I didn’t stop screaming until a nurse came into the room.

  During that time, I also turned my attempts to get free from my restraints into an Olympic sport. I pulled and yanked and strained every way I could think of.

  The handcuffs would not budge from the bed arms.

  I was going to end up dislocating my own body parts before any of the metal parts came loose. So far, all I had been able to accomplish were sizable bloody gouges in my wrists. It didn’t matter, I needed to get out of there.

  “Heyheyhey it’s ok,” a nurse said, coming into the room.

  She was followed by a uniformed officer who looked either panicked or irritated or both. The short, stocky nurse was a little younger than me and looked like she could probably handle me more than the cop could.

  She had a pleasant and lean face that had a look of practiced concern that looked like it could turn mean with the flip of a switch.

  The officer was not much taller than her and was in the process of growing a beard out. Or maybe it was a beard that was just never going to fully form. Either way he looked fresh out of high school and it made the facial hair feel forced and fake.

  He had a very slight build, but forced a swagger that I’m sure was an attempt to add some size to him. It did the opposite and made him look smaller.

  “I need to get out of here,” I said. I could only imagine how I looked at that moment.

  “That’s not gonna happen,” the officer said, his young face settling into a scowl. I noticed his name patch above his badge: Clayton.

  “Officer Clayton, I am more than sure that you have a really good series of sound reasons to have me handcuffed to this gurney, but I need you to let me go,” I said, trying to sound diplomatic.

  The high pitched shakiness of my voice probably just added to my manic appearance.

  “I need to get to my son. Do you not see what is happening out there? That is my son’s school on the tv, or it was… well it’s part of it. I don’t know what happened to it or where it went. I need to find it. I need to find him. I… I need to make sure he is ok. Please, you have to let me go!”

  I was speaking rapid fire like a verbal machine gun. Both the nurse and the officer looked at the tv at the same time and their faces became glued to it. The color had drained from their faces, and their mouths had opened in shared shock.

  Was this the first time they had actually seen what was going on out there? Had no one let them know what was happening? It all started after 9 AM, it couldn’t have been much later than that, could it? The state I was in told me otherwise.

  “Look at me! I need to get out of here! Please!” I shouted again. They continued to look at the screen. Finally, I turned to look too and joined them in their shock.

  The images on the TV continued to change as they had before but now they were showing buildings in the same shape as Troy’s school.

  Something had carved out an entire chunk of the entire area, shearing the base of the buildings, and then somehow vacuumed it all up or something. There was smoldering and smoking embers along the edges of walls and doorways where the shear line was.

  It was horrifying.

  The cut-out area was curved like some sort of massive alien ice cream scoop had come down and taken a chunk of whatever flavor of civilization they wanted. There was no way this was real.

  “Oh my god,” the nurse whispered. I barely noticed. I was feeling a sense of familiar numbness.

  The TV flashed to a live video of the process as it was happening. A space ship became visible above a 3-story brick and mortar building you would see somewhere like older downtown New York or something. This ship was smaller than the massive cubes we saw early but still absurdly massive.

  The spacecraft – alien ship – whatever – was using some sort of cloaking device I’d only seen in movies. The ship slowly materialized from the inside out and part of the ship unfolded from beneath it.

  A huge, robotic arm lowered and started to glow with bright blue light. Suddenly an array of laser light the same color shot out in a cone.

  It looked like there were little drones or something at the base of each beam. The little devices were what had sent the lasers out, spreading around the base of the building in a line. They formed a semi-translucent sheet on each end of the buildings underneath.

  The lights began to move together like some sort of construction crane scoop. The second the drone-like devices connected in the middle the lasers disappeared, and the little robots shot back up.

  As they reconnected to the arm of the spacecraft everything in the cone seemed to follow it as it was sucked into some sort of tube. It happened so fast and with such precision it was actually impressive.

  Impressive outside of the real possibility that every single person that was in that apartment was now vaporized or smashed to bits as it was sucked up.

  The nurse and Officer Clayton both gasped as the ship recloaked in midflight and vanished. There was a pause that was almost almost visible in the suddenly still room.

  “What the actual fuck did I just watch,” officer Clayton finally said.

  “I… I can’t do this. I need to get out of here,” the nurse said, pushing past the officer and scrambling out the door. She left the door open and I could hear snippets of people shouting at each other as they passed the open portal.

  “… just gone just fucking gone like it was never there…”

  “… what about the people! Where did they go?...”

  “… this can’t be real!”

  Officer Clayton was still looking at the TV, whose image had changed to the aftermath of another location. He suddenly started to make his way to the door.

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Wait! No, don’t leave! Officer!” I called after him.

  He ignored me as he kept moving towards the door, his blank face finally leaving the TV. I was gasping as I yelled, my body straining against the handcuffs.

  “You can’t leave me here! I need to get to my son!”

  He stopped. I’m not sure what was going through his head at that moment, but when he turned around to look at me it was like I was looking at a ghost.

  There was no substance left in his eyes, just a hollowness that was indescribable. He didn’t blink and despite the absence there his gaze bore into me.

  “Your son is gone,” he said. As he walked away, he pulled his buckle loose, letting his belt, and everything attached to it, fall to the ground. I was very aware that this included his keys and his radio that was squawking random police codes.

  “No!” I shouted.

  I screamed through the grit teeth of anger and frustration as the keys to my freedom hit the ground a million miles away. The sound turned to one of regret at knowing I was trapped there, in that room.

  It became a sound filled with knowing what had just happened, the world outside slowly gobbled up by some fucked up aliens. The screaming continued as I realized I would not be able to get to my son.

  And I screamed because a part of me heard what the officer said and felt the truth in it.

