2012 (Nov 13):
Mr. Halbrook's voice droned on like a broken museum recording, nasal and eternal, echoing through the stale classroom air. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, competing with the barely functioning ceiling fan that clicked every third rotation like it was counting down to the end of the world—or at least the end of fifth period.
Jack slouched low in his seat, one boot wedged against the desk in front of him, headphones discreetly looped around his collar like a silent protest. His notebook was open, but the only thing he'd written on the page was a sketch of a man with a telescope for a head firing laser beams at the school. He added little Xs for eyes on one of the stick figures getting vaporized and smirked.
History, in his opinion, was just a long, boring list of things other people did wrong a long time ago. And Mr. Halbrook had somehow found a way to make it worse—like, monotone Gregorian-chant levels of bad.
"Now," the teacher said, oblivious to the thousand-yard stares around him, "as we enter the chapter on celestial events and their influence on early societies, it's important to understand how eclipses were viewed by different cultures."
Jace blinked. Did he say celestial events?
He sat up just enough to see out the window. The sky was dimming—cloudless, but tinted like someone had put sunglasses over the sun. Not dark, not quite, but definitely off. Like the afternoon had a bruise.
"Today," Mr. Halbrook continued, raising his chalk-stained fingers like he was about to bestow ancient wisdom, "we'll be experiencing a solar eclipse. A total one. Rare, fascinating... potentially dangerous if you're not careful."
Half the class stirred at that—finally, something vaguely interesting. Jace raised an eyebrow and smirked again, because of course Mr. Halbrook was the type of guy to find a cosmic event "educational" instead of, you know, awesome.
A girl in the front asked, "Can we watch it from outside?"
Mr. Halbrook adjusted his glasses. "You may view it, but under *no circumstances* should you look at the eclipse directly without proper protection. Permanent eye damage is very real. The ancient Mesopotamians thought eclipses were omens. I assure you, going blind is a very modern, very avoidable curse."
Jack rolled his eyes.
Outside, the sun was already slipping behind the moon like it was hiding something.
He didn't know it yet, but this was the last normal hour he'd ever sit bored in a classroom.
And he was definitely going to look.
Because of course he was.
*skip*
Jack slipped out of the classroom the moment the bell sliced through the stale air, not bothering to get caught up in the crush of bodies flooding the hallway like some lost cattle. The familiar mix of sweat, cheap deodorant, and damp backpacks hung thick around him, but he barely noticed. His mind was elsewhere—already moving ahead to the next thing, the real thing.
He dropped his backpack against the chipped brick wall of the stairwell with a muted *thud*, the sound swallowed by the distant chaos of lockers slamming and kids yelling down the hall. The whole school felt like a dying echo beneath the buzz of his thoughts.
Fishing his phone out of his pocket, Jack didn't bother with a greeting. He tapped Tank's name, fingers impatient.
"Jay," Tank's voice came through, low and rough, tinged with impatience. "You coming or what?"
Jack smirked, hearing the usual edge of boredom in his own voice that he usually tried to hide. "Shut the hell up, I'm five minutes out."
"Five minutes?" Tank shot back. "You been saying that for like ten."
Jack rolled his eyes hard enough to feel the weight behind it and shoved the phone back into his pocket. The last thing he needed was Tank nagging him today. Especially since Tank was usually the one dragging him into dumb shit like this.
He slipped down the corridor, cutting past classrooms spilling kids into a chaotic river of noise and motion. Nobody stopped him. Nobody even glanced twice. They all knew Jack Smith had better things to do than drown in another boring history lecture.
When he reached the east side exit—one of those half-forgotten emergency doors mostly used by janitors and deliveries—Tank was already there. Leaning casually against the brick, popping the tab on a soda with a lazy grin that made Jack want to punch him just to knock some chill off.
"Finally," Tank said, eyes sharp and amused, like he'd been counting every second.
Jack shrugged, rolling his shoulders and tightening the cuffs of his hoodie like he was gearing up for a fight. "What? You expecting me to stroll up in a tuxedo or something?"
Tank laughed and clapped him on the shoulder, hard enough to sting. "Nah, just don't be the reason we get caught."
Elle was already lurking in the shadows nearby, arms crossed, the familiar weight of a crowbar resting easy in one hand like it was an extension of herself—something she'd mastered a thousand times over. Mason shuffled behind her, awkward and fumbling, clutching a battered telescope that looked like it had seen better decades.
Jack barely spared Mason a nod. Smart kid, but way too careful. Way too nervous for what they were about to pull.
Jack turned his attention to the door. An old steel slab with a thick metal handle and a simple, stubborn lock. He took a step back, cracked his knuckles—an old habit—and then drove a hard, deliberate kick right into the middle of the door with the toe of his boot.
The stairwell echoed the impact sharply, but the door barely flinched.
"Shit," Jack muttered under his breath, disappointment flashing across his face. "Guess they really don't want us up here."
Tank laughed, sharp and amused. "You seriously thought a little kick was gonna do the trick?"
