Titans

The Genesis [01:30]

Location: Unknown

I can’t tell you what drives me to do it. I can’t tell you how I find myself there in the darkness, lost and confused, my head spinning like a moon, looping round and round. But when I see the light, falling from the sky, my body moves instinctually. I run.

I run towards it, like a planet gravitating towards a life-source – a bright, glowing star. All around me is darkness – thick, heavy – but there in front of me, like some kind of miracle, is light. My feet kick up what I assume must be rocks as I run across the uneven ground and I can’t understand how that could be. How can total darkness be possible outside? How can I feel the breeze when I can’t see the stars?

The light grows closer to the rocky earth and I pick up my speed, knowing on some deeper level that if I don’t reach it before it hits the ground, it’ll be extinguished, and I’ll be plunged into complete and utter darkness once more.

My feet pound against the dirt, my heart pumping in every part of my body. My lungs scream, forcing me to take gasping breaths, but no matter how much air I greedily consume, it never feels like enough. The oxygen must be thinner here, weaker, and it makes me think that maybe I am indoors after all and I’ve been locked up in some dark expanse of fake rocks and dirt. Maybe this is a reality TV show, and the producers are sitting behind windows I can’t see, watching me with mugs of coffee and shortbread cookies as they lazily decide, “Let’s reduce the oxygen. Make it interesting.”

Pushing those thoughts aside, I focus on the task at hand. I’m closer to the light now, and the ground before me grows slightly brighter, until I can see the dull outline of various-sized rocks and lumpy earth. I can also see my feet, clad in black leather boots, and my legs, sporting a pair of what seem to be cargo pants in the dim light. I don’t remember putting these clothes on however, and when I think about it, I realise I don’t remember anything. Nothing but the darkness.

Almost there, my brain says, forcing me to continue. The muscles in my side and calves are aching now as well, and I chalk that up to the low oxygen. If I don’t reach this falling light soon, I may very well collapse, maybe knock myself out if I’m lucky. And then the solid wall of darkness in my memory will become a reality once more.

I take another gasping breath. I must be only fifteen metres away now – the same distance the light is from the ground – and suddenly it looks different, less like a falling star and more like a beam, swinging around randomly in the dark as it falls. Kind of like a search light being operated by a person who doesn’t know how to operate a search light.

“Come on,” I whisper urgently to myself as the light races frighteningly closer to the uneven earth. Three more seconds and it will hit and the game will be over. I sprint, and then with one last desperate push, I practically leap forward, throwing myself to the ground directly below it.

No more than a second later, something large makes contact with my body, landing heavily on my back. The air rushes out of me as my ribs are flattened, my stomach pressed to the ground. My body groans in pain, and I know that bruises will already be starting to form.

I gasp. After sprinting in low-oxygen and being crushed by something falling from the sky, my lungs threaten to stop working all together, and I try to claw myself out from under whatever’s landed on me.

“Get…off…” I say through clenched teeth, pushing at the object. Surprisingly, it works, the weight rolling off me easily, but it takes me a moment longer to realise that the thing I touched was soft and warm. And when I do, I scramble frantically away from it, a conflicting wave of fear and curiosity washing over me.

I move into a sitting position and face the thing that fell on me as I catch my breath, only able to make out a blurry outline in the dim, barely-there light. The light source is sitting on the ground a couple metres away, its beam shooting out in the opposite direction. Forced into action by fear, I crawl quickly towards it and snatch it up off the dusty ground. It’s a flashlight, nothing like the falling star I imagined, but still a miracle in this world of darkness.

I grip it tightly in my hand and swing the beam of light towards the object. Instantly, my eyes go wide, my breath catching in my throat as I take a subconscious step backwards in surprise.

It’s not an object.

It’s a boy.