nibiru

In the school gym, my peers gather on the court covered with confusing objects: glass, bricks, rebar, electric prods. The participants chat excitedly, stretching and jogging in place as if they'd trained for this. Then a buzzer sounds, and I stare in horror as my classmates turn to savages. I see Sarah bleeding from the nose and laughing like a hyena before she's knocked to the ground and jabbed in the neck with a buzzing taser. Nick sucker punches John who falls, skull cracking like a gunshot against the laminated floor. He seizes. Foam pools from his swollen lips while Nick does a victory dance. The impact of a concrete block knocks Kate's eye clean out of her head and she cups it in her hand smiling numbly at it. Sneakers slip as bodily fluids pool across the basketball court, and the snapping of young bones echoes through the room. Dead-eyed custodians roll out carts full of rancid food for ammunition: moldy cheese, sauerkraut, rotten eggs. The students bleed and laugh and vomit together. On the sidelines, I avert my eyes and stalk along the perimeter, stomach tense and bile tickling my throat. They've cracked, all of them. What demon whispers to them, and why have I not heard it's dark voice yet? Teachers and adult spectators cheer, and for the first time, I realize the origin of scars I'd previously taken for granted. I slip out into the parking lot crowded with tailgaters watching the proceedings on TVs. People murmur as I hurry by, wondering how I escaped unscathed. I stare at the solid ground, confused, agitated, superior, alone. My uncle and his niece bump into me, greeting me excitedly on their way in. I try to tell the girl she wouldn't like it but my uncle shushes me, shaking his head. He wants her to enter without warning, and I feel a heaviness in my heart. They're all in on it. Suddenly a young teacher lunges out of the gym doors and points at me and shrieks, Somebody grab him! I flee into the woods behind the school, branches whipping, briars tearing at my skin. I stumble over a lumpy mass hidden beneath the leaves and fall, and the shape rises slowly, as if from a long slumber: a young man in his late teens, head shaved and a crooked row of stitches snaking across his forehead. He stands hunched and stares with sad eyes. Who am I? he croaks. What am I doing here? I retreat, horrified, as dozens of other leaf-piles stir. I scramble down a rocky hill, under a fence, and into a plowed field that stretches to the fading horizon. Above: relentless stars, and in the middle, a gaping black spot growing. Something is coming. It's swallowing stars.