Mason joined in, chuckling awkwardly. "That's a *pull* door, you goof."
Jack shrugged, irritation flickering in his eyes. "Worth a shot. Can't always pick a lock when you're in a hurry."
Elle stepped forward, eyes narrowing in on the lock like a predator. "Give me that." Without hesitation, she pulled a thin lock pick set out of her backpack, fingers flicking out the tools like she'd done this a thousand times before.
Jack rolled his eyes, shaking his head. "Seriously? You're a fucking wizard with that shit."
Elle smirked, crouching beside the door and working the lock with quiet, practiced confidence. "Shut up and watch."
Jack leaned back against the wall, crossing his arms, playing it cool—but his eyes were locked on her fingers, nimble and patient as they danced over the stubborn tumblers. There was something hypnotic in the precision, the kind of delicate control that reminded him of his dad back in the workshop, fixing watches—tiny, precise movements that only made sense to someone who knew what to look for. Unlike Jack, who just wanted to break shit and get out.
A minute stretched between them. Only the soft *clicks* of Elle's picks and the distant hum of the school filled the silence.
"Almost there," Elle muttered, voice low.
Jack shifted his weight impatiently, glancing over his shoulder. "Hurry the hell up, yeah? I'm not standing here all day."
Tank snorted behind him. "Patience, man. She's doing her thing."
Then, finally—a soft *click.*
Elle straightened up, a triumphant grin splitting her face. "Got it."
Jack didn't waste a second. He grabbed the handle and eased the door open just enough to slip inside. The stairwell reeked of old cement and dust, the weak flicker of dying fluorescent lights throwing long, spindly shadows down the narrow metal stairs.
"Let's move," Jack said, a faint grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
They started the climb, boots clanking on metal steps in a rhythm that matched Jack's quickening heartbeat. The air grew cooler, tighter, the noise of the school fading behind them like a fading memory.
Jack's mind was already elsewhere, caught on the eclipse. The light outside was dying fast, the sky shifting from its usual blue to that weird bruised purple everyone had been whispering about all day.
Mason fumbled with the battered telescope as they reached the last landing before the roof, sweat beading on his forehead despite the chill.
"You think this thing's even gonna work?" Tank asked, eyeing the duct tape and wires holding it together like some Frankenstein project.
Mason shrugged, a nervous twitch to his smile. "If not, we still got pinhole viewers."
Jack pulled his own pinhole viewer from his pocket, tapping it against his palm like a talisman. "Yeah, I'm just bored as hell."
Elle shot him a sideways glance, amusement lighting her eyes. "You're always like that—always on the edge, like you're waiting for something."
Jack smirked. "Maybe I am."
Tank reached out his hand in the universal gesture of bumming a cigarette. "And you better sit your impatient ass down, Jay. We've got like half an hour before the eclipse anyway."
Jack dug into the depths of his cargo pants, pulling out a lighter and a pack of Camels with practiced ease. He flicked the lighter on, the small flame sputtering to life before he lit his cigarette, inhaling deep.
"Yeah, you're right," he said, handing Tank one. "Can't watch an eclipse on an empty lung."
They'd gone quiet for a while—lazy silence stretched between them as the light dimmed. The rooftop heat had started to fade, traded for that dry, eerie stillness that always came before an eclipse. Jack tilted his head back, eyes hidden behind dark lenses, just breathing in the space.
Tank broke the silence first, flicking his finished cigarette off the ledge. "So, Friday. You all hitting that show at Mercury Lounge?"
Elle perked up immediately. "Wait—Dead Dogs are playing there, right?"
"Yeah," Tank nodded. "Doors at nine, local openers. Might be loud enough to make Mason's glasses fall off."
"I don't even wear glasses," Mason muttered, adjusting the strap on his telescope case like it personally offended him.
Jack snorted. "Still checks out."
He dug into his hoodie pocket, pulling out a crumpled flyer someone had handed him in the quad last week. "They're actually decent," he said, holding it out for Elle. "Kind of heavy, kind of messy. You'd like it."
"Messy's my genre," she said, snagging the flyer and folding it with practiced indifference.
"I'm in," Mason added, maybe too fast. Then, realizing he sounded eager, he added, "Y'know. If we're going as a group. Safety in numbers or whatever."
Jack smirked. "You scared someone's gonna push you into a mosh pit and steal your telescope?"
Mason gave him a flat look. "That's not how mosh pits work."
"Sounds like something someone who's never survived one would say."
Tank was already counting people off on his fingers. "Alright, that's Elle, Mason, me… Jay, you good?"
Jack hesitated for a second, then shook his head. "Can't. Got some HEMA thing that night. Granddad's making me go."
Tank raised an eyebrow. "You still doing that sword nerd shit?"
Jack shrugged, brushing it off. "He thinks it builds character. Honestly, I just go so he doesn't bug me about everything else."
"Dude," Elle said, kicking her boots against the concrete, "you get to beat people up with swords and complain about it like it's a chore."
