The Holes in Space
Lately people have been coming home, whether from work or school or merely a five minute errand, to find that it is gone. Not that it has burnt down or that they’ve been evicted or any other such mundane, ordinary life thing; but that it is well and truly gone, and where once a house had stood there is now a void. Where once there was something, now there is nothing. No, not an empty space, but an emptiness, like a hole in space and time; not a blank page, nor the absence of a page, but as where a page cannot be; not an empty space because there is no space there at all.
Many, upon first seeing this, go mad. Perhaps it is most—I couldn’t say—and who could? Others become overcome to all appearances with an unbending but unspoken desire—thoughtless, zombie-like, empty as the emptiness that calls to them—to go into the nothing before them just as they would have gone into their homes. What they make of their experiences in these attempts is unknown to any other, unless by some strange power here there is a link between them, a psychic link, such that they feel each others feelings or know each others thoughts; for those who have given up on it go catatonic and never speak again. Whatever the cause of it, however it has come to be, they all behave the same, all move and act in the same manner, as if puppeted by the same puppeteer. Onlookers say only that it isn’t that they are prevented from entering, or repelled by some force—no such barrier exists that any can see—but that it is as though they are always entering but never enter. Perhaps this is because they cannot enter a space that isn’t; a thing like themselves cannot enter a nothing; and what exists cannot be where existence is not; but the nature of the unnatural does not lend itself to easy explanation.
The others are still there, day and night, however many nights and days have passed since first they returned to find there was nothing to return to. The passage of time and its usual effects seem irrelevant to them, still entering but never having entered the void where once their home had been. They show no awareness of the outside world and do not respond to anyone who might attempt to speak with them, ignoring, or perhaps it would be better said oblivious to, those who call their name; they are trying to enter and, it seems, will keep trying to enter. And that’s that. Do they hold out hope something will change? They say no word. Do they think there is some trick to it they haven’t figured out? They give no sign.
Those others going about their normal lives in the neighborhoods where these lost souls have found themselves, once friends and neighbors, can't but feel they are the most wretched and pitiable creatures; but that pity soon turns to a discomfort and then disgust. They hurry their children away, “Don’t look at them! Don’t look at them!” But why they feel as they do is as much a mystery to them as the mysteries of these holes in space and time, whatever they are, or of their consequences upon those whose lives they consume.