Fog

I stepped out of class into the hallways of the university feeling like my mind had just been through the meat grinder. All this information had just been shoved in their like unfolded jeans into too small of a drawer. I felt like I was retaining zero information.

The air felt almost dead, at a complete stand-still but it was still too cold for a mid-April morning. I wrapped my jacket tighter around me.

I pushed open the back door of the building and walked out into the eerie world in front of me. In the time it had taken me to sit through an entire statistical lesson the world outside had turned from spring to a mesh of fog and cold. The fog covered the whole ground and it was so thick I could barely see the stairs as I climbed down.

I walked slowly to the parking lot, trying to trust my memorization of the school layout rather than straining my eyes to see through the fog. Another student started walking towards me but as he got closer I noticed something strange happening to his face. It was warped and shaking: like it was trying hard to show me his true face under the mask. He made a low growl sound and I swallowed a scream in my throat. I made my best efforts to move farther out of his path and coward away from him. Much to my surprise, he did the same when passing me.

I tried to pick up the pace towards my car, I wasn’t sure how I was going to drive home in the fog but I knew I’d feel safer if I could just reach my car. Up ahead was another person and I started, instinctively, to move farther out of their path. It was a professor here. Her face looked the same as the student’s: distorted and shifting. I could see the bones behind her skin and her eyes turned a weird milky grey color as she started to growl as well. I tried to keep my head down and move along but she redirected her path towards me.

As she got closer, her growls turned into more of a low screech, like she was trying to speak but her mouth could no longer produce comprehensible words. I kept moving away until she launched at me, gripping my shoulders in her twisted, bony hands.

Puss and some sort of goo were dripping from her mouth as she screamed in my face. I screamed back, out of fear and tried to pull out of her grip. We took a few steps back as I shook my shoulders loose. When she finally released me I fell to the ground, hitting my head and blacking out.

I woke up to the sun shining brightly in the sky and a crowd of people - normal looking people - around me.

“Hey, are you okay? You hit your head pretty hard,” said one of the people standing over me. My vision was still a little bit too blurry to make out who spoke. The professor that had attacked me bent down, normal looking as ever, and held out a hand for me. Hesitantly, I took it and let her pull me to my feet. I recognized her now as my anthropology teacher.

“Jen, are you okay? I came to you to talk about your last paper, I had some questions before grading. You screamed and … are you okay?” She asked calmly, clearly very concerned.

“I … I don’t know. What happened to the fog?” I asked quietly.

“An ambulance is on their way,” said another student from behind me. I turned to look but everyone was looking at their phone now.

“What fog are you talking about, Jen? You should probably get checked out just in case you have a concussion,” my professor voiced with concern. She started reaching up to check my head for any bumps but I pushed her hand away.

“There was a fog, just now, so heavy it covered the whole area, I could barely see….” I had started off strong but noting everyone's faces I let my voice fade to nothing.

“Jen, there was no fog, it’s been sunny all morning,” my professor added looking at me like I might need a longer stay in the hospital.