Chapter 1: The Death of The Witness

But I guess all that doesn’t matter at all now. I used to think nothing could get any worse than life in this culturally diverse cooking pot of a school, but that was before The Crack in the World appeared. It wasn’t “a crack”, but “The Crack” -- a single glaring white gap in the sky that separated the clouds and left a simple white void instead.

I suppose I was lucky; I may have been the very first person in the world to see the crack. I had skipped class: I was supposed to be in Language Appreciation (I speak; ergo I appreciate language. I don’t need a class to help me appreciate it any more.), but I just didn’t want to go. Instead, I slipped out after lunch and snuck my way up to the rooftop of the main educational building to just goof off. The truth was I didn’t want to be here, so I didn’t care one bit if I failed to meet expectations and got sent back home. Heck, I would’ve been happy with that – but this school is too “culturally sensitive” for such things and they “respect the student’s beliefs” too much to do anything like expel someone. I suppose, short of murder, there wasn’t any way those politicians were going to let people go home and be counted as a “failure” to them. I was stuck here and I didn’t like it, so I just did whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. And on the day of The Crack, I simply wanted some fresh air, so I went up on the roof.

The roof was a nice place. Quiet. Peaceful. The smell of the ocean breeze drifting in the wind was relaxing and calming, and the sounds of all the people bustling around the school were gone. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that life on the roof was GOOD, but it was tolerable – and that made it a lot more appealing than life in the Language Appreciation classroom.

I was lying back on the rooftop, some grass weed I’d found growing in the cracks of the edge stuck between my teeth like a modern day Tom Sawyer (or Huck Finn or whoever that barefoot guy was with the straw on the riverbank on that book cover I remember seeing), and just staring up at the sky relaxing when I saw It. It being “The Crack”, of course.

At first, it wasn’t anything more than just a small line across the sky, similar to the trails that a jet makes as it passes by overhead. I hardly even noticed it to begin with, but then it started to grow longer from both ends – which I felt was rather odd. A plane tends to travel in one direction and the trail slowly fades out as it goes across the sky, but this was spreading in both directions and getting longer. And then it started to get wider. Eventually, it looked like a giant rip was opening up in the sky over us, with nothing but a pure white light behind it.

Nothing but a white streak that was slowly spreading and engulfing the sky, at least until I saw the little black dots which seemed to be falling out of it. At first they looked like little black stars shining through the light, but then they started to get bigger. And bigger. I could tell it was something starting to fall out of the crack, fall out and down towards the school – where I just happened to be sitting on the roof unprotected!

As I was struggling to get up and run towards the door to get inside for some shelter, there was a resounding BOOM from the rooftop behind me. Panicked, I spun around to see what had hit with such force and standing there behind me was a massive beast that could only be called a minotaur! Almost three meters tall with a thick furry chest and a massive bulls head. It bellowed at me. I screamed back at it. I had a moment to see the massive double bladed axe in its hands, and then it simply cut me in half like I was nothing!

Congratulations!You have been the first to experience the 8th Day!

You have been granted the Title: Witness

DING!! A resounding ping echoed from somewhere near me, and a blue information panel hovered in the sky near where – I suppose it must be my spirit – floated. My stomach felt as if it was on fire, and I could still see everything around me. The minotaur was there on the roof with its massive axe still, and it was slowly approaching what was left of my body. Other creatures were still falling in waves out of the sky and crashing into the roof and ground all around.

I didn’t get a good look at what all was falling around as I couldn’t take my eyes off the minotaur, my body, and my now … whatever I was! I was floating a few feet up off the rooftop and I was a pale white cloud-imitation version of myself. There wasn’t any way to describe what I was any better than to just say I must’ve been a ghost or spirit of some sort.

As I was trying to get a grip on my newfound appearance, I suddenly felt a great burning pain in the shoulder. AAAAAHHHHHHH! It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!

Crying and screaming, I howled in pain and tried to see what was causing such agony to me. My cloudy shoulder and arm looked just fine, but…

AAAAAHHHH!! It hurts! It hurts WORSE!

Screaming a scream that apparently no one could hear, or no one cared about if they could, I twirled around in agony – just in time to see the minotaur take a third bite out of my dead body’s shoulder. With a careless yank, it tore my arm completely off and began to feast upon it.

And.

I.

Felt.

Every.

Excruciating.

Bite!