  Images of the school flashed in my mind and I screamed again, quieter, as tears leaked from my face. I continued to yank weakly on my restraints and to squirm in a way that might let me get my feet on the ground somehow.

  I was just too far away and the handcuffs were positioned to keep me from being able to reach anything.

  “Oh my god! What the hell?” I heard a woman shouting near the doorway as she tripped over the belt. She bent down to get a closer look at it, curious.

  “Please, miss! Doctor! Please. I need you to let me go!” I could not seem to catch my breath. My heart was racing so fast it was drowning out the sounds of the chaos of the hospital. I zeroed in on the doctor kneeling so close to the ring of keys on the officer’s belt.

  The doctor stayed kneeling and looked up at me, “I… I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “No-no-no listen. I need to get to my son. We got separated and I don’t have my phone on me. Please, do you have kids?” I was rambling but she nodded. “Ok, ok, good. Then you understand. You understand how desperate I am to get out of here and get to him.”

  I was trying to keep my voice calm but it was shaking and raspy from the yelling. I was talking to her like she was a stray dog that looked ready to bolt at any second.

  Honestly, I wasn’t so sure she wouldn’t do just that, and I couldn’t take that chance. I had no idea if anyone else would come along and help. She looked calm but her wide eyes and jerky motions were concerning.

  She stood up holding the officer’s service belt. She was still on the other side of the door’s threshold, but her eyes were slightly less wild.

  She took a hesitant step towards me. Behind her the chaos was sporadic as people moved throughout the hallway.

  “Why are you handcuffed?” she asked.

  She seemed to shake herself out of the shock she was in as she approached me. She took the site of me in, and I just didn’t care what she saw. I had to get out of this hospital.

  There was the briefest of moments where I thought about playing dumb. Where I thought about saying anything other than the truth - that I was a deadbeat drunk that almost killed himself drinking. That I had been still drunk from the night before driving his son to school.

  The school that was now completely gone.

  So I told her. I rambled the whole thing off to her.

  “Then the lights and sound of the ships caused me to lose control of my car and crash into a telephone pole,” I finished.

  She didn’t say anything while I stared at her. Her face had been a practiced calm like the nurses had been, but it had changed to something else while she listened.

  She had been glancing at my chart while I was talking and stopped to look at me as I finished. Her eyes shifted a bit and her brow furrowed.

  “So you’re not dangerous, you’re just an asshole.” She said. There was a pause that could have filled a warehouse before she tossed me the belt. Without another word she turned and walked out the door. It happened so fast and with so little fanfare I was struck dumb for a moment.

  Then my heart started beating again and I scrambled for the keys that were hanging off a clip on the side. I had to shift my hips to move the belt closer to my left hand so I could grab them.

  With shaking hands I fumbled my way to uncuffing myself from the arm of the bed. I almost dropped the keys once and I forced myself to calm down. With some effort I was able to get the key in the cuff and get my first wrist free.

  Once I got my other one free I gave them both a ginger massage. They were all sorts of messed up after I had thrashed around trying to break myself free, but luckily it didn’t feel like they were broken anywhere.

  Pushing the blanket off of me I was about to jump down from the bed when I looked at my left leg. There was a massive gash and fresh stitches down along the outer side of my calf that almost snaked up past my knee. That was one mystery solved at least. It didn’t seem broken, but certainly not great news.

  I twisted around so my legs hung off the edge of the bed and gingerly tested my weight on the injured limb. The second I did, I screamed in pain and I pulled them back up.

  My leg being positioned the way it was gave gravity the opportunity to get the blood flowing, making my leg throb. Any remnants of alcohol that might have been left inside of me had been chased away by the abject panic and incredible pain I was now experiencing.

  I looked around for a crutch or wheelchair. Something that would help me get out of that bed and out of the hospital. There was nothing I could see at first until then I spotted a walker on the other side of the room. It looked like it had been left by another patient.

  Finders-keepers.

  Well, if I could make it to the damn thing that was. It may as well have been in another part of the state. I tried my weight on the leg again and sure enough, it still hurt like hell.

  My eyes were watering from the agony coursing through the entire left side of my body. I could feel the pressure of it all rising up and pushing against the bizarre calm I was feeling.

  Was this what shock felt like? Or was this dissociation? My therapist told me I dissociated a lot, not that I had talked to him since Trisha died. He had gotten in the way of my drinking and I had stopped going. I wonder what he would think of all of this.

  My mind was all over the place and I wondered if I had been given any pain meds while I had been there. The wound on my leg didn’t look healed by any means but it looked taken care of in a way that told me I had been unconscious for at least a few hours.

  I sat with my legs handling a moment to let the blood flow and to get used to the throbbing this caused. After a bit I tested my other leg, and it seemed I was able to put some weight on it. It felt sore and I could see some bruising, but I was able to stand on it at least.

  I decided to try to hop over to the walker, though I wasn’t exactly sure what the plan was going to be after that. I tried to focus on one thing at a time. With a tentative bounce I began to make my way to the walker.

  I, of course, slipped and fell hard on my left side almost immediately.

  The pain that lanced up the side of my body almost made me pass out. It seemed I had broken my fall with my left leg and felt agony up the entire length of the cut on my calf.

  It was pure fire burning from the wound and a lump was forming on my head. I lay there for a moment, catching my breath half hoping I would just pass out again.

  Some deeper part of me wouldn’t let me rest there for long. It spoke up and told me to move and so I moved. I started pulling myself along in a sort of half crawl, determined to get to the walker one way or another.

  The fall must have ripped some of the stitches because when I glanced back I could see a blood trail following me. There was new pain in my leg, but it was redundant at this point and it felt distant. It didn’t matter.

  I was going to get to that walker and I was going to make it out of this fucking hospital.