Do not Look at the Moon

Dear reader, I fear you won't believe me if I told you how humanity had ended. How man truly ceased to be. The story just seems too profound, too fabricated—a tale of nightmares...something one can concoct only in the ghastliness of a disturbed consciousness.

Even if you did—by some farcical, questionable logic—believe my twisted tale, there is not a soul left to tell. At least not a fellow human I can confide in. I was the only one of my kind (man) that survived their arrival. The only way my story can be shared is by the ink spreading across these very pages. Though whose hands my words may fall upon I am not sure. I doubt my readers will be human.

If you really want to hear about it, I suspect you will want to know who they were and why they chose Earth in the first place. Truth is I still don’t entirely know. All I know is they had been watching us keenly for millenniums—scrutinising our lives, our vanity and our unintelligence with unforgiving eyes. Perhaps almost as intently as a scientist with a microscope might study an object at the cellular level, analysing the shape of a cell, its nucleus, mitochondria, and other organelles. We were inferior, lowly creatures to them, to be examined like lab rats. And the whole time we were completely naïve to their gaze.

If only we had known...

Now the world of man seems so very far away...

I suppose I should start with the first night of their arrival...It is difficult for me to describe to the reader the events that took place that night. The only words that come to mind to explain it's mood are 'terrifyingly bizarre!' It didn’t happen like you see in those big-budget, Hollywood movies or science-fiction stories—there was no alien spacecraft descending upon us from the heavens, there was no chaos, violence nor death. Everything was completely silent when they arrived.

It started with the moon. I remember that night hazelly. Still to this day it seems more like a fever dream if anything. I was woken up in the night by my phone pinging: Emergency Alert: The Moon has caught on Fire: Thousands of people alarmed by the sight of the full moon going up in a blaze of fire. Stay alert. Listen to authorities.

I remember groggily getting out of bed, wrapping myself in a shawl as I pushed open the veranda to inspect the evening sky. It was the middle of winter, and the air expressed that well. There was a terribly frigid coldness to the eve. The type that soars your eyes and burns your cheeks nastily. Dear reader, you must make note of the weather here for it will be pertinent to my story later on.

I shivered, tucking my head down so that my scarf covered my lips and nose. Thank God I did, or I would have ended up like them....

The words 'Oh my God!' escaped my lips and I gasped in bewilderment. My eyes had allotted on the street below before I had even begun to inspect the moon. Although it was the dead of night, the street was full of people. The flickering street lights lit up the scene enough to reveal the real horror of it all.... no one was moving. And by moving I mean not a breath was uttered nor an eye turned. My entire neighbourhood stood on the road, their faces transfixed above them to something in the sky. They were immobilised, visibly frozen in the act of moving: a woman had her mouth agape, a man mid-stride with one leg off the road, even a cat sat like a statue on a neighbouring fence.

Dear reader, I cannot express to you the terrible feeling that struck at my soul in that moment. I did not understand what I was seeing, why my neighbours had frozen or why they were all gathered on the street at this time.

Another faint ping came from my phone. Another emergency announcement only the words made me freeze: Emergency Alert: Do not look at the Moon.

I don't know what the reader would have done in my position. But I needed answers or if not answers, I needed to understand the situation I was in more appropriately. And so I exited my flat to inspect what was going on up close.

The quietness of that night seemed almost otherworldly. It would be difficult to describe that silence properly in words...but I'll try. Dear reader, it felt like I had lost my hearing completely. The silence was a void all around me. My faint breathing was a scream against that gulf of desolate space.

I shone the light of my phone into the faces of a hundred observers. Each person's eyes were exactly the same. A milky glass had spread over the irises. They were large and opaque and filled with fear. The first person I directly approached was Mrs. O'Donielle—my elderly neighbour. She had come out in her nightgown and cap, her curls askew from sleep and her makeup not completely removed.

