Hey. Hey you. Yes, you. Do you hear that sound? It's a beautiful sound, isn't it? That's
the sound of a raging campfire, and it's calling you to come in just a little bit closer. So,
why don't you join me around the campfire, because I've got a little story to tell you.
It goes something like this.
Everything, all of this chaos and madness, all began with the black fog.
It was just an ordinary day when the news reported a strange phenomenon. A wispy black cloud of
fog steadily making its way toward the west coast of the country from over the ocean.
Nobody really cared at first, as you'd expect. It wasn't hurting anyone,
except maybe the sailors and planes flying over the ocean. But life for everyone else continued
as normal. Whenever the news would talk about what we now know as the black fog,
people would nod, show mild interest, say something like, oh yeah, that's interesting,
and be done with it. Until the black fog hit the west coast. Cities on the seaside were the
first to be hit and covered with the black fog. The news went crazy. Every station frantically
pointing their cameras at the fog to capture footage of the unique event. Personally,
it always looked like a thick cloud of smoke to me instead of a city covered in fog. The news
said that nobody from the outside world could contact anybody in the fog. A nationwide panic
was beginning, and it grew fast. People who'd previously disregarded the black fog now look
for ways to leave the country, as the news reported that the black fog was still heading east,
as though determined to devour the entire country. With mass hysteria of this magnitude,
it can be safely assumed that plenty of doomsday prophets came forward with explanations about
the fog's origin. It quickly became obvious to me that these prophets of the apocalypse were
nothing more than crazies who walked into the news stations from off the street. Nearly every
scenario imaginable was told as a reason for the black fog's existence. God's wrath on humanity,
the apocalypse, aliens seeking a safe place to land their spacecraft. The black fog was
simple fog mixed with pollutants in the air. It was a publicity stunt for a new movie. It was
the government using the fog for some purpose. Cthulhu was rising. We heard everything, but
none of the theories seemed to make sense. There was a few more days of chaotic news reports,
and then the black fog came to my town. I was walking home that fateful afternoon,
turning a street corner to see my two-story home come into view down the street. Cars' breeze
passed me at a steady pace. Coming to warp me down the sidewalk was a mother pushing a baby
stroller, with an enthusiastic little boy running ahead of her, cheerfully telling his
mummy to hurry up. The grass was bright green in the warm summer atmosphere, and there were only
a few white clouds in the sky to distract from the wild blue yonder above. A red car,
the side splattered with a thick mud, raced past me. The bright yellow orb in the sky
beamed down on the world, covering us in sunlight. If there's anything I do remember from that day,
it was the colours. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a dark giant stood up over the horizon, and loomed
over the city, blotting out the sun. Cars stopped in the middle of the road, leading other cars
to crash into them. People began to scream. Some hysterical woman yelled,
it's here, as I looked up at the black fog blotting out the sky. It swept over the city
quickly, shrouding me in a cave of blackness. I stumbled through the fog, unable to see my
own two hands in front of me. The world around me looked as though it were covered in smoke,
but I could breathe it in normally. I heard people screaming. The sound frightfully clear.
There was the screeching of tires as cars stopped, and the crunching of metal as other cars
crashed into each other. In my mind, I could picture the street as it'd been before the fog
hit. My house was a few yards down across the street. If I could find my way inside,
I could wait the fog out, and see if it would disappear and leave the city.
I began walking toward my house uneasily, still hearing people cry out for help. It
was as though I'd become blind. I took my steps with care, and tripped over a blunt
object when I was halfway across the street. I climbed to my feet with my sense of direction
disorienting it. How close to my house was I? I just gave it my best guess and made my way forward.
I had to walk around a parked car and, after tripping over the kerb and falling onto the
sidewalk on the other side of the road, my shoes felt grasped beneath them. I wasn't
entirely sure if it was my yard. I worked my way to the front door of the house,
and sighed in relief when I realized it was mine. I hurried inside, quickly closing the
door behind me. The fog hadn't gotten in my house, which I was thankful for. Only a
little of it got in when I opened the door, but I could still see. The windows displayed
nothing but black. It was as though I was standing in my house at night, a starless,
moonless night. I sat down, took a few deep breaths to calm myself, turned on the TV and
began to watch the news. If anything was being done about the black fog, surely they would
have reported it. The news anchors were calm, but to my dismay, they had nothing to report.
