The sidewalks near Shores Charter School were broken and uneven, flanked by sun-faded fences and crooked mailboxes. All the homes on the street were one-story boxes, patched together with peeling stucco and stubborn pride. Despite their worn-down exteriors, they blazed with color—turquoise, coral pink, bright mint green. It was an unmistakable echo of the Caribbean roots of the families that lived there.
Twilight crept in, dimming the world one inch at a time. What little sunlight remained pooled faintly on rooftops and car hoods. The streets ahead of me were narrow and quiet. A few figures drifted past, and the occasional car rolled by, but that was about it.
I walked alone. A breeze tugged lazily at my shirt collar as I marched through the neighborhood with a monotonous gait. All of my senses felt dulled, and while I was certainly there physically, my mind was somewhere else entirely.
This had been my route since freshman year. I was in my junior year now. That made it… what? Three years?
Three years of the same turns. Same cracked sidewalk slabs. Same leaning street signs. Same chain-link fence with a baseball-sized hole that no one ever fixed.
It went without saying, but even without thinking about my every step, I'd be able to walk the path perfectly.
I was intimately familiar with every little thing on this route.
And yet, today, that familiarity didn't comfort me.
I walked with an empty expression of boredom, but there was a sensation growing within me.
As I kept going, the sensation began to grow and get stronger.
My head snapped up.
It was a vague feeling. A mere hunch that I felt in the pits of my stomach, but one so powerful that I couldn't ignore it.
I held the side of my head and mumbled to myself.
"Are the strings of fate finally calling my number? Don't tell me, is the world watching on with bated breath as a pivotal encounter appears before me?"
I struck a dramatic pose mid-step, hand outstretched as if expecting some ancient artifact to descend from the heavens. Nothing happened, of course.
"Ah… No glittering princess in a falling carriage," I sighed. "No portal to a forbidden realm. No cat-eared messenger of destiny dropping out of the sky. Tch. Lazy worldbuilding."
I shook my head and kept walking.
The moment passed—or, at least, it should have. But something was still clawing inside of me.
As the sensation grew with me, it morphed into something far more concrete. Almost like a whisper, I could feel it calling to me. It was urging me to do... something or other.
"Maybe I forgot to do my homework and the guilt's evolved into sentience," I muttered.
I half smiled. "Or maybe this is that infamous sixth sense they talk about. The ancient instinct of mankind... honed over millennia to detect stalking predators. Modern humans have lost it, but as an awakened human, it was a matter of time before I acquired this skill."
I nodded my head. "Yup. That sounds about right."
I kept walking.
The sensation didn't fade. If anything, it was gaining weight. It buzzed within me. Not really in any place in particular, but in my spirit.
Maybe this is some sixth sense?
"Or maybe," I said aloud, "some creepy old vampire is behind me, dramatically reaching out with one pale, trembling hand, desperate to consume my soul. Or suck my blood. Or confess their tragic backstory. Could go either way."
I twirled on my heel mid-sentence, throwing my arms open with mock theatrical flair.
"Reveal yourself, dramatic entity of the ni—"
I froze. Every muscle in my body stiffened all at once.
Then, my eyes widened, having witnessed a miracle.
There were cracks in the ground.
When I put it like that, they really sound quite mundane, don't they? But these were unique, unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life.
They were blue.
...
Again, not my best use of wordplay.
These cracks were not the usual jagged scars left by time and weather. These were fundamentally different. They were akin to fractures of the earth. There were deep cracks in the ground from which a ghostly pale blue light seeped up from somewhere deep underground.
"Like trapped moonlight trying to escape..."
The strange fractures weren't minor either; they were long and extended far out. Just from what I could see, they extended from the midline of the road beyond the edge of the sidewalk, but there were more that seemed to expand in a different direction.
The sight seemed so unnatural to me that I couldn't look away. I had to confirm to myself, over and over again, that what I was seeing was real.
Before I knew it, I'd been standing in the same spot, staring at the ground for over ten minutes. When I did finally raise my head, I was still too awestruck to move.
I flung my head from side to side, hoping to find someone to share my wonder with. That was when I was hit with another shocking revelation.
Not a single other person around me seemed to be even the slightest bit interested in this, quite literally world-shattering sight.
The few strays who were walking in the area were going about their business as usual. With the sun's light slowly waning, the ethereal cracks were made even more striking by contrast, and yet no one even paid them a passing glance. If anything, they seemed more weirded out by my actions than anything else.
"I don't understand... What in the world..."
Just then, the creak of a screen door caught my ear.
An old man stepped out onto the porch of a coral-pink, single-story house, its front yard adorned with a lone cactus among the row of brightly painted homes.
He wore a loose straw hat and held a wrinkled magazine in one hand. His tanned skin was a weathered bronze, the kind you only earn after decades under the Miami sun.
My eyes looked at him, and I took a moment to think.
I wasn't eager to run headlong into another social interaction, even more so when taking into consideration that this man was a total stranger. But, there was a force inside of me that was battling fiercely. It was a curiosity that I'd never felt before in my life. This man, who stood in front of me at this moment, was a witness to something marvelous.
