The eyeless children appeared outside my cottage at midnight, blowing bubbles through their wands, bubbles that reflected moonlight like stained glass.
They were laughing, running around a patch of land full of dried wheat and animal feces. In my ten years working remotely from the village, people stayed clear of that area, save for the owner that occasionally tied his horse to a pole within. Now those alien kids intruded in that near-sacred piece of land, kids whose loud giggles had roused me from sleep, and whose bubbles entranced me so that my aggravated temper soothed before I could yell at them.
A bandana of fog wrapped their face where eyes should be, releasing no vapor beyond it. I must have stumbled into another dream—one that forced itself into my mind, yanking me from the familiarity of my nightmares, the safety of known darkness. This was outlandish in a way that presented no apparent threat but for their laughter—the sheer immensity of the unknown that mocked my thirty years of existence.
Then the bubbles popped, and so did all the lamplights of my house.
Over the following days, villagers vanished.
First the priest. Early morning, horizon like molten gold, the bells rang as I changed a broken light. Strange, because it was a weekday, no celebration, no reason for tolling bells. I headed for the church, my eyes flickering between the road and the field, half-expecting eyeless kids, alien bubbles. There was nothing but a cat, scuttling among the wheats. Had it been a dream? A way for my subconscious to justify an electric burst that shattered the house lights?
Yet I couldn't shake the feeling there was a gap in that field. That the cat was too perfect, almost fake, going in circles. Like my brain was plugging that cat in my eyes to protect me from seeing what was there.
I couldn’t find the priest in the church’s courtyard. Only the rope flailing as the bell’s swinging dissipated, and liquid on the floor beneath it, droplets spread in a perfect circle—each droplet a spectral gem of colors, like glass shards reflecting sunlight.
I visited the hairdresser, supposedly for a beard trim. I wanted to talk to someone, and she was more open-minded, having studied hairstyle and fashion abroad. But everyone likes gossip, and if I said what happened, a cloud of lunacy rumors would envelop me.
I said it anyway, pretending I believed it was a dream.
She closed her mouth, blowing her cheeks which she always did when she was processing a thought. Then she vanished with a pop, spilling me with droplets that smelled of soap.
Clients crossed themselves, the assistant fainted. No one screamed. Perhaps some things cause internal screaming, muffled by layers of dread.
I walked out, ashamed of my awkward half-trimmed beard. Like that beard was marking me guilty for whatever happened to her.
More people popped over the following days, until the whole village smelled soapy. Admittedly, I hadn’t socialized with the village before this, too absorbed in my career, the micro-world of my laptop. Bizarre catastrophes apparently bring people together. Those who didn’t cloister themselves into the church, crowded at the café.
Stoics among us said ‘it’s what it is,’ others thought god was gathering us in heaven. And there’s one who said things like “wish that ugly monument would pop.” Referring to the cheaply made statue of an old mayor at the square. He hated it because that mayor’s family stole a goat from his great-grandpa.
I partook in those conversations early on. I had a kind of curiosity akin to a child observing the sun for the first time. When such depths of the unknown surround you, it’s impossible to focus on anything else.
They seemed all too happy to dismiss my occasional scientific thoughts about it being a collective illusion. I stayed silent, observing their conversations. And one day the joker said ‘imagine the planet’s a bubble, and it pops next.’ They all laughed, except me because I couldn’t find anything funny about it. They laughed harder, so hard like it was the best joke ever told. Until one by one they popped, as if they were themselves bubbles, and laughter the pinprick pushing them to burst.
The village was a desert, my internet connection stopped working, and I realized I didn’t care about any of it. Maybe I’d been waiting for the end of the world, and this was better, because it had mystery. It had the excitement the mundanity of my career pursuit had lacked. We lived and vanished just like that. It put things in perspective.
My car burst as well, as did my house. I wandered the village, hoping to find those kids again, but they never returned.
Perhaps they never left.
I don’t know why I said that last bit or what it means. I can’t entirely put it into words, but I believe that I was not supposed to see those kids. That they were always there, and like a cartoon character shouldn’t see the artist who draws them, so did I intrude into a ritual that was not meant for my eyes. Like a cartoon character, unable to perceive the third dimension, so did my mind correct what I was seeing into the form of a tied-up horse, a too-perfect cat. A mundane field of wheats. Now by observing the artist, I broke the illusion.
The houses burst in the distance, but I remain in the nook of a tree, as my lungs inflate. I wait, expecting I’ll burst and water this meadow. Maybe I broke the world by unveiling its secret, or it’s all me, punished by illusions, punished for something I cannot understand.
An earthquake-like rumble fizzles out to a thin sound, like a titanic balloon is being blown past the point of stretching. With a loud pop, the earth vanishes beneath me, drenching me in a soapy spray, and I find myself floating in space.
