The Edge

By Joseph Sweet

0 Day
Thomas's Journal
April 12th

    Two days ago, the world disappeared.

    I don't know a better way to say it than that.

    It's just gone.

    I imagine I'm just writing this to keep myself sane. If what I see out the window is all that remains of the world, there isn't much sense in trying to tell anyone what happened, because there isn't anyone left to tell.

    I somehow can't convince myself to believe that, though. I have to believe that there is more; something beyond this, and that people live on there. Maybe a world exists, in some other dimension, where this hasn't happened yet.

    There's no logic to what I feel inside – except for the kind of logic inspired by too many science fiction movies as a kid – but I don't think there has to be. That's how I feel, and at the moment there's no one around to disagree.

    It's like that saying. If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it fall, will it still make a sound? Okay, more of a philosophical question really than a saying, and I'm pretty sure that I got it wrong, but I'm reminded of it suddenly. If no one is around to disagree with you, are you still wrong? Okay, so I never claimed to have the best sense of humor, but given the circumstances I would think you could cut me some slack.

    I'm at Kathy's diner, in Sackets Harbor NY.

    I don't know how much time I have left, so I know I should hurry this along, but I really don't know how to describe the events of the last few days.

*

    Thomas dropped the journal on the small diner table, and stood up.

    His first thought was to go to the large window and look outside. Maybe it would clear his head. But he didn't turn that way.

    There was nothing out there, and looking would just make matters worse. Twice his head almost turned that way instinctually; but he fought it and managed to look only at the tables, the floor, and the walls. That was something he was going to have to work on. Staring out that window was horrible. When he was a kid he had lain down in the middle of a field at night once while camping with his brother. It had been a cool, clear night and the stars were very visible. Laying like that, staring upward, with only space seeming to be before him and all around him, he'd suddenly panicked. It had been like laying on a rock, floating through space and he'd felt as though he could fall off at any moment and just tumble through oblivion forever. He'd been terrified and felt sick at the same time. This was worse. At least space was just a vacuum containing gasses and rocks and planets and stars. It wasn't alive. It wasn't waiting to eat you. And who knew? Maybe there was something in there waiting. Maybe if he allowed it to take him, he would be transported someplace horrible.

    For a moment he hesitated there at the edge of the counter, feeling some sense of manners and rules, holding him in his place. Then he reminded himself that there was no one here and the same old rules no longer applied. He walked past the counter pushing two doors open - which immediately fell back into place - and into the kitchen. His stomach was growling and he wondered what he could make himself to eat. Maybe some food would allow him to think better.

    On the other side of the small kitchen, he saw a cooler door and headed for it.

    Goosebumps broke out all over his body as he pulled the handle and began to open the door, although he didn't know why at first. He expected to be hit with a wave of cold air, but there was nothing; just dead, silent air and the hungry grumble of the abyss beyond begging to be fed.

    His blood froze in his veins as he looked into a wall of darkness so thick that light could not penetrate it.

    He just stared at the spot where the building ended, frozen in place. That sound was horrible – A steady rumbling, like an immense stomach, growling and like a low distant thunder. It wasn't natural. Something in it seemed alive. And it was watching him. He could almost feel it breathing and he shook involuntarily as a series of chills moved through him. At any second, it could rush forward and envelope him, and that would be the end. And why didn't it? What was it waiting for? Why had it seemingly eaten the entire world and stopped just yards away in every direction?

    For what seemed an agonizing eternity, Thomas willed himself to close the door, silently begging his body to comply, but nothing happened.

    Then a sound somewhere in the kitchen startled him, and as he spun around, his arm shot forth reflexively and slammed the door shut.

    The walls shook in that instant, and several pots and pans had fallen to the floor from where they had been hanging above the food prep tables.

    The power went out.

    Knowing that he would never see the kitchen be devoured in this blackness, if that wall of living shadow had started to advance, Thomas ran for the doorway leading back out into the dining area.

    He lit a lighter which had been in his pocket and watched the doorway for a few minutes, in terror, but nothing happened.

    Thinking quickly, he remembered seeing some decorative candles behind the counter, and moved toward them. They were made to look like little chefs.
    "Sorry little guy, he said, and lit the wick on one fat chefs' head.

    Slowly, he made his way back to the table he had been sitting at with an armful of unlit chef candles under his free arm.

1

    It has started to take the building. I don't imagine it will be much longer now.