"It is a chore when you're sparring some sweaty forty-year-old accountant who thinks he's a knight of the realm," Jack muttered, rolling his eyes. "Last time I caught a pommel to the ribs because some guy screamed 'for honor' and forgot what footwork was."
That got a laugh from everyone, even Mason.
Tank leaned back, hands behind his head again. "Well, sucks to miss the show, but I guess we'll drink one for you."
"Thanks, Dad," Jack said dryly. "Don't get stabbed."
"No promises," Elle grinned.
They went quiet again for a second, listening to the weird hush of the air. Even the usual hum of distant cars and muffled shouting from the field below seemed dampened, like the whole world was holding its breath.
The sky had gone a deep, bruised violet. Shadows stretched weird and long across the rooftop, and everything had taken on that unreal eclipse glow—gray and flat and almost fake-looking.
Mason pointed up. "It's starting."
They all looked.
Jack leaned forward on his elbows, tapping his pinhole viewer against his thigh like a tic. The sun was already halfway swallowed, a perfect crescent eaten by darkness. The moon edged closer, slow and silent and hungry.
Tank whistled low. "Damn. Kinda creepy."
"Kinda beautiful," Elle said softly, more to herself than anyone else.
Jack didn't say anything. He was staring, not through the viewer now, but past it. Past the rooftop. Past the bullshit. Just watching the shadow crawl across the sky like it was meant to be there all along.
Eventually, he sat back, crossing his arms again.
"Alright," he muttered. "So, show on Friday, death-trap observatory on Saturday, eclipse now. Pretty solid week."
"You forgetting Sunday brunch?" Elle added, smirking.
"Hell no," Tank said. "Sunday brunch is sacred."
Jack grinned at that, but didn't say anything. He just leaned his head back again, eyes closed, the wind brushing through his hair as the sun dimmed to a ghost.
And for a moment, the rooftop was silent again. Like they were the only four people left in the world.
*skip*
The light kept dying.
The sun, once just bruised, was now a sliver—a blade of gold hanging in a sky that had turned an uncanny gray-purple. Shadows deepened and twisted at wrong angles, bending like they didn't quite know where to go anymore.
Mason had gone quiet, focused through the viewfinder of his telescope, breath shallow. "It's almost there," he muttered. "Totality in… twenty seconds. Maybe less."
Tank tilted his head, peering through a pair of cracked eclipse glasses. "This is some alien movie shit, man."
"It's like watching the sky forget itself," Elle murmured, arms folded tight, eyes shielded but expression unreadable.
Jack stood back from the edge, pinhole viewer forgotten in one hand. He didn't put it to his eye.
He stared straight up.
"Jay—" Mason started, alarmed.
"I'm good."
He didn't flinch. Didn't blink. Just stared at the last dying crescent of sunlight as the moon swallowed it whole. The corona bloomed—a ring of ghost-white fire in a sky gone black.
And then the sun was gone.
It hit them all at once. The world didn't dim—it vanished. Shadows swallowed everything past the chain-link fence at the edge of the roof. Buildings, roads, trees—all gone, erased in one silent blink. The school remained, but only just. Its edges blurred, flickering faint at the border of a spreading void.
The temperature plummeted.
Elle sucked in a breath and hugged her arms to her chest. "Holy shit—it's freezing."
Mason's voice shook. "T-This isn't right. This isn't—this isn't just an eclipse—"
Jack didn't move. His hoodie whipped around him in a sudden wind, but he stayed still, face lifted, jaw tight. His voice came low and steady.
"You feel that?"
Tank's teeth chattered slightly, breath fogging. "Yeah, man, I feel it. It's like my bones are getting frostbite and heartburn at the same time."
Then—movement.
From beyond the rooftop, where the ground should've been, the eclipse was rising.
No longer just a thing in the sky—it had shape. A figure, impossible to describe but real in that ancient, bone-deep way. It floated above the ground without touching it, without casting a shadow, yet somehow consuming all light around it.
Its "body" was void. A cutout in reality shaped vaguely like a being, but filled only with that blinding, writhing ring of eclipse-fire. And from that body came a pressure—deadly cold and calm, like the final breath before hypothermia sets in… and burning, relentless passion, like a scream that couldn't stop. An aura that pushed and pulled in the same instant, every instinct in Jack's body telling him to run and kneel all at once.
The others felt it too.
Elle backed up, knocking into Mason, whose knees had started to tremble.
Tank swore under his breath. "Is that—what the fuck is that?"
"It's looking at us," Mason whispered, voice thin with awe and panic. "It doesn't have eyes, but it's… looking at us."
The being hovered just beyond the edge of the roof, vast and silent and absolute. The corona flared in a slow, pulsing rhythm, like a heartbeat. Or breathing.
Jack didn't look away.
He couldn't.
And then it turned—slowly, deliberately—and that eyeless face aligned with them. The air froze. The fire in its form flared higher, yet gave off no light—only weight. A pressure like drowning in molten glass, like staring into something that had existed long before stars ever burned.
It saw them.
And the world held its breath.