I lifted my hand in dramatic proclamation, my voice deepening instinctively.
"Heed my voice, oh witness to creation!"
The man had just seated himself on a folding chair on his porch when my voice caught his attention. He squinted his old eyes in an attempt to get a good look at me. The look on his face was one of confusion.
"Me?"
"Yes, you!" I shouted again, gesturing regally as I began striding toward him. "Resident of this fractured dominion! Bear witness to the anomaly underfoot!"
He blinked. "...Huh?"
I stopped at the edge of his overgrown lawn and pointed imperiously to the glowing fractures behind me.
"These cracks," I declared, "the unnatural scars upon this land—tell me, when did they appear? Who laid these curses beneath our feet?"
The old man tilted his head and chewed his cheek, clearly bewildered. He fished a pair of glasses from his pocket, slipped them on, and peered toward the road.
"Boy, what the hell are you talkin' about?"
"The cracks! The fractures! The place from which the glow of a false moon dares to erupt from the sacred ground of the Earth! I wish for you to tell me of them."
Clearly not understanding my way of speech, the senior citizen couldn't even formulate a reply. The old and weathered man rubbed his chin before standing up. While he couldn't move fast, the man marched forward with stable grace.
My heart pounded in my chest from anticipation.
He leaned on the porch rail and glanced down at the street.
"...Do you mean the potholes?"
I paused and took a deep breath. "You don't—Do you—What is it that you see exactly?"
He shrugged. "All I see is concrete and asphalt. Same as always."
I looked at him, then back to the glowing crevices etched into the road like veins of starlight. My heart thudded once in disbelief.
"…You don't see them."
I took a step back, eyes wide.
This wasn't just ignorance. It was a complete inability to be aware of what was right in front of him. The man wasn't denying it. He truly couldn't perceive it. Frantically, I turned and stared behind me, then to the left, then to the right.
Just like before, no one reacted to the cracks. None of them could see them.
No one except for me.
The old man scratched the back of his head, muttered something about "weird kids," and disappeared back inside his bright pink home.
Once again, I was alone on that sidewalk. Sweat dripped from my cheek as I pondered. Just to make sure, I placed a hand on my forehead and took my temperature, but that didn't help.
Whatever these cracks were, they were undoubtedly unnatural. I'd walked up and down this sidewalk for years, and never once had I seen them. Then came the fact that no one else could see them either. There was a chance that these fractures had always been here, but it was only now that I'd gained the ability to see them.
No matter how hard I try to think of one, there isn't an easy explanation that could explain what I'm seeing.
It was with that thought that I took my first step toward that odd light. I understood the danger. There was no telling what would happen if I touched the light, much less if I touched the cracks themselves.
Normally, I would avoid something this mysterious and risky, but for some reason couldn't help myself.
As I walked toward the crack. Closing one eye, I plunged one foot into one of the glowing lights.
...
...
Nothing.
Simply touching either the cracks or the light that they emitted didn't seem to have any noticeable effect.
Once again, my eyes wander toward the vast expanse of the network of fractures, and I couldn't help but be in awe of just how far they reached. They had no end in sight, seeming to expand endlessly southward.
I gulped.
The smart thing would've been to turn around. Go home. Pretend this never happened. While this mystery may have been interesting, it's not like it needed solving. There are plenty of small everyday mysteries that people leave alone and go unanswered. Then, we all go on with our lives.
Even as I told myself this, my legs didn't budge.
I'm certain that most would consider my actions to be vexing, maybe even more vexing than the way I usually act. Still, the thumping of my heart in my chest was at odds with any form of logic I could think of.
If I let this moment pass. If I didn't take action and walk forward, what would happen? Would these cracks disappear? Would I never again see something that wasn't bland and mundane?
Making a sudden return, the sensation in my chest pulsed. A small flame that feverously clung to me, refusing to be extinguished.
I tilted my head down.
Right now, something impossible had appeared, and for whatever reason, it chose me to witness it.
Only me, and no one else.
'This could be it...'
That ridiculous little phrase echoed through my head like a half-joke I didn't fully understand. I didn't even know what 'it' was. Somehow, that part didn't feel important.
To me, those words bounced around in my mind like some prophecy.
Defying all reason, I could feel something deep inside myself being drawn to some unknown place.
The world around me felt deadly still. The wind had stopped. The air didn't move. Every car and passerby froze midaction. Even the last rays of sunlight, once glinting off windows and hoods, had faded entirely.
It was as though every atom in the universe was giving me time to make a choice.
I stared down at the glowing fissure and followed its path with my eyes.
My heart thumped loudly in my chest.
"To think... I'd end up believing all those crazy things I say... I might really be a half-brained lunatic..."
The world sprang back to life. The gentle breeze teased at the edges of clothing. Passing cars zoomed down the streets. Wind chimes allowed their light tingling to be heard.
And quietly, almost unnoticed in the mess of daily life, the soft crunch of fallen leaves underfoot echoed against the quiet houses.
Step by step, I made my way south.