    God, why am I even writing this? Maybe I'm just distracting myself from what's coming.

    I guess I should go back to the beginning, and get it out as quickly as I can…

    It started four days ago.

    I had been watching TV, flipping randomly through the channels. One minute everything had been fine, and then quite suddenly, everything went off the air.

    The satellite receiver was saying "No signal."

    "Damn it!" I cursed, and turned the receiver off and back on, hoping that resetting it would fix the problem.

    Nothing

    I knew everything couldn't be off the air. Most likely it was a problem with the satellite company or their receiver.

    I turned the receiver off and put the TV on channel 7, hoping to catch a locally broadcast station. Sure enough, it worked, and there was an emergency newscast. I don't remember it word for word, but they were saying that reports of power outages had been coming in from as far as Syracuse, and then the phones had gone down.

    I went instantly to the cordless phone, and picked it up… Nothing.

    There was another phone on the wall. But it was dead also.

    I came back into the room at that point and sat down, waiting for the reporter to tell me what was going on, but it didn't happen. They didn't have answers.

    No power, then no phones, cell phones weren't working, no internet. There was no form of communication other than the TV station, which luckily was still using their old style analogue transmitter. Lucky for me I'd been too cheap to buy a digital TV when the satellite company was supplying a digital receiver which worked just fine on my old analogue television.

    But they had no communication from the outside world either, so they were no help.

    An hour later the station went off the air.

    For a few minutes, there was a high pitched tone, color bars, and then static. I tried hooking up the digital box again, which the government had convinced us would be great for emergencies. Excuse me if I call bullshit. There was just a blue screen, of course. There was no emergency broadcast.

    I was panicking. There was no one else at the house. I lived alone. I couldn't contact anyone, and I was pretty sure that we were at war.

    For all I knew, someplace nearby had been nuked or something, and we would be next. I did mention that I watched entirely too much television my whole life, right?

    I paced back and forth for a few minutes, went upstairs to get candles and flashlights. Living in the north country, I was prepared for those emergency winter storms that usually left you S.O.L. with no power, trees down so you couldn't travel, and no phones. Granted, they have worse storms that destroy entire towns in other parts of the country, but that doesn't make being snowed in for two weeks  straight  in below zero weather with no supplies, no heat, and no power, suck any less.

    This was obviously different, but I needed something to keep me busy.

    After a few hours, however, I couldn't wait any longer.

    I went outside and got into Ellie, prepared to go into town to see if anyone knew what was going on. Ellie was an old beat up, early nineties fire-bird. It barely ran, probably wouldn't make it through another year's inspection, and consumed gasoline like I breathed air, but she was my baby.

    My ex-girlfriend named her, but I still call her that. Old habits die hard.

*

    Thomas was startled suddenly by a loud crack sound, like someone slapping a desk with a ruler, only about ten times louder, and he nearly dropped the pad of paper.

    He waited, watching the kitchen door from which the sound had come, certain that at any minute, the wall would vanish into the black nothing which had consumed everything else.

    That steady rumbling was growing louder and louder from in there, but at the moment, it didn't seem to be advancing any further.

    He wondered briefly once more how this thing had devoured everything in just days, and somehow had slowed to almost a crawl suddenly at the end.

    He got up, unable to take the suspense any longer, and walked to the kitchen door.

    The door pushed open easily enough, but more than half of it vanished into what seemed to be a wall of shadow at first, had it not been for the grumbling of the void, which had grown louder the instant the door had opened.

    He backed away swiftly, and the door fell back.

    There, however, was nothing two inches from the hinges when it tried to close.

    It had been eaten by the void.

    Thomas's stomach began to growl louder now, and he tried to remember when the last time had been that he'd eaten. He almost laughed when he realized that eating would be nothing but an empty comfort at this point, since he was most certainly going to die soon anyway.

    'Oh well,' he thought, 'Might as well die comfortable.'

    His eyes wandered about the little restaurant for a few seconds. There was a cooler out here with ice cream in it and the generator at the side of the building had just been taken so it was probably still frozen. There was a thing under the counter with individual servings of crackers, and plenty of condiments, but he knew that real food had been in the kitchen and that was now gone. A short ways down the counter, his eyes finally came to rest on a glass covered dish with what looked to be apple pie in it. That would do.

    Glancing cautiously back at the blackness beyond the partial kitchen door, he made his way to the pie, certain that it had stopped its advancement for the moment.

