Eternal Midnight

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Prompt

Write something that starts with: They say nothing good happens after midnight, but that wasn’t my experience…

They say nothing good happens after midnight, but that wasn’t my experience until it was. Now, I can't say how long ago all of this happened. The timeline has faded with memory, as have I. I do remember that it happened while I worked the closing shift at my local cheap movie theater.

Since I closed the theater more nights than not, I was used to going home after midnight. Usually, it's a long drive of nothingness in the dark, sometimes punctuated by the bright lights of an emergency vehicle, but even that is rare.

This night was no exception. The clock ticked over to midnight seconds before locking up the theater. I got to leave early for once. No time for the night to sour before leaving. Perhaps that is what they mean, though; in the moments after midnight, nothing good happens.

My manager walked me to my car, and that’s when it started: I dropped my keys. Now, I do that on a regular basis, so midnight can’t be blamed for that. When I reached down, I spotted something strange under my car. As I stared, thinking it was an animal, I realized it had the shape of a man with the glassy reflective eyes of an animal. Assuming it was a bear, I held my composure, stating with all the calmness I could muster, “There’s a bear under my car.”

“A what?” my manager asked.

“A bear,” I repeated. "Under my car."

“You drive a Beetle, sweetheart. No way it's a bear,” he said with all the confidence of a man not about to be eaten.

Yeah, you read that right because the thing jumped out from under the car like magic and charged at him. My manager didn’t stand a chance; within seconds, the humanoid thing had its hands on him. Its claws sank deep into his flesh, and blood dripped from his throat, only visible with the aid of the parking lot's dim lights.

I am not a hero. I never was and never will be. Please do not make the mistake of assuming this story ends with my heroic efforts saving the day. I did what anyone trying not to crap their pants as another human being was consumed by monsters would do: fumbled with my keys. My hands trembled, and the keys fell again. Tears of terror filled my eyes as this monster devoured my manager. I searched for my keys, finding them under the edge of my vehicle. I fell to my hands and knees, reaching for them, and that’s when it happened.

In my confusion and fear, I had missed the second set of glowing eyes. I jumped to my feet and took off running, which is when the agonizing sensation of rail-thin fingers digging into my flesh stopped me in my tracks. First, searing pain, then nothing as a length of bloody pink vertebrae clattered to the pavement.

It took longer than I care to admit for me to realize the vertebrae were mine, and my spine had been ripped from my body.

With nothing to hold me, I collapsed. Dying on the pavement, unable to breathe or speak or anything. As I slowly lost my life, the only thought I could cling to was where I would go after. Were heaven and hell real?

Hell was real, I was in it, waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel. Almost yearning for it, but it didn't come. No light. No highway to hell or stairway to heaven. Rock lied to me. The only thing left was roaming the earth as a disconnected soul. Unable to communicate with anyone but my manager, who is also bound to this property. 

We still have no idea what ended our lives with such suddenness. 

We never saw or heard of those creatures again.

Years have passed, but they were like a single day. My family has long since moved on, and the theater has crumbled to bits. We’ve watched the world end twice over. We've seen the dinosaurs rise again and many civilizations fall. We’ve felt the continents collide, recreating Pangea. We’ve seen it all on our never-ending midnight. Our bodies have returned to the earth, but we have not, and it seems we never will.

This midnight is eternal.

There is no after.

The End.