1 Evanescent

"Human life is as evanescent as the morning dew or a flash of lightning."

-Samuel Butler

It was a slow but exciting day. The seniors in high school were a week from graduation and were currently on a bus with their destination being a beach as their senior field trip. As they were located in Waitsfield, Vermont; a small town in one of the most rural states of the US. There was a lot of rough and rocky dirt roads with forests surrounding everything in view for most of what would be of the trip. It was a quiet, serene, yet also melancholic and slightly spooky atmosphere, with the large and almost haunting pine tree forest, cloudy skies, and bumpy ride. Hopefully it would be sunny when they arrive at the beach.

Apollo was sitting by himself watching the trees pass by, trying his best to not be bored on what would seem like a long ride. He wasn't sitting by himself because he didn't like people, that people didn't like him, or even because he was introverted. He had plenty of friends and loved meeting new people, but he always liked being by himself; having silence allowing him to think. He liked thinking a lot, he was good at solving problems; and there were a lot of problems nowadays.

"Hey did you guys hear about that strange phenomenon in California where the sky suddenly turned green for a few hours?"

"You've gotta be kiddin me. That's like the 6th one this month!"

Apollo overheard a group of classmates talking about the phenomenon again. Around two and a half years ago, strange and unexplained occurrences started happening all over the world. It could be as something as simple as ants becoming 3 times their usual size in a particular area, to dogs and cats raining from the sky in a city in china, and even all the bottled water in Sweden suddenly turning into carrot juice (the only harmful part about that is they are starting to look like Donald trump because drinking too much of the juice turns your skin orange). The strangest part of all these occurrences is that so far, all of them have not led to any direct harm or death of anyone. The ants were not large enough to harm anyone, but enough to scare them. No person or animal got hurt when dogs and cats started raining from the sky, including the animals that were the 'rain'. The only harmful thing about the carrot juice was that the swedes were in-taking too much vitamin A.

The phenomenon have been a widely discussed and feared topic ever since it was concluded that all these random phenomenon were not just coincidences and were getting more frequent by the month. Even though no harm had come to anyone so far, people still feared for what these phenomenon meant. A message from God? Aliens pranking us? Some weird alter-dimensional shift resulting in weird and unseen consequences? Apollo didn't know, or even try to guess. All he knew is that his peaceful and carefree life might soon come to an end, because he was about to graduate of course.

Others who weren't talking about the phenomenon were talking about what college they were going to and what they think they want to major in, or talking about not furthering their education and wanting to choose a path like music or art.

"Hey Apollo! What are you going to do after we graduate?"

Apollo wanted to major in some sort engineering course. Maybe aerospace engineering, because like his namesake, Apollo was obsessed with space. Most people usually say they either want to be a firefighter, an astronaut or something similar as they are kids, but then usually choose something else as they grow older. Not Apollo. Apollo has wanted to be an astronaut as long as he remembered. It was his dream, his obsession. Something about space seemed to call out to him. Aliens? Apollo was almost certain aliens existed, but didnt think they would come to such a far out place as earth, any resources we might have they could find anywhere else, and he certainly didn't think it was them calling out for him . Apollo just felt space was where he belonged, and taking an engineering major relating to being an astronaut was his first step to getting there.

"Probably going to college like the most of you guys, nothing else is really going for me." Apollo replied.

"See! I told you guys Apollo was obviously going to college. What did you think he was going to say?"

Apollo smirked and started to daze out the window, bored again. Even though he enjoyed his peaceful life, like everyone he sometimes just wished something would happen to make life more interesting.

And then he saw it. A ghostly beast that shifted and merged through different forms and shapes so quickly, it was almost impossible to describe. It had rushed out of the forest by the side of them, and it was heading straight towards their bus.

"Mr Rond! There's something charging at the bus!" he tried to warn, but he was too late.

The last thing Apollo remembered was the sensation of the bus being thrown into the forest opposite of where the beast originated from, and he blacked out.