I don’t know when the dust first came. If things were different there’d probably be an army of scientists working it out… people stringing together incomprehensible data points and painstakingly gluing tiny bits of data to each other. Then would have come the cynics and doubters and deniers. Well, when I think about it that way, maybe everything would be ending up the same anyway. So, in that case, who cares?
But as it really unfolded, as far as I could tell, I was the only one who could see it.
It simply came to be that one day, I noticed something strange. Like when you’re cooking and something starts to burn just a little bit and it takes you a moment to figure out why something in the room looks a little off.
My husband couldn’t see it. There wasn’t anything burning.
I’d had floaters and things before. Things in my eyes. So I was a little worried about that, but not too worried. Not worried enough to get it checked out until a couple days later.
I was getting old, my left retina was starting to detach. Just a little. Nothing to worry about. Not the cause of the haze or the dust. Maybe it would clear up on it’s own, or I’d have to see the other kind of eye doctor. The one that isn’t at the malls. Maybe a neurologist, if it wasn’t that.
I was afraid, so I didn’t go. Silly of me, but I really couldn’t decide if some kind of brain tumor or eye problem was worse. They aren’t really equivalent problems, but the surgeries I would imagine for either and their potential catastrophes were still then too frightening for any calm, logical, rational decision.
In a few weeks, I would have. Once I’d calmed down. In a normal, sane world I would have had that leisure.
The dust didn’t wait that long.
That, too, I didn’t realize right away.
By the time I made an appointment, the death tolls were…
People. Nature. They were getting angrier. More wild.
But it was harder for me to see it.
People, trees, animals, buildings… they began to disappear.
I was the only one who could see it.
Maybe.
Before the end, I was still pretending everything was normal, that it was just my eyes.
I was watching a ferris wheel, the people riding up and down, up and down. I held on to my husband, who was barely there. I could see them, in the baskets. The dust covered everything but for just a moment in the breeze, when they were up high and right before they plunged back down, I could see them realize and begin to scream.
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Nightmare Fuel 2017, Day 1