They said the black fog was perfectly natural and explainable. They said that the entire
nation was being covered at an unbelievably quick rate, and the President had been evacuated
for his own safety. I changed the channel right there, cutting off a blonde newswoman
mid-sentence. On the new channel, they weren't calling the fog natural. They weren't talking
about the President. They weren't pretending this wasn't a national emergency. Instead,
they were panicking. People who looked like normal civilians ran around the station in
a frenzy, while the camera's view rested on a guy sitting behind the news desk, sitting
in the middle of all the chaos. He stammered as he spoke, trying to maintain order somehow.
There are no reports of rescues from any seaside city, nor did the black fog show any sign
of receding, the guy was saying. As I watched, he managed to stop one of the frightened civilians
and asked him to say a few things for the camera.
Hi, my name is Adam. Adam began, breathing heavily.
That shit out there is crazy, man. Like, it ain't fog. It's something else. Adam wiped
off his sweaty forehead and cleared his throat. We heard rumors that you can see in the black
fog if you have a flashlight on or fire. We sent a guy out in the fog, one of those
big-ass flashlights. He hasn't come back yet.
I remained in my living room, in complete disbelief that this was happening. I barely
registered anything in the news set, not that it said much. The only thing they could talk
about was the black fog, and because nobody knew anything about it, there wasn't much
to say. I couldn't tell if it was day or night outside, so I tried to sleep according to
the clocks in my house. I slept on the hardwood floor in the living room, too weary and afraid
to climb upstairs to my bedroom. When I woke up, I immediately turned the TV on again.
At the news station, there were sleeping people mixed with people standing off-camera who
were in rapid discussion about what to do. It was as though they'd forgotten the camera
was on. I decided to wait and see if they were going to give any piece of news that
was worthwhile, and went into the kitchen to fix myself something to eat. Fortunately,
I'd made a trip to the grocery store the day before it all started, and despite this,
my appetite still wavered when I looked at the food. Black fog didn't feel real to me,
almost like some kind of demented nightmare, but it still hurt to think about. I returned
to the living room without eating anything, and sat down on the couch instead at the TV.
After staring at the screen and listening to the people in the news station talk for
an hour, I groaned. Survival was boring. I turned my head to the living room window,
and examined it from where I sat, curiously. I think Adam had said something about being
able to see in the fog with... I jumped off the couch and stumbled over to the hall closet.
After shuffling through coats and other miscellaneous things, I found a flashlight. Clicking it
on, I sighed in relief when a bright beam of light shot out. The first light I'd seen
since it all started. I pointed the flashlight towards the living room window, and froze
when I saw a face outside. There was a man standing outside the window with his thin
nose barely touching the glass. His face was horrible, yet I couldn't look away. The skin
hung loosely on him, making him look like an old man. He had long silver hair on his
head, a few strands of which were dangling limply over that face, but also huge bald
patches. The worst part about the man was that he was smiling at me. He had a wide toothy
grin, but his eyes had black irises and white pupils. Near the bottom of the window, I could
see he was wearing a torn-up white shirt. But his smile hypnotized me. His eyes burned
into mine. There was no colour to the man at all. Even the thin cuts on the side of
his face were an inky black. He was nearly completely unmoving, only moving the slightest
bit as he breathed. The light from the flashlight didn't seem to affect him at all. I moved
closer to the window and wrapped my fist on the glass, but the colourless man only stared.
I turned the flashlight off, and the man disappeared into the fog. I turned the light back on,
and he was visible again. Adam was right. It was possible to see in the black fog with
a flashlight. I was intrigued by the colourless man, but also very frightened. How long had
he been outside my window? A shiver ran down my back when I realised he could have been
watching me sleep. I was unnerved by his endless staring and amused smile. As much as I wanted
to watch the news in the living room, I instead found excuses to stay out. I found myself looking
through the same pantry in my kitchen for almost half an hour. Soon after, I found myself
sitting alone in a chair in my room upstairs, quietly thinking about when the fog would
lift. But I couldn't stay out of the living room forever, and I eventually went back.
The first thing I did was flash the light at the window to see if the colourless man
was still there. He was, and didn't seem to have moved at all since I'd first realised
he was there. Unsettled, I turned off the flashlight to conserve the batteries, but
also so I wouldn't have to look at him. I made myself comfortable on the couch and turned
my attention to the news where Adam was talking.