    After a few seconds, he found a fork, and took the half pie out of its case, moving back toward the table he'd been sitting at.

    Then it occurred to him that the sound he'd heard had been the void advancing, and that it had moved startlingly fast.

    The table he'd been sitting at was right next to a large window, and the blackness had only been a few feet away earlier.

    At the speed it currently appeared to move in, it would undoubtedly take him quickly, should he remain seated there.

    He placed his pie on a table in the center of the dining area, as far from all walls as he could get, and retrieved the notepad.

2

    It's almost here now. I don't know what to do, so I'm just sitting here eating pie. I guess the only thing that's kept me from just giving up and walking out into it is the dim hope that it would eventually receded and leave me alone if I just waited long enough, but now that hope is beginning to seem pretty damned foolish. It's right at the edge of the kitchen, and it ate the door when I opened it to look.

    That sound is driving me bat-shit. It's like an earth-quake, thunder, and some giant's stomach growling at the same time. It sounds alive.

    I guess I should get back to where I was.

    Lucky for you, I don't have time to get into details, or I'd probably try to tell my life story. I would take the time to wonder why it is that I'm talking to a piece of paper as though it was a real person, but as a writer I do it all the time. Why would today be any different?

    You know, I just remembered something I saw on television a few days before this whole thing started. It probably doesn't have anything to do with it, but there was this thing about the hadron collider; apparently some huge machine that three countries paid billions of dollars to build. The guy talking on the show said something about it creating micro-singularities, which he said are basically tiny black holes. I'm wishing I'd paid more attention now. There were a ton of people who didn't want it to be built because they claim there's a tiny chance it could create a black hole that would get bigger and bigger, feeding off itself and destroy our planet and then our solar system. Maybe that's what this is.

    Forget the fact that I know absolutely nothing about science, and fell asleep watching that show, so who knows. Maybe I'm sleeping right now. Maybe this is one hell of a fucking nightmare. Wouldn't that be some cool shit. Maybe I fell asleep watching that, and I'm having this dream now. Or maybe I'm just full of shit.

    Anyway, I had gone into town, but there were very few people around.

    Sackets Harbor is a tourist town, profiting mainly from its history. There aren't many jobs in town, and most of the people living here, work somewhere else, or are somewhat wealthy and don't stay here much.

    I stopped here at the diner, but there was only one waitress working, and otherwise it was empty.

    I asked her what was happening, and she said they were running on a generator, and most likely closing in a couple of hours.

    She said they couldn't afford to stay open on the generator unless the place suddenly got packed. This made me feel guilty about just sitting there drinking a two dollar cup of coffee, so I bought a fudge Sunday and ate it slowly, drawing out the conversation as much as I could, although I was unaware of it at the time. What I really feared, most likely, was the long walk back to my house and the prospect of being alone in whatever it was that was happening. We talked about gas prices for a few minutes, and I remember commenting that you'd think a country that just invaded another one under false pretenses, in order to get control of oil, would be able to sell it cheaper.

    She frowned at that statement, and I let it go, realizing that most people don't agree with my view on politics. Almost everyone around here knows someone or has family in the military with Fort Drum being so close, and they want to believe that they are getting shipped overseas for a legitimate reason. Let 'em have it, I say. The soldiers themselves think they are protecting their country and its citizens and I have nothing against them, either, for that matter. I support them one hundred percent. It's  the government I have a problem with.

    After a half hour, there was really nothing to talk about. Despite my coming into town for answers, I'd found that I myself had driven the topics of conversation far away from the problem at hand more than a few times. So maybe what I had really needed was just to talk to someone.

    I left, deciding that whatever was happening, things would be okay. We most likely were not at war, and things seemed alright for the moment.

    What was probably going to happen, was I would go home, and have a few drinks to take my mind off the subject, pass out, and when I awoke the next morning, everything would be back to normal again. I told myself this over and over, even with the steady sinking feeling which told me I was full of shit.

    I did just that; at least the going home, getting drunk, and passing out part, anyway.

    When I awoke it was early morning, and I felt like a blender full of ass-holes on puree with a cup and a half of diced jalapenos tossed in for good measure.

    I downed some generic Ibuprofen, and had a glass of orange juice, noticing by the dead refrigerator light and warm juice that the power hadn't come back on. Could have been worse, I figured. At least it hadn't gone bad yet.

