By Tim Johnson

 It was muggy and hot in the loft. I checked off another task on the to-do list in my little notebook and placed it back in my pocket. I was attempting to fix a weak section of the roof on my grandmother’s barn. Struggling, I accidentally banged a large and awkward board against the back wall. The board didn’t hit very hard, yet it managed to punch a hole through the old wood. I knew the barn walls were weak, but that particular section broke away like a frail cracker.

 Wondering why light wasn’t reaching in through the opening, I curiously approached. When I peered into the opening, rather than seeing the trees that bordered the rear of the barn, I saw a crawl-space of some kind.

 It didn’t make any sense. I knew that simply the physical existence of that crawl-space was impossible; I have seen the back of that building many times. My mind added two and two together, got five, and expelled the possibility. I shouldn’t have been so dismissive.

 After a moment of bewilderment, I found myself breaking more wood away from the opening. For a long while I sat staring into the little tunnel, wondering. Finally, feeding my curiosity, I ventured into the opening, wondering how the flooring beneath my hands and knees was supporting me, knowing that it didn’t exist.

 I now realize that nobody truly knows anything.

 The further I crawled, the tighter and darker my surroundings became. Then, just as I decided to head back, the surface beneath broke away, and I suddenly began falling. Now I couldn’t see that I was falling; it was merely a sensation.

 I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. My eyelids bit down tightly over frightened eyes.

 Suddenly I…stopped. I didn’t hit any landing, I was simply still.

 The fear that surged through me when I opened my eyes was enough to last me a lifetime; or what little is left of it, anyhow.

 Above was an orange-gray mist, wafting thickly and becoming bolder and heavier by the second. The air was cool and smelled of old grease and perfume. Before my eyes, right in front of me, was a true horror.

 I stared at a field of some kind; it stretched into the orange, misty distance as far as my eyes could see. And growing in rows, like corn, were these…things. They protruded from the clumpy, ashy ground, with brown, spiral stems. Extending from the twisted stems were gnarled, beast-like arms, with claws as sharp as razors. At the top of each thing—plants, I suppose—was a large, bulbous head. Only it wasn’t an entire head, so to speak; it was simply an eye—green, with a large, brown pupil. Tears of thick, blue slime pooled and dripped from the giant eyes.

 My blood nearly boiled in my arteries and evaporated from my veins. I stepped away.

 As I moved, the eye at the top of each plant shifted towards me. All of them, thousands—millions—moved in unison. They were watching me.

 I started to tremble, befuddled and afraid, and began walking away, with millions of grotesque eyes following me every inch.

 Then I gazed in terror as one of the plant’s brown pupil began to split, dividing, opening, displaying row after row of sharp, yellow, slimy teeth.

 That was when I turned away and ran.

 As I ran, passing numerous obscene creatures of inexplicable form—things that an imaginative mind’s eye would be blind to see—it began to rain; from above, I suppose, although it’s hard to be sure. Thick drops of warm, gooey wetness splashed against my dry skin.

 I continued sprinting through absurdity.

 At first I didn’t notice it, but I was soon aware that as the downpour of gray liquid intensified, my skin continued to absorb the moisture, soaking up every drop like a hungry sponge. Much like my hungry eyes absorbed every drop of this new reality.

 Running became impossible. For a while, I walked, struggling to lift my increasingly heavy legs, feeling the building liquid sloshing grossly beneath my stretching skin as if I were wearing heavy clothing that was becoming waterlogged. I stopped, screaming with frustration and fear, terribly confused. Then I noticed the hole in the ground here. It’s small, too small for me to fit into now. Perhaps if this rain hadn’t come I could try my luck. But luck is running thinner and thinner as I become fatter and fatter.

 I can hear and feel my skin expanding and tearing like putty as this incessant downpour worsens—but it’s surprisingly painless. Actually, it feels kind of nice.

 There isn’t much time, I can barely hold this pen, and there’s little room left in this mini notebook—suddenly my to-do list seems to be the biggest triviality in the world.

 In the world?

 I’ve realized that, like my skin, reality is not impermeable. Somehow I fell through a break, an opening, a tear. I now realize that anyone could slip through a crack in reality. But what is reality? Perhaps, nothing.

 It’s amazing how someone could go from something so normal and simple—like mending the roof in an old barn—to expanding like a cheap water balloon. It’s like plucking an insect from the safety of its familiarities and tossing it carelessly aside, into a place that it cannot understand or adapt to or survive in.

 I’m going to drop this notebook into the hole now. 

 And explode.