Darkening into White

A Story by Reddog19

A short story, inspired by my favorite show, The Twilight Zone (original series).

Major, major!

Play the trumpet!

Major, major!

Play the flute!

Major, major!

Play in time!

Major, major!

Play this rhyme!

The house was silent as the young man of 17 awoke on that crisp Saturday morning in late December. The golden rays of the morning sun had breached his wall of curtains yet again. Maybe that was best. It was already 7:00 am and he was going to be late for work. Again.

All his boss ever complained about, what anyone ever did really, was how his time-management skills needed to be fixed desperately. He always tried to remember, but unfortunately his memory was not exactly up to par as compared to others. He stretched, his arms creaking with the effort, and strolled into the kitchen.

His strawberry-blonde bangs had their trademark early-morning cowlick effect and he brushed them to their places. He turned on his battery-powered radio to the local news station, but only heard static. He took a step back for a second, trying to remember if something had happened during the night. He shrugged and turned it to a different station, but again only white noise reached his ears. He was thoroughly confused now and he tried to turn on the light, but the power was out. Then, he began to awaken to a normal state of consciousness.

The sun was already out at this hour in such an ungodly month? It could not be. He looked outside, and around him, there was nothing. Whiteness faded to black in a never-ending uncurved horizon.

The man was petrified now, and he quickly got dressed and raced outside. He looked around everywhere, trying to see something that would tell him that Man was still around, or that he was even on earth. He turned to go back inside, but where once there had been his home, there was now only the dark horizon. Far off in the distance, there arose a monstrous jet black plateau. He started sprinting towards the object, slowly getting closer.

The object gained height as he ran. It was bigger than he had thought. No matter how fast he seemed to have been running, the object simply got a miniscule amount closer, but doubled in size for ever minute he raced towards it.

Suddenly, a loud trumpet began to play as the man approached the huge black mountain. It began to play smooth jazz. The smoothest jazz you would have ever heard. The man still sped on, unconsciously keeping in time with the trumpet now.

As the trumpet played, a quiet flute started up somewhere in the whiteness. it's sweet notes circled in his ears as he raced. He finally reached the black object.

This object was like nothing he had ever seen. It was a sheer 89 degree shiny flat and straight side. It seemed to stretch on for miles. For some reason, though, when his hands touched the object, they stuck, giving him an almost gecko-like hold to the unclimbable surface. He placed his other hand on it and again it stuck. He could climb the shiny black mountain.

He climbed for what seemed like years of his life. He reached the top, amazingly not out of breath. He looked around the endlessness and to his right, he could see another gargantuan black plateau-like mountain. Past that, he saw yet another black object. They faded off into the distance behind him, but it did not matter to him. He saw what almost looked like cracks in front of the black mountain shapes. Yes, they were cracks. Clean-cut, arrow-straight gray cracks in the whiteness.

The trumpet and flute slowly came back in, now playing more of classical jazz than the previous smooth jazz. Soon, the soft ring of a piano joined the duet and the mountain beneath him shook slightly. The man sat down and listened for the rest of eternity.