4338.206 · July 25, 2018 AD
Owned Before He Fell
Joel reaches toward the colours. The colours reach back. Something speaks his name—not the name on his work shirt, but his full name, as if it has been watching. Waiting. He should run. He doesn't. And before he can understand what has found him, something else finds him first. Strangers with questions he can't answer. A blade he never sees coming. A darkness that refuses to stay empty.
The gate shouldn't exist. Joel knows this. He watched a man and two dogs walk into it and vanish. He watched reality tear itself open in a suburban backyard and offer no explanation.
He should leave. He should get in his truck and drive away and never come back to this address, never think about the swirling colours or the impossible things he's witnessed. That would be the sensible thing. The safe thing.
Instead, he steps closer.
The light is warm against his fingertips. The sensation goes deeper than skin, deeper than bone—something fundamental shifting inside him, something being seen for the first time. A voice speaks from everywhere and nowhere. It knows his name. It knows him.
Joel Gibbons has been noticed by something vast and ancient. But he's not alone in this driveway, and the men who step out of the shadows aren't interested in wonder. They want answers. They have weapons. And they don't believe him when he says he doesn't understand.
What happens next takes less than a minute. What comes after takes longer than death should allow.
