WASHINGTON—With deep unease and outright horror haunting millions of Americans as a great shroud enveloped the land, late-breaking reports confirmed Monday that the darkness had returned.
Bystanders first spotted the churning, amorphous black fog at 2:37 p.m., when it arose from the shadows and crept toward small towns and cornfields in the Midwest. From there, the inky swath reportedly poured through main streets nationwide, sweeping over mountains, valleys, and highways as it plunged Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston, and other metropolitan areas into eternal night and caused citizens across the country to vanish, possibly forever, inside its lightless depths.
“We once thought we had beaten back the darkness, but we were wrong, dead wrong,” said the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, Joseph Cuffari, who urged Americans to stay calm, turn on any floodlights they had, and cover their home’s vents with towels, as that was how the darkness often leaked in. “So far as we’re aware, traditional weaponry is useless against the darkness. armies, our best technologies, cannot stop it from drawing closer and closer. Your best bet—your only bet, really—is to stay in the light as long as you can.”
“The darkness is back, and soon it will consume us all,” Cuffari added.
Authorities have estimated that since the dark scourge’s reappearance, it has already cloaked nearly 1.5 million square miles of the country, disrupting economic and government function worldwide as vast swaths of land were abandoned to the seemingly endless dusk. Speculations about the origin, trajectory, or intention of the darkness have been described as futile by experts, who noted merely that it was “coming nearer, always nearer” as it seethed out of deep forests, murky swamps, and pitch-black caverns.
Witnesses in New York City spotted the darkness enclosing the Statue of Liberty and described hearing a low-pitched whisper in their ears as the black clouds approached, filling them with an irresistible urge to extinguish every candle and lamp in their home. Meanwhile, a farm family in Okemah, OK, said they heard the chattering of thousands of voices that seemed to beckon them to turn around their car, drive into the unyielding dimness, and become one with the abyss.
According to historians, the source of the darkness remains no less mysterious now than when it last emerged in 1846 and reduced the nation to an inescapable twilight, separating parents from children, driving wild animals to flee from its pursuing shadows, and causing the Donner Party to succumb to cannibalism due to what one survivor account described as “gloom-induced madness.”
“I’m the only one left,” President Donald Trump said in a live broadcast from the Oval Office, which grew steadily dimmer as the windows behind him filled with complete blackness and a single lamp on the Resolute desk flickered. “I’m the only one left. They all tried to escape, but it was too late. It already took Melania. Once you see it on the horizon, the darkness already has you.”
“Oh dear God, it’s here—it’s here,” added the president, his voice falling to a whisper as a hissing black fog filled the room.
Until the darkness can be contained or turned back—a possibility that grows increasingly unlikely by the hour—authorities have urged citizens to flee to the federally protected lighting corridor that spans Colorado, Kansas, and Missouri, the three states that remain as an island of light in an ocean of tarry blackness. However, the likelihood that even these strongholds will hold out against the insurmountable threat appeared doubtful as numerous assumptions fell to the perpetually shifting ways of the darkness.
For example, experts long thought those who were swallowed by the darkness never reemerged. But doubt has been cast upon this belief by reports of a survivor who stumbled out of the so-called Dark Zones to deliver a grave pronouncement.
“What I have seen on the other side would destroy you,” said the self-described survivor of the darkness, 43-year-old Andrew Weiss, whose monotone voice was heard in a 30-second online video that prompted many viewers to remark upon his pure black pupils and the coal-dark smoke that seemed to emerge from his mouth with each breath. “Do you understand? Of course not. You are too blinded by the light. But when you peer into the darkness, you see it for what it is. There is dark, yes. But it is a dark mirror. Do you see now? Hide in the light all you want, but the truth is the darkness already courses through your veins.”
“You have been in the darkness since the moment you were born,” he concluded.
At press time, sources confirmed an eerie stillness reigned over the land, in which there was only nothing, dark nothing, stretching on forever.
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