Daylight (1)

Like everyone else, Amy could not say with any certainty when she began to suspect that something was wrong. Her neighbor George claimed to have smelled something strange as early as five o'clock that afternoon, but Amy suspected it was only his week-old laundry that tickled his olfactory nerves.

After all, it was early summer. The sun would not have set until at least eight at night.

But the sun never set.

Amy was lying on the couch and reading a Norah Ephron book when George knocked on her door, calling her name. Behind him, she could see people going in and out of their apartments, mostly going out. A low buzz of excitement, barely audible, filled the air.

"What's going on?" She said dumbly, holding the book in one hand. She inserted an index finger in the middle of the book where she was interrupted.

"Uh ... There is, there's something wrong," George blinked and scratched his clean-shaven chin. "Uh, uh, it's not ... not getting dark."

"What?" Amy stared at him, not comprehending.

"Can't you see it's still light outside?" He said impatiently.

"What?" Amy still did not understand what he was talking about.

"Look outside and see for yourself," he turned and left.

Confused, Amy went to the windows of the livingroom and pulled them open. Outside, the sky was still the gray overcast as it had been all day.

"It is dark," she muttered to herself. Then she glanced at the clock on her desktop computer screen --- nine thirty.

Her first thought was that the clock was too fast. But the buzz outside the door was growing louder, and she realized that it was not excitement, but panic.

She stuck her feet into a pair of sandals, grabbed the door keys from the table, and hurried outside.

(TBC)