Joe’s body teetered for a moment on the edge of the doorway, and then he fell headlong into it. Even though Sarah tried to help him, she had a small frame, and she wasn’t nearly strong enough to corral Joe’s mass. So he bowled her over in the end, his hands finding not just her but the ground on the other side as he tumbled in head first. She cried out and was knocked to the ground, but she scampered quickly back to her knees and knelt beside him, as he lay on the dark and dusty ground with his body heaving. They locked eyes—hers were wide and worried—and upon seeing them again Joe felt a million memories swirling inside of him from their shared history together. But it all cycled past him to a backdrop of whirling chain links on the other side of the shimmering door, and the voice of the shadow was on top of it all, hollering maniacally. It had all become quite distant though, like a radio station falling out of range and losing reception. But the connection still persisted, and the shadow was not yet evaded—it could still follow them. He saw Sarah’s wide eyes shoot over to the doorframe, as she realized this too. He also noticed something else—that she had an orb in her hand, tinged a royal blue, just like his had been.

Thankfully she knew just what to do, and before Joe could form any words at all, he watched Sarah climb rapidly to her feet and then she brought the orb to the doorframe, just as he had done once before. With a brisk tug, the doorway shrank and then came apart altogether. The ends of the broken circle retracted rapidly back into her orb, and then all sounds from the horror on the other side simply ceased, like the radio died completely.

All he could hear was a light sprinkling sound of the dust falling to the ground in the wake of his entrance.

Then he heard Sarah’s voice.

“Holy shit, you really are here,” she said.

Joe tried to talk but couldn’t. The pain in his body was deep, almost incapacitating. It felt like all of his ribs were broken. He laid on the hard ground, still on his back, unable to move.

This is it, he thought. It’s over. My torso has been crushed.

“Jesus, are you okay?” Sarah asked, her voice fraught with desperation, realizing his paralysis.

Joe tried to collect his words, but they wouldn’t come. Peering about, he could see they were in a dark cavern. There was some meager light—an eerie green glow. Joe looked for the source and saw it was from a couple of broken glow sticks that had been tossed in their near proximity. These looked perfectly functional, like tools that soldiers would have in the field, and the ensuing thoughts of why she would have these and why she would have to use them made his head spin.

The floor was dust and dirt atop flat concrete. The rounded ceiling high above him was cylindrical shaped, like they were within a massive, cavernous tube. The surface of the ceiling was ridged, in a repetitive geometrical pattern. It felt both ancient and modern, like they were inside of a spacecraft that had crashed ages ago. His eyes flashed over to Sarah again, and saw she was clad entirely in black, her clothes sleek, and formfitting. While it wasn’t so dissimilar to what she might have worn when jogging on a chilly morning, it was clear that she wore those clothes now for very different reasons. For stealth, he thought to himself, in awe, and while still staring at her, he asked, who are you? He wondered frantically why his ex-girlfriend from his early-twenties was now some kind of ninja-like soldier. He remembered her as a soft-spoken, shy girl, but… now she seemed like a badass.

He tried to get up, but the pain lashed at him with more severity yet. Sarah stood over him, and he could hear her asking him again and again if he was okay. But he couldn’t reply.

Then his vision clouded over and everything went black.

The End

I hope you enjoyed Night Falls Part 1: Women, Dreams, Acid.

The story is continued in Night Falls Part 2: The Ebb.

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