it was as dark as midnight. which wouldn't have been concerning if it were actually midnight, and they were somewhere rural, perhaps. unfortunately, like everything else that had happened in flora's life, she was in the middle of a bustling city, known to be brightly lit 24/7. okay, so, maybe the power went out, no big deal. the cherry on top was that the sun had been in the sky approximately 3 minutes ago, and it was currently somewhere around 11 am. flora and ellie were in the coffee shop when it happened. they had decided to meet up there for their lunch break. even though it always seemed to last a minute, it was better than nothing. they never saw each other otherwise, because their classes never seemed to cross paths. ellie had been wanting to tell her friend about everything that had happened since last week, like all the new couples, the incident, and the job she had recently landed as a wedding planner -- and that was basically the moment where the light decided to wander from the earth. no one knew why - theorists proposed that light had gotten tired of the sad, spherical orb, and they were not happy with the way humans twisted it into new things every generation or so. scientists suggested that they wouldn't find out why, ever. the planet would be gone before most of them reached their labs, and it would take far too long for the astrologist to dust off his telescope. everyone in the shop was visibly startled. flora nearly spat out her coffee, and ellie was first to run to the window, an impressive feat. soon enough, everyone was crowded around the three glass panels, a few stumbling like children on roller skates. some tried turning on the flashlight on their phones, but quickly found that it didn't work. in fact, the screens didn't even produce any light, despite the fact that they were all charged. panic rapidly began to rise. outside was a work of modern art. nothing could be seen except for a few shades of dark gray and black. there was a lot to be heard, however - the noises included whispers, talking, screaming, and violent crashes. it was a city, after all, which complicated things. there were, or had been, a lot of cars on the road, and all the ones that didn't pull over either crashed or were crashed into. the people in the coffee shop looked - no, listened - to the chaos in horror. they too began to chatter at levels which would've sent the lunch monitor to heaven. people who were scared of the dark hid in what they thought was a corner, and cried. flora turned in the direction that she thought her friend was in. "hey, how are you feeling about all of this?" she asked, since reading her friend's expression was as impossible as finding a needle in a house fire. thankfully, ellie's voice came back to her, and not some random man's. "well, i don't know. i wasn't expecting it, for sure." "it's the end of the world! we're all gonna die!" shouted an old-ish woman. "and there's that," ellie added, "she voices my inner thoughts pretty well." flora glanced outside again. it hadn't been this dark, or colorless, since the dawn of time. there had always been a neon sign, a firefly, something. she tried to stay calm, but her thoughts seemed to be running at the speed of light. the noise around her began to crescendo-- and then it all stopped. she felt weightless for a brief second, like the summer wind before it gave in to autumn, or a feather that had started falling long ago. "hello?" she whispered. everything gradually faded away, just like it did for billions of others.*** the galaxy in her entirety had become her own midnight - lightless, lifeless, and empty. she rather liked it. (***well, not for me. i'll just be floating around here until there's another story to narrate.)
