Joe leaned up from bed quickly, his face bent in fatigue and distress. The apartment was dark, very dark, like he’d slept all through the day and now it was the middle of the night. The sheets around him were wet and it felt like he slept in a pool of his own sweat. For a second he hoped that the nightmare would fade away, the way dreams often did upon waking. But it was a fool’s hope, he knew. This one would burn him forever. Joe had read somewhere that nightmares usually only lasted a few seconds. This one had felt like it had gone on for hours. The worst part was knowing that it was still happening—in some way, in some capacity.

The orb sat on the sheets just beside him. Though he’d put his second pillow on top of it before drifting off, it had become uncovered at some point, while he lay in his miserable sleep. Now it was aglow like a disco ball, emitting fluorescent beams of light on all sides. Joe saw turquoise and magenta, and a bright green chartreuse. The orb was also the source of the music—the same haunting tune he heard in his dream came spilling out of it. It was the eerie broadcast from the party, but unlike how he’d heard it in the dream, where it had literally shook the earth, now it was weak, yet still piercing, like a cell phone set on its highest volume.

He clutched the noisy orb, a glowing beacon in his otherwise dark apartment. While squinting to protect his eyes from the spinning lights, he could see in its surface, for the first time, the End of the World Party in New York City. Though Joe had successfully remained at home—he was literally in bed—Saturday night had arrived, and the party was right on schedule.

Staring into the orb, he saw its broadcast, as though it were a streaming video feed from the event, all of it viewed through that disorienting fisheye lens. It moved about the room rapidly, like it came from a tiny camera held by a fly that never, ever stopped moving. It would zip high above the crowd, and then it would shoot down through them and into them. Watching it, Joe felt like he rode on a zany roller coaster, and that each of the partygoers were hundreds of feet tall.

One thing was clear—the party was in full swing.

The crowd danced wildly and unreservedly, and adding to the disorientation and the pure strangeness of the scene were the lavish costumes and masks worn by so many of the revelers. The masks were fanciful things, Venetian styles, some with their full face covered, others with half, each of them uniquely decorative while also locking their wearers into eerie, emotionless gazes. To Joe the whole scene felt like an extension of the acid trip that had infected his dream. While watching them, he couldn’t decide if their dance was a natural and primal thing, like natives dancing around a bonfire at night, or if it were lascivious and indecent, like bad teenagers playing a game they knew they shouldn’t be. It was both, perhaps. He truly felt both.

He watched in confused fatigue for a few minutes, trying to comprehend it, as all along the rave music played like a cheap cell phone ringtone. Looking more closely, his eyes were gradually drawn to something else, and upon noticing it he felt his skin crawl. For it was the darkness in between the dancers that began to come alive. That darkness formed into creature-like shapes, as tall as giants, and perfectly intermingled with the people, filling the space where they weren’t. Joe almost wanted to call out, to warn them, because those shadows in between the people began to stalk them, like predators with gleaming eyes. It recalled a monster that was all too familiar, as Joe felt his dreaded memories arise of the shadow that had visited him on occasion, tearing into his psyche with all the sympathy and compassion of a serial killer. These were of the same breed, for he watched the ghastly silhouettes on the dancefloor steadily take the shapes of men and women, and he knew it was their own doppelgangers among them, dancing like cobras rising slowly out of a hat, and then striking as the same, their slithering, sinewy bodies gradually becoming more humanlike as they merged together. The view became more twisted yet, and it was like the dancers had no bones in their bodies. Like jellyfish, their limbs rippled and wavered, while Joe viewed it all through turbulent waters from high above the surface.

He knew what it all meant, and what it signified. That the doors were open, and the shadows poured through—as of that very moment. Joe could envision his own shadow, and the thin smile forming on its remorseless face, sensing its freedom, its release. It would come after him. The End of the World indeed. And then he did see it—his shadow was among the others in the orb’s view. It was there, it was free, and it stared into the fisheye lens, grinning venomously, knowing that Joe was looking back.

I’m coming for you, it mouthed silently, and at the same time Joe heard the voice in his apartment, spoken in a low, raspy whisper, like it was right there in the room with him.

“Fuck you,” Joe said finally, as a shiver coursed through him, and goosebumps emerged amidst his cold sweat.

It worked. The orb fell dark and silent, as the transmission was broken. The video ended, and so did the music. His apartment was pitch black once more.

He reached for his cell phone on the nightstand before remembering that he’d left it in detached pieces on the floor. So he crept out of bed instead, and walked on light feet across the hardwood into the living room. From there he saw the time on the digital display of the microwave, and saw it was just after midnight on Sunday morning. Then he froze, inexplicably, while staring at the door of his apartment. He could sense, even anticipate, that it would open—because an intruder was coming. There was no doubt in his mind. It wasn’t the shadow, not yet. It was someone else. He could hear a voice in his head, speaking with a scary, determined calm.

I know where you are, motherfucker. I’m gonna come after you. Swat you like a gnat and just be done with it.

And then, there was Chrissy, with her strange, conflicted appearance in his dream. But her words had been straightforward enough.

He’s coming after you, Joe. You better wake up.

She’d even slapped him in the face.

Wake the fuck up!

He felt like slapping himself in the face. It was Eddie—he was coming, and he’d be there any second. He had, after all, kept Joe running around dumbly in the dream, like a mouse in a maze, while all along he crept ever closer. Now Joe was a sitting duck in his apartment. It had been a trap from the get-go.

Moving quietly about his room, he flicked on the small lamp by his bedside, so he had just enough light to see by. He put on fresh clothes—jeans, a T-shirt, socks, and shoes—and then he took hold of the orb. He dropped it into his pocket. His eyes scanned across the room again, as he had it in mind to find the pieces of his phone so he could reassemble it. But at the same time his mind kept replaying the nightmare—the end of it specifically, with Chrissy’s glowering stare, her fiery eyes, and her stern warning.

He’s coming after you, Joe.

Time was of the essence, so all other thoughts departed from him as he backed up slowly until he leaned against the wall of his bedroom. He felt the building humming, which may have simply been water flowing in the pipes, but it also could have been the elevator coming up.

Chrissy had actually been helping him. He could see it now. It was obvious. She was actually on his side. It was Eddie—he was the monster. He was the terror. And he was coming.

Joe quietly flicked off the bedside light so his apartment was entirely black again. Then he opened the curtains all the way, so he had the light of the moon to see by. He stood by the open window and looked through the darkness towards the front door.

In total silence, he waited with bated breath, knowing someone was out there in the hall. He felt his mind screaming at his body to act, to do something. But he couldn’t. And then, finally—as he stared at the front door, he heard the deadbolt fall back with a heavy click, as though a key had moved it, though none had entered the hole. A second later he heard the chain guard on the inside of the door begin to slide across the lock plate, as though an invisible hand was moving it. This snapped him into frenzied action.

He ducked hastily out of the window and onto the fire escape, the night air cool on his skin. Then, in the light of the moon he scrambled rapidly down the ladder, the entire time asking himself if he was really doing this again. It appeared so.

He made it down a couple flights from the 8th floor before he paused and took a deep breath, feeling his body shaking with adrenaline. The fatigue and the panic seemed unreal, like he was still in the nightmare. Joe arched his head so he had a clear look back up at his apartment. Just as the seed of a thought popped into his mind that it was only his imagination running amok, he saw Eddie’s head emerge from his bedroom window, looking right down at him. The terror indeed. They locked eyes for a fraction of a second before Joe commenced again with scrambling down the ladder.