    Deciding against anything in the fridge, I concluded I wasn't hungry anyway, and went out onto the back porch to get some air.

    Everything was so dead, it was creepy.

    There was no sound.

    No birds, no insects, no dogs barking, nothing. A song kept repeating the same line over and over in my head, making the dull ache there get worse and worse by the second.

    "It's the end of the world as we know it… And I feel fine."

    But I didn't feel fine. I had a fucking hang-over, and my stomach felt like acid was slowly eating its way to the surface, which I knew the ibuprofen was just going to make worse if I didn't eat something.

    I dumped what was left of the orange juice over the railing, and went back inside to make coffee.

    As I pulled the pot out, and filled the filter, it never occurred to me that there was no electricity.

    I could taste the coffee already as I deeply inhaled the aroma of the grounds, poured the pot of water into the machine, and flipped the switch.

    Nothing happened. The little red light didn't come on. I wanted to smash something when I realized how stupid I was being.

    There was no power. I knew this. All I can say is that I don't think so well when I first wake up. And hangovers don't help.

    Refusing to be beaten, I took the pot out, took out the holder with the filter full of coffee grounds, and filled a pitcher with about twelve cups of water, and slowly poured it onto the coffee grounds watching, as it dripped into the pot at an unbearably slow speed.

    It seemed like an eternity as I waited, slowly adding more water, and waiting for it to filter into the pot.

    When it was done, with a smile on my face, I poured myself a cup of room temperature coffee, and went out onto the porch to enjoy it as much as I could. I was content that this problem, whatever it may be, had not defeated me; even if I was drinking coffee that tasted like shit.

    At some point though, I noticed something while my eyes roamed the tree line and horizon all around, looking for any sign of life. There was what looked to be a black patch in the sky.

    I tried to make out what it was, my overactive imagination coming up with all sorts of ideas, but nothing plausible.

    It looked as though someone had built an immense black wall, way off in the distance.

    As I looked, though, that seemed more and more absurd.

    This wall of black seemed to extend up past the clouds.

    I had to know what it was.

    After about fifteen minutes, knowing I needed a shower, and probably smelling like booze, I jumped into Ellie, and heading off in that direction. I could see myself getting pulled over and the cop smelling the booze on me and asking me to step out of the vehicle. I didn't really care though. I had to know what that black patch in the sky was.

    I drove for hours once I was on the highway. At first it didn't seem to get any closer, and then after a couple of hours, I realized that I could see more and more of it. Once I did, however, I realized that I wished I hadn't.

    It seemed to go off forever to either side, and go up past the clouds, which were sitting still, and not moving at all.

    I pulled over and got out of Ellie, realizing then how strange it was that I had encountered no other cars on the road so far.

    I watched the clouds for a few minutes, assuming that they were just moving too slow to register, but it soon became obvious that they weren't moving at all.

    And then I came to the realization that there was no wind either.

    There was just a dead calm.

    'The calm before the storm,' I thought.

    I suddenly didn't want to get any closer to that wall.

    But I had to know.

    So I drove.

    It took a few more hours, and I was somewhere beyond Syracuse, when I finally got close enough to see the edge; the edge of the world.

    There were cars here finally.

    My heart seemed to stop in my chest, and it felt suddenly as though my blood were about to reach a below-freezing temperature. There were goose-bumps up and down my arms, and I couldn't have moved if I had wanted to.

    It was as if everything ended at this wall.

    It went in a perfectly symmetrical line off as far as you could see, and straight up.

    There was no more blue sky at its edge.

    I somehow knew also, that when it got dark, there would be no stars in its part of the sky.

    I was beyond terrified. Right now, it seems absurd, but for that moment, it was as though I was witnessing the end of the world - Something immensely profound. This was not something that was supposed to happen in my life time.

    I don't think I believed until that moment that the world would ever end. But now that I think of it, how could it not? It was as if everything in the universe was working against this one puny planet's continued existence, and yet despite all of it, it continued to go on day after day. I guess it was just a matter of time before something happened to end it all.

    And that something, apparently, was this black wall in the distance. After whatever was happening finished, there would be no more. No more births, no more families, no more weekends, or weekdays, no holidays, and nothing human-kind had ever done would ever matter, because it was finally over, and by the looks of it there would soon be no proof that we ever existed.

    I wanted to cry and to laugh at the same time. All of those people who wrote about their lives, hoping to be remembered, and all of the things we did, hoping to leave a mark on the world which would be there forever, was in vane.

