaming and the running.

"Yes, please."

Something squeaks from in front of me, and something brushes past me and pats my shoulder. It takes me longer than it should have to calm my heart down. The squeaking was Jessica getting up. Jessica was the one who patted my shoulder.

I've read about what people said about how losing one sense heightens all of your other senses. I wonder when that particular skill would kick in. In the silence, I can hear the sound of water gluck-gluck-glucking out of a pitcher and into two cups.

Jessica returns. There's the sound of wood squeaking. The soft sound of something clicking on wood in front of me. She pats me on what I guess she thought was my shoulder. It was my ear. I take her free hand and she guides my hand to a plastic cup. The water is lukewarm, but it's heaven for my throat.

"Why are we whispering?" I ask. She gave me a pretty big cup. I can't even wrap my fingers around it entirely.

"Frank and Izzy are asleep upstairs," Jessica explains. That doesn't explain anything at all.

"I'm sorry," I begin. "I just have so many questions. Who are you? How do you know me? Where are we? What was that thing outside?"

Jessica sighs in front of me. She sounds annoyed. But then I hear her gulping down water, and I take a breath to soothe my rankled nerves. She's just thirsty.

"I'm Jessica. We met--"

"You don't have a last name?" I blurt out. I don't know why that's the first thing I notice. I hear her chuckle in front of me.

"You're you, all right," she says. "That's what you ask every time."

"What do you mean, every time?"

"Let me answer your first questions first," is what she says in reply. I hear her take a sip from her cup. I'm uncomfortably aware of the sweat pouring down my neck, pooling on the small of my back. My front is no better. I wouldn't be surprised if Jessica would be able to see my nipples through my shirt--

Oh, wait. Never mind.

"We met way before all of this started--before the darkness came. We were classmates. You were always so nice to me. You were always so nice to everyone. It was kind of infuriating to be next to you because you'd always say 'Hi' to anyone who'd walk in."

"I'm sorry?" I hedge. She laughs. The sound pierces the silence, and I couldn't help but jump in my seat.

"It's okay," she promises. "As for where we are, you mentioned knowing this place. Your house is nearby. That's where we were supposed to set up camp a few months ago. But you saw your mom and your sister... and for a while, you just couldn't."

Mom. Nena.

"What... what happened to them?" I can hear how my own voice had grown small.

"They didn't get to paint their doors in time. The darkness got to them."

What did she say? She sounds strangely distant... as if I'm hearing her from somewhere else. On the other side of the room. She sounds so far away. I feel my mouth open, feel my throat vibrate with the force of my words, but everything seems so far away.

"What do you mean the darkness got to them?"

It seems like an eternity before I hear her voice again. For the first time since the darkness swept away my sight, I grow to hate this blindness. I've always been more reliant on my sight, reliant on the curve of light and shadow, reliant on color and all the shades in between, reliant on body language. Being blind to whatever Jessica wants to tell me through the scrunch of her eyebrows or the way her eyes would dart around the room...

The darkness stops being the mere absence of light. It becomes the absence of space itself. It's claustrophobic.

Before the silence and the darkness become too much, Jessica is talking again:

"The first thing that you have to know about how this world is different from the one you know is that there are three kinds of darkness here." There is a sound of plastic clacking against wood. She must have put down her cup. "The first is that which was allowed. This includes the evening hours. The darkness behind your eyelids when you blink or when you sleep."

"Is there even such thing as night time here?" I ask. My throat feels dry. I take another sip from my cup.

"Yep." She pops the "p". "The night is different from the dark because there are always stars out. Ever since the power plants stopped working, and electricity went out for good, light pollution stopped being a thing. That, and the moon is always full."

"How long does the darkness last?"

"I haven't tried counting the hours. I haven't had the time to do that yet. I'm always stressing out over food and potable water."

"Have you gone through the neighbors? How about the bakery back there?"

"I was just about to do that. And then you showed up."

"Sorry." I don't even try to hide my chagrin.

"The second darkness is that which blinds, in all the senses. This is the darkness outside, the one that we had been caught in. The one that flooded from the sky."

I can still see it so clearly: the painted canvas of the dusk peeled back to reveal a gaping void. It looked like something out of a horror movie. I could wax poetic about just how stark the darkness was against the strokes of red and gold, but I don't think I could fully describe the fear and awe that swept over me when I saw the sky destroy itself, plunge itself into darkness. The darkness looked like a place where... things could sleep--

"Oh, my God. Are there--things in the darkness?" My breath catches at the question.

Jessica continues as if she hadn't heard my question at all. "And then there's the third: the darkness that can manifest, and be felt."

I can feel my heart pounding against my chest. I'd forgotten how to breathe. "So... is that a yes?" I ask once I catch my breath.

"Yes," she answers. "When the darkness comes, the creatures come with it."

"What are they?" I can't help asking.

"I don't know," she answers. "They look different every time I'm unlucky enough to see them."

I remember something, from back when we were outside. "Earlier, you told me that I shouldn't look at the thing that was touching me." I take another gulp from my cup. "Wh-why is that?"

"It was looking at you in the dark. If you look at them while in the dark, that's when they can turn you."

I'm suddenly aware of all the water in my stomach. I can feel it sloshing inside me. I want to throw up.

"Turn me into what?"

"Something not alive."

"Is that what happened to my mom? To Nena?"

In the silence before Jessica says "Yes", I can easily imagine her nodding sadly in the dark.

Everything is so far away. There is a question burning on my tongue. And when I ask it, I feel myself pulled back down. 

"Can you show me?"