I woke with the taste of a bad dream still clinging to my tongue, thick and metallic, as if I had been breathing rust instead of air. My sheets were damp with sweat, my heart beating with the echo of a world that had almost ended. The dream had been apocalyptic in a way that felt intimate and personal, not a distant catastrophe but something pressing directly against my skin. Someone had died, and their death had shifted the balance of everything, tilting reality toward extinction. At the center of it lay an old man stretched in stillness. I never saw his face; it remained blurred and unreachable, like a censored memory. Yet his absence radiated outward, a gravity that bent the emotions of everyone around him. We had arrived at his funeral by accident—or so the dream insisted. The reason for our presence slipped from my grasp each time I tried to seize it, dissolving like mist. All I understood was that I was running, fleeing from a truth I was not ready to confront.

The mourners’ faces resolved into people I recognized, fragments of a past I had tried to seal away. They were acquaintances who carried outdated versions of me in their memories, reflections I no longer wanted to acknowledge. Their eyes felt heavy with unspoken judgments and unfinished conversations. My chest tightened under their collective gaze. I kept my head down, desperate to avoid being pulled back into histories I had fought to escape. In my haste, my little sister’s warm hand slipped from mine. One moment her fingers were curled around my palm, the next they were gone, swallowed by the shifting crowd. When I turned, she was already distant, her small figure struggling to keep pace. Panic unfurled inside me, sharp and suffocating, filling every corner of my thoughts.

It was late afternoon—around four, the hour when daylight begins to thin but has not yet surrendered. The sky hung overhead in a pale, washed-out blue, deceptively calm, while the promise of night crept along the edges like a silent warning. Before us gaped the gravesite: a dark, open mouth in the earth. Its rim was littered with scattered paper bills that fluttered in a restless wind, whispering against the soil like frantic prayers. Then a man stepped forward from the crowd, his presence commanding instant silence. He announced that the time had come, his voice carrying a finality that chilled the air. From nowhere, colossal strings unfurled, shimmering and taut, shooting upward until they pierced the sky. They wrapped themselves around the moon with impossible precision. With a single, deliberate pull, he dragged it aside. The heavens lurched. The sun blinked out as if snuffed by an unseen hand. Streetlights flickered and died one by one, and from the thickening darkness emerged towering, slender figures who moved with mechanical obedience to his will.

I forced my frozen body into motion. Finding my sister became the axis around which all my fear revolved. The thought of facing my mother without her drove me forward with desperate urgency.

I slipped through deepening shadows, my breath shallow and ragged, narrowly evading the creatures that prowled the streets. They moved in jerky, unnatural patterns, their silhouettes bending in ways that hurt to watch. I did not know what fate awaited anyone they caught, and the uncertainty was a terror more potent than any image my mind could supply. The path ahead stretched like an endless corridor of darkness, each step carrying me deeper into a world unraveling at the seams.

Then, in a moment that felt both miraculous and fragile, I found my sister again. She stood clustered with my other siblings, their faces pale but intact, and beside them was an old friend from seventh grade, a familiar anchor in the chaos. Together we ran, our footsteps uneven and frantic, until we stumbled upon two convenience stores pressed side by side. One was sealed shut, its windows black and unwelcoming. The other blazed with harsh fluorescent light. I hesitated at the threshold of the open store, an inexplicable dread rooting me in place. In my pocket lay only twenty pesos—a pitiful measure against the vast, uncertain future looming before us. Inside, people swarmed the aisles in a frenzy, their fear crackling in the air like static. Shelves emptied in seconds. Voices overlapped in sharp, panicked bursts. No one spoke of tomorrow with certainty; it had become a fragile rumor no one fully believed.

Desperation began to murmur its dark suggestions. I caught myself imagining the shatter of glass, the rush of taking what we needed from the closed store. Before my thoughts could settle into action, a woman hurled herself against its door, and the glass exploded inward with a violent crash. The crowd surged after her in a single, unstoppable wave. Swept along by their momentum, I ran in too. My hands moved quickly and instinctively, gathering food and necessities into a basket. Each item I grabbed tightened the coil of guilt in my stomach. A voice in my mind whispered of consequences, of someone returning tomorrow to demand justice. But survival roared louder. I was not stealing for greed; I was gathering lifelines for my child and my siblings. In that fractured world, I had somehow become the only adult left to shield them. My parents were absent, their disappearance a hollow ache I kept carefully at the edge of my awareness.

We piled our supplies into a basket and climbed onto a motorbike steered by my friend’s boyfriend. His expression was eerily calm, as if he had already made peace with the ruin around us. The engine roared to life, and we tore through the darkened streets, weaving between the wandering creatures. The wind stung my face, carrying the scent of smoke and dust. Every shadow seemed alive, every corner a potential threat. When we finally reached home, relief washed over me in a trembling wave. Inside, we huddled together—the man, my friend, my child, and my siblings—our bodies forming a small, fragile circle of warmth against the vast hostility outside.

Yet even in that brief sanctuary, my thoughts returned relentlessly to my parents and my partner. Their absence throbbed like an open wound. I did not know where they were or whether we would ever stand in the same room again. The uncertainty gnawed at me, but beneath it flickered a stubborn ember of hope. I clung to the belief that we would reunite, that this nightmare was not the final shape of our lives.

The night stretched on, heavy and airless. Outside, the creatures roamed, their distant movements a constant reminder of our vulnerability. My mind twisted itself into knots of fear and confusion, replaying every decision, every loss. Then a sudden knock shattered the silence. When we opened the door, two children stood there, eerily calm amid the chaos, their small hands outstretched as they asked for spare change. My friend, without hesitation, pressed some of our precious money into their palms. A sharp pang of disappointment pierced me. With the end of the world pressing against our walls, she was still giving away what little we possessed to strangers.

And in that suspended instant—poised between terror and tenderness, scarcity and compassion—the dream unraveled. The images thinned and scattered like smoke, and I woke, carrying with me the lingering weight of a world that had almost convinced me it was real.