Page 2 of A Million Stars and Shadows

The air around my legs filled up to the point where the suit ballooned. I was now barely floating above ground. I took a step, and it was like I was bouncing off the ground, leaping distances forward. “Whoa!” I exclaimed.

“Wait until you see this,” Sally said. “Run and jump at the same time.”

I did as she said and saw that my speed accelerated double, even tripled. “Wow!” I ran and jumped forward.

“Keep going!” Sally said calmly. “You’re not out of the woods yet. They’re still coming after you.”

I kept running and jumping forward as fast as I could for as long as I could keep going until I reached a cliff.

“Can I rest now?” I asked Sally.

“Yes,” Sally said. “You are far away enough to elude them for a while, but not too far. You have a few seconds to catch your breath, Evie.”

“We must’ve traveled miles and miles,” I said.

“You can rest when you get to the ship,” Sally said. “Do not underestimate the speed and determination of them. They will be here before you know it.”

“The Monsters,” I said.

“You’ve been fortunate to not have encountered them when you were in the shelter with your mother,” Sally said. “But out here, they are everywhere.”

I shuddered, remembering everything I’ve known about them.

Ever since I can remember, THEY have always been here.

First, they appeared on Old Earth. They came out of nowhere suddenly. Unremarkable and unassuming.

No one knew about them until it was too late.

There wasn’t time for humankind to even give them a name…so they were just called, “The Monsters.”

I scoured all I could on them through the database of knowledge that was in the hidden wing of the Shelter. No one seemed to know what they were.

Thousands of accounts and filmed footage pulled up when I did a search for them. Taken from people’s own cameras and posted through social postings. People running frantically through the streets as though something terrifying was chasing them.

When the people stopped running, they stood still as though in a trance. The next thing they all did was cover their ears, close their eyes, and sink to the ground, huddling and shaking with fear before letting out a blood-curdling scream right before they die, frozen with that face in utter terror.

It reminded me of the painting called “The Scream” by Evard Munch painted in 1893 which portrayed a man or a woman, you couldn’t tell which, holding their elongated wavy head with both hands, while screaming as though their very soul was dying.

The sky and air around the screaming victim seem to twist and turn into waves as the victim is engulfed in agonizing pain and fear. As though they had witnessed the gulfing flames of hell and had died of fright.

Evard Munch’s own poem describing his painting reaffirmed my suspicion about this:

"I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous infinite scream of nature." - Edvard Munch

But this was something else more terrifying. The Monsters were attacking people with this wave of fear in masses. Like a horrible unspeakably evil storm, waves of people were engulfed in this terror, unable to escape, until it was too late.

The darkness covered the Earth. The only glimpse of light was the blood red of the flames underneath the dark clouds from explosions that came with unattended fires running rampant, caused by accidents.

“Mom?” I asked while helping her make dinner. “I can’t see the Monsters from any footage people took of them. It’s like where they are supposed to be, there is only a wavy blurred image. Can they be seen?”

“Not with the human eye, Evie,” Mom said. “That is why they are so formidable. We can’t see them.”

I shuddered. A cold chill went down my spine. “Then how are we supposed to fight them? How did Dad tried to fight them?”

“Ever since we were attacked at New Earth,” Mom said. “I’ve been trying to figure that out. We knew a little bit about them before building the Shelter. We also knew a little about them before we tried to colonize New Earth. The Monsters travel like the wind, appearing suddenly out of nowhere, and feeding off people’s fears, destroying them with their own worst fears.”

“We fight them psychologically,” I said.

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