Things in the black fog are everywhere, he was saying, because the fog is probably covering
the whole world by now. Stay vigilant, a miracle has to happen soon.
It seemed that I wasn't the only one who had detected the presence of the things in
the fog. Adam delivered reports of mutilated bodies found in the streets with their eyes
in their mouths and their teeth in their eye sockets. More of the new station survivors
chimed in behind him with more information, and told of strange thumps outside safe shelters
where people were holed up, waiting for it to end.
There was no denying it, something unnatural was in the black fog, maybe something beyond
the colourless man outside my window. I decided to sleep upstairs in my bedroom that night.
I shone the flashlight at the window, before trudging upstairs to see if the colourless
man had left. He was still there, only his eyes had moved for me. Once I'd gotten upstairs
I placed the flashlight under my pillow, kneeled next to my bed, and did something I hadn't
done for a long, long time. I prayed.
The night I dreamed that the light had returned to the world. Families walked down sidewalks,
children shouted to each other as they played. The grass was a dark green and the sky burned
blue. The wind was crisp, gently caressing my cheek as it passed by. I looked around
in wonder, and then noticed somebody standing behind me. I whirled around to see the colourless
man standing there with that same grin on his face. Only this time there was no glass
separating us. I woke up sweating. The first thing I saw was my bedroom window. Out of
curiosity, I took the flashlight from under my pillow and pointed it at the window, my
thumb flicking the switch on. I don't know what I was expecting to be there. I was probably
thinking that the colourless man would somehow be outside my second floor bedroom. Something
was out there, but it wasn't him. This time it was a woman with pale skin and long black
hair. She looked younger than the colourless man, probably in her 20s, but she still had
the same crooked grin, the same vacant eyes and the same unsettling stare. She was also
completely drained of colour. I immediately fell off my bed and screamed as the colourless
woman stared on. I crawled to my feet and slammed my bedroom door closed as I hurried
out into the hallway. As soon as it had shut, I noticed another window in the hallway. I
flashed the light at it, and gasped when a fat colourless man came into the light, grinning
as though laughing at a private joke. I didn't know what to do. Total panic seized me, causing
me to flee from the unseen eyes in the black fog. I shone the flashlight at every window
I came across. I found another colourless woman in the guestroom window and a thin colourless
man looking into the upstairs bathroom before I managed to reach the stairs. I practically
flew down them and dived into the kitchen where I ducked under the table and tried to
catch my breath. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the kitchen window. As much as
I didn't want to know if one of them was there, I still flashed the light at the window.
Ah, this was the worst one yet. He resembled a wolf with a wide snout, shaggy black fur
and pointed ears, and he stared at me with wide, hungry, pupilless, white eyes. For a
crazy moment, I thought it must have been a wolf skull or a mask, but then a thick dog
tongue slid out of his mouth and licked his chops as he continued to gaze at me. There
was a colourless person at every window in my house, I realised. I stumbled out of the
kitchen to get away from the starving eyes of the colourless wolf and found myself standing
in the living room. I flicked the flashlight on and I pointed it at the window to see that
the colourless man was still there, patiently waiting. As I stared, his grin widened and
revealed fangs like razors in the back of his mouth. His eyes flashed red, the first
colour I'd seen since the black fog had arrived, and then the flashlight died, leaving me alone
in the dark. As I stood there, blinking in the utter blackness that surrounded me and
pressed in from all sides, something began tapping on the living room window. As if in
response, the colourless people began tapping on every window in the house. The sound was
maddening, completely in unison and growing louder, more frequent as every second crept
past. I've been listening to them ever since, all of them, just tapping on the windows.
The sound never leaves, never stops, never pauses. Listening to that endless noise, I
just know that it's tearing my mental state in half. I don't know how much longer I can
take this. I just heard a window break. I hope to God it isn't the wolf.
I don't know how much longer I can take this.
Well, it's been quite a while.
Well, it's been quite a while since you joined me around the campfire, and a little too long
if you ask me. I hope you enjoyed that one. Not quite sure what it was, was it a vampire
tale, a zombie tale, or was it just another of those post-apocalyptic tales that I've
been telling so much of recently? Who knows, and who cares? I'm just glad you were able
to join me around the fire. So, that's me for this evening, but I'll be back again
real soon. Hope you can join me again on Friday night for another tale of this strange, mysterious,
and if you're lucky, horrific. Bye for now.