    At some point, I had stepped out of my car to get a better view, but now I made myself get back in.

    As I dropped back into the seat, my eyes glued to the black nothing ahead, I caught movement, and looked that way.

    A station wagon, had inched forward, and then driven halfway into the blackness.

    And then I saw something which terrified me even more. The back end of the vehicle upended, and it slid forward at a downward angle into the void.

    It took me a few seconds to realize why this had frightened me so.

    And then it had hit me.

    There was no ground beyond.

    In all likelihood, there was nothing at all beyond the darkness.

    It was devouring everything it touched; including the earth. This was too much to take in, and I just sat there, too frightened to move. Some voice at the back of my head kept telling me that I should go back the way I came, get as far away from this thing as I could, and maybe it would stop. But I couldn't do it.

    And then it moved forward, and took maybe seven or eight cars in less than a second.

    At the time, it didn't seem to have moved very far, because of my distance from it, but for the number of cars that had vanished.

    That was the push I had needed.

    I turned my car around as quickly as possible, – begging that this wouldn't be the time when she finally failed me and the engine died – and I headed back to town as fast as I could.

    When I reached Sackets Harbor, however, I just couldn't bring myself to stop.

    I drove straight through, paying no attention to the speed limit.

    I had to be doing eighty miles per hour, noticing the uneasy shuffle of the engine, and marveling that it was able to take the abuse, after so long.

    It didn't take long for me to see that there was another wall in the opposite direction. I just turned around and headed for home.

    I wondered about God, and a bunch of other things; wondered if I should pray. In the end, I grabbed a bottle of Jack Daniels, and attempted to drink myself to death. I'd heard it was possible, but apparently it wasn't in the cards for me.

*

    Thomas was thrown from his seat, as the building shook hard. The kitchen and the bar across the room vanished practically in the blink of an eye.

    'It should be shiny.' he thought suddenly. The blackness ahead, growled obscenely, almost a roar now, and then calmed to a steady thin rumble.

    Picking himself up, he noticed the ticket pad a few inches away, and retrieved it.

    Plopping back down in his seat, he noticed that the quarter of the apple pie which remained, had not been knocked off the table, although it was sitting dangerously close to the edge now.

    He slid it over to him, and forked another bite into his mouth.

    "Not a bad last supper." he said calmly, having accepted his fate.

    Thomas thought for a few minutes about his writing career. He'd sold one book, and had probably a few hundred more either in his computer or in his head. None of them would ever be published. He decided that was okay though. He hadn't written them for the sake of publishing.

    At that moment, however, it felt like he could write them all one right after another. His mind was racing. All of the stories came rushing back, and he had to fight not to pick up the pen, and start trying to get them out.

    He thought then of what different authors had said about stories, and where they come from. It seemed to some as though there was some vault of ideas that we all tapped into, while others seemed to think that authors could see into other worlds.

    Thomas himself got most of his ideas from dreams and nightmares.

    New ideas started to flood into his head suddenly, and he found himself desperate to write. He kept telling himself that it would be pointless, but he wanted to, nonetheless.

    It came to him so suddenly that he almost heard the sound of a light clicking on in his head, and he knew that his world was connected to all others. Somehow writing down what happened to him, would ensure that his story was not lost. Somehow he would be contributing to that vast intangible library of ideas to authors in other realities which had not been destroyed.

    He knew that it sounded insane, and maybe it was just a crazy notion that was keeping him from jumping into the void and ending it, but who cared? A few days ago, he would have thought it was insane to think that a wall of blackness could devour the world, but here it was.

    He picked up the pad again, placed it comfortably and began writing once again.

3

    When I awoke midway through the next day, I felt remarkably good for a man who'd polished off half a bottle of J.D. the night before.

    Then I remembered why I drank it and went outside.

    It had all been real, and now it was only a few miles away.

    From an upstairs bedroom window, I was able to confirm that it had advanced just as quickly from the other direction.

    I walked into Sackets Harbor with the bottle in my hand, knowing that I was going to have to find more when I got there, as this half bottle was not going to keep me unconscious until the apocalypse ended.

    Halfway into town, however, I went to take my first drink of the day from the bottle and decided against it.

    What, I thought, if when this was over, I found out that God was real, and was drunk off my ass? And anyway, who wanted to be drunk all day on the last day of their life?

    Well, maybe some people, but not me.

