In my dream, I was a young asparagus. To be specific, I was Junior from Veggietales, a Christian children's show with vegetable protagonists which I watched quite a bit at that age. I was with Laura Carrot, we were outside and it was dark—pitch dark. But it was not night. Laura gestured up at the sun directly above us, in whatever way a baby carrot can gesture at all, and said, “Look, Jacob, the sun's gone purple.” And it had. The sun, hanging large and lifeless, glowed a dim violet, but seemed to cast no light on the neighborhood at all. It was the middle of summer, and it was cold out. Something was very wrong. “Yeah, we should probably get inside,” I responded. “There's a church right across the street. That might be unlocked.” We crossed the empty street, and hopped our vegetable bodies through the ornate double doors.
Warm air blasted from the foyer. The low murmur of grown-up voices filled the room—serious voices. “Come in,” someone said. “Close that door,” said another. We did. And when the door shut, I was no longer Junior. I was myself, in all my four-limbed glory. And my carrot companion was now Audra, my friend from kindergarten. I was relieved to see all these people here. They were all talking about what was going on. I knew they'd figure out what to do. Maybe this would all just pass. “It's just an eclipse,” I heard a man saying. “The sun can be purple during an eclipse. It'll pass.” But if it was to pass, it wasn't happening quickly. And all the grown-ups were talking on and on about astronomical phenomena, leaving Audra and I with nothing to do. So, she and I explored a bit. There wasn't a ton to look at in the foyer or the hallway. All we found were some poorly colored-in pictures hung up on the walls of Noah leading animals to the arc—leading them somewhere safe to hide away before the storm came. I wanted to look out the at the sky again, but we couldn't find a single window.
Then we made our way into the sanctuary. Its atmosphere was drastically different. This place was older than the church surrounding it. It fulfilled the promise of the ornate door we'd entered. A giant cross stood dimly lit behind the pulpit and the rows of yellow wooden pews. It was empty except for two older women drinking coffee near the back. But what caught my eye most were the beautiful stained-glass windows along the walls. I crept toward one of them, a depiction of Mary holding a baby Jesus. I nearly put my eye to a purple tile, but I realized that wouldn't do, and shifted to a light yellow one. And I was delighted by what I saw. It was bright outside. The sun was yellow, and the sky was blue again. I could see people swimming in a public pool. It was a normal summer day again.
I shouted the news to Audra and the ladies in the back. “It's good to go outside again!” I yelled. I was proud of myself for making such an important discovery. The adults had no idea because the foyer had no windows, and they hadn't wanted to open the doors. I ran out of the sanctuary. “It's good to go outside again! I looked out of the stained glass windows in the sanctuary, and it was bright out, and people are swimming!” The adults liked the sound of that, and we all raced outside to make the most of the rest of this strange summer day. But it had not been good to go outside again. It was still cold. The sky was still dark. The sun was still purple, and it seemed like it had gotten bigger. There was a strange high-pitched sound in the distance. Someone turned around and grabbed the door. It had been locked behind us. All the adults looked at me. Some of them ran off. Audra did. That's not possible, I thought.
I walked to the side of the sanctuary, and saw it. A small CRT television was set up on a schoolroom desk right outside the stained-glass portrait of Mary. It was connected to an orange extension cable that seemed to stretch away into forever. I turned the TV toward me, and I saw a man jumping into a swimming pool on a nice summer's day playing back on a loop. I stepped back in horror. I tripped in doing so, but this was not the result of fear. The ground had begun to shake, and I realized then that the sound in the distance was a medley of screams. It was getting closer.
Most of the adults from the church had already dispersed, running away from wherever they each judged the sound to be coming from. But I held my ground and looked toward it. The ground shook. Thud. Thud. Thud. Those were footsteps. And then, from the dark, it emerged. It was a towering, gelatinous purple monster, covered in dark spots. It must have been 100 feet tall. It looked precisely like the Fib from Veggietales, but I knew for certain that it was a different monster. It was pulling down power lines, smashing cars, stomping houses, and down the road was a crowd of terrified people running toward me. But I couldn't run. I was frozen watching the destruction. Every time it stepped, the street would tremor, and some of the people would fall and be trampled. It was hard to stay on my feet just watching, but I couldn't look away. Then I saw my mother, running, terrified, and I ran all the way home
The house was empty. My whole family must have been out there running from that thing. I saw the sun again through the living room window and quickly shut the curtain. I locked the front door. But what if they come back? I thought. What if they come back, and they don't have their keys? What if I lock them out like I did with the people at the church? I unlocked the door and ran into the basement. There weren't any windows there. I would just have to wait until someone found me, if that would ever even happen. I sat in the bean-bag chair at the other side of the ping pong table and cried and cried. Then I heard a click. The front door was opening. I wanted to yell, but I didn't hear any voices. All I heard were footsteps--quiet, gentle footsteps. I saw a shadow in the basement stairwell, descending. “Hello?” I said in a whisper. There was no answer. Then I saw it.
The monster had descended my stairwell. It was person-sized now, but it was the same monster. It was calm. “Hi, Junior,” it said in a friendly voice. I gasped. I shrunk into the beanbag chair. “Hey, what gives?” it said. It picked up a ping pong paddle and began to bounce the ball. “Do you want to play some table tennis?” it asked.
“No,” I whispered, drawing my knees to my chest.
“Come on, play ping pong with me.” And though its voice was calm and polite, I knew this was a command. So I rose up, shaking, and grabbed the other paddle.
“I'll serve,” it said And we played. It knew that I knew what it had done to my family, and I knew that I could never stop playing so long as it wanted me to. First, it wanted to destroy the neighborhood. Now it wanted to play five billion consecutive rounds of ping pong against this one kindergartner and nothing in this world could stop it from taking what it wanted. So we played ping pong forever.
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