"Mrs. O'Donielle! Mrs. O'Donielle!" I pleaded, tugging frantically upon her arm. She did not budge. I even waved my hands directly in front of her eyes. Mrs. O'Donielle did not so much as blink. Her usually mauve eyes were swirling pearls of white. Even her signature scowl was replaced by a complexion of utter fear, her head thrust back as she stared transfixed by something above.

"Please wake up!!" I sensed a note of hysteria enter my voice as I pushed at her body with more charge. I just wanted to provoke a reaction, anything to signal a sign of sentience. Was wake up even the right word? These people were not dead, nor asleep. But neither were they alive. They were just there. Existing but not existing...

I admit, it was at that point I lost my senses a little. Could you blame me, reader? I ran through the street like a wild thing, screaming a mantra at the people: 'Wake up! Oh God please wake up! Is anyone out there?? Hello?!'

There was no reply, and the further I ventured the more I became aware of my own solitude in the world. The more I descended through the street the more I became afraid. Whatever had happened to Mrs. O'Danielle had happened to all of them. Was I the only one who hadn't looked at the moon? Was I the only one unaffected? But why? Surely someone must have caught on to what was happening as well? I could not be the only one? Could I?....It certainly seemed that way.

The temptation to look at the moon was mounting by the minute. God was I curious. Thankfully terror had addled my brain more than interest. It was roughly a quarter past two when I removed my shawl. Recall that chill I had earlier mentioned dear reader. Well it had disappeared abruptly. When had that happened?

I recall, it was then everything began to feel stiflingly hot. I noticed a strange mass of gas arising from the ground and advancing forward. Like a dense cloud pulsating, the colouration of fire, it rose and moved through the atmosphere. Everything in it's way—houses, trees and skylines—was swallowed and obscured. It continued until Earth's most familiar features were blurred.

Whatever monstrous thing this air was, well it was hot enough to melt the road before me. The bitumen had become mushy like mud. The air was like standing inside a furnace, about to be engulfed in flames. Sweat trickled unpleasantly down my forehead and neck. The heat sawed my eyes, making them tear up childishly.

My neighbourhood was known for its quaint little park. It had a large frozen pond on which the children could skate on during the Winter holidays. As I passed by, I noticed the ice had melted. Instead steam rose from the surface as the water bubbled like boiling water. It was perhaps not the most intelligent of things to do but I put my hand in inquisitively and yelped as sizzling hot water burnt my skin.

At the time I didn’t understand—the heat, the melting snow and streets, but now I do. Dear reader, I will let you in on a little secret. They can only survive in extremely hot temperatures. The disastrous heat was merely them transforming the Earth to suit their peculiar tastes. A refurbishing of sorts like movers decorating their new home. These changes (objectively perilous for man) were all to support their animated existence. For life to begin, at least for them to share our air, the world's oxygen had to accelerate to a boiling point.

As I peered closer I realised the pond had turned a violent red-orange. Yet, it was not the water itself that was red. It was merely a reflection of the infernal sky across the pond's surface. Perhaps if I could not look at the sky (for fear of becoming like my neighbours) then I could look at the sky's reflection in the pond. I remember the visual I saw clearly.

Above me the moon was engulfed in flames. Across the gulf of space the night burned as if the sun had popped and spewed it's lava coloured gas across the heavens. In the distance strange objects were falling from the stratosphere. Stars? Meteorites? Martians? I was not sure.

.....

Dear reader, I must pause in my story here. I can hear movement not so far away. A larger cluster have set up camp around the pond I mentioned. Perhaps they too require water to live. And now and then lone stragglers break from the herd and roam the streets as if in search of something. I fear there is no place truly safe for me to hide. They are everywhere!

I believe the Martians are all bound earthward. The longer I survive the more of them arrive uninvited upon our doorsteps. By God dear reader they are swarming this bit of Earth. They are drawn to something here i am sure of it! Just like how the sweet, sugary water of syrup attracts a colony ravenous of ants!

If this by chance is my last entry here, I fear they may have found me. And by God the last of man too shall cease to be...