    With a sigh, knowing that I would regret it later, I threw the bottle into the woods, and continued my walk into town.

    The road was silent. There were no cars, and no animals making noise. No wind to rustle the leaves in the trees.

    When I reached the bridge, – as I had been thinking that things couldn't get worse – knowing that the water would still be rushing beneath it, and that at least would bring a sense of normalcy back into the day, my heart sank.

    There was no water.

    A short way up river, I could see where it was supposed to meet the lake, and couldn't make out the water there either.

    Panicking, but unsure why it was so important to me, I entered Madison Barracks through an opening in the fence just after the bridge, and began down the old cement road toward the water.

    For those of you that don't know, Madison Barracks was an old military barracks from back in the war. Most of it has been rebuilt, however, full of military housing, a health club, some civilian housing and a couple of restaurants.

    A short ways down the path, a terror filled me suddenly.

    There was no water.

    It was like a great muddy pit.

    It was like nothing I've ever seen before.

    I realized instantly what had happened.

    Everything was being devoured as it touched the void, but water isn't solid. So when it had reached the lake, the water had just drained out one side into the blackness.

    There were still pools of water here and there, but for the most part, it was just a vast pit.

    I did the first thing that came to mind, needing to get away from there, and headed further into town to the first bar I could think of.

    On Main Street, however, I realized that it wasn't alcohol that I needed.

    I thought about killing myself, but decided instantly against that.

    That darkness on the horizon would get around to me soon enough, I wasn't going to make it any easier than that.

    I yelled for anyone to come out, but no one answered.

    Perhaps with the end so obviously nigh, they'd all committed suicide. I did catch a couple of curtains falling back into place. I thought of going to the front doors of those houses and knocking, and then wondered if I would answer the door in such a time. Perhaps that would be a good way of getting myself killed also. Some scared person, holed up in their house or apartment with a shotgun might shoot first and ask questions later in such a situation.

    So I let them be.

    I wandered for a while, went to the old battlefield – another historical attraction from the war of 1812 in this town - and walked through one of the old buildings that they give tours through.

    I figured, why not?

    With no electricity, and such a spooky old house, I didn't bother to go through much of it, and just headed back into town.

    I made myself look away from where the water should be, as I passed the docks, and the Boat House restaurant and bar.

    When I came across this restaurant, I came in, sat down and just passed out.

    It was a hot summer day, and I had probably just walked between six and eight miles.

    When I awoke, the blackness was directly across the street from me, having devoured everything right up to a few feet of the buildings there.

    I didn't go outside to see how far away it was in the other direction.

    I seemed to be in the middle, and I guessed this was where I was going to make my final stand.

*

    Thomas looked around at what he could make out of the restaurant. The candle was close to burning out, so he picked up one of the others which he'd grabbed earlier, and lit it. He wondered then what he would have done if he'd only taken down one candle, since that part of the restaurant was now gone.

    He guessed it didn't matter. He had grabbed them all. End of story… Well almost.

    The darkness advanced again, this time from both sides, leaving only about a thirty foot area.

    The entrance was gone, and there were no windows. There was just a thin shaft of flickering light from the candle, and complete darkness on either side of it.

    There was a low groan from the void, different this time, almost warning him that his time was almost up.

4

    Well, this is it.

    I wonder what it will feel like.

    I wonder if I'll just cease to exist, or if I'll move on to some other place. Maybe just merge into some other version of myself in an alternate reality as a story idea.

    Or maybe I am just a story character. Maybe some writer is typing these thoughts as I write them down, and at the end of my story, I'll cease to exist, because that's all I was: An idea.

    Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm locked away somewhere. Or perhaps I'm really sitting here in this diner, but it's actually packed with people, and they're all staring at me, because I'm crazy and unaware of them. Maybe my brain finally cracked and I'm living this out in my head.

    I'm hearing some strange noises now from the void, and it could literally be any second now.

    I guess I should end this. I think I've told you everything.

    If someone is reading this, remember that Thomas Avery did exist.

    I wasn't just some story idea in some author's head - And if I am, be easy on me man.

*

    Thomas stood then on the edge of the groaning, grumbling abyss that had closed in on him now from all directions, lifting the waitress's order book - which had become the story of his last four days - kissed it, and threw it into the void.

    The living darkness responded with another hungry groan. Thomas had time for only one startled gasp as it advanced on him, and in an instant of cold, he was gone.