Into the Unknown

*BOOM*-

"God damn it Micheal! I said a little gas to get the fire going!"  I yelled, watching my friend roll on the ground laughing at me.

"Oh calm down Chris, you're only missing an eyebrow... or two."Kim says while trying to stiffen her laughter. "And if you ask me I say its an improvement"

" well excuse me, but I'm not to fond of being on fire." I say dusting off the few embers

Micheal finally catches his breath " Sorry bro, I really didn't expect it to be that big." he says with a grin.

" Its alright, no real harm done. Besides, I've had worse."

" yeah, like that time you made out with that trap!" Kim says.

"Screw you, I was drunk and it didn't help that you two decided to dump me off on 6th street!" I reply, causing both of my friends to laugh even harder.

"Well guys, as much as I would love to kill Chris with embarrassment, its getting late. I'll catch y'all in the morning." said Micheal as he walked to the tent.

"goodnight" Kim says to him.

"You better sleep with one eye open ya bastard." I yell at him. To which he gives me the finger. I laugh it off.

"Hes right, its late." Kim says." you coming?" she asks as she gets out off of her log.

" Nah, I'll be there in a bit." i say with a smile.

"Okay, good night. Don't let the vashta nerada bite!"

"Damn it Kim! you know I hate those things!"

" yeah, why else did I say it" she says with a playful smile and walks to the tent .

" yeah yeah, love you too Kimmy" I say.

As I sat there poking the fire, my eyes wander to the tent with my two best friends. Best friends. Hell, I consider them my family. We've helped each other through personal highs and lows. The death of Micheal's father when he was 12, Kim when she broke her leg and lost the scholarship, they helped me when both my parents died and I had nowhere to go. We looked out for each other, we were a family.

If you have never been out in central Texas at night away from the cities, you would soon realize that you can see more of the night sky than you would imagine. I looked up at the stars and sighed. " I hope something exciting happens this week. " i quietly say to myself. Unknown to me was the shooting star that passed overhead along with the clouds rolling in.

Finally exhaustion sets in and I get up and douse the fire. That's when I noticed something off... there was no noise. I couldn't hear a single cricket, or cicada. there was no wind yet there was a large cloud formation filling the sky rather quickly. Something was coming, and it was coming soon.

I rushed to the tent and poked my head inside, " Micheal! kim! get up, we need to leave. Like now!"

" Wha-whats wrong ?"

"I don't know, but something is about to happen and I don't want to be caught in the middle of it. I need you guys to trust me, just get dressed and head to the jeep. "

Micheal says "Okay man, I trust you just give me a sec."

" Alright, just hurry!"

As Micheal and Kim step out of the tent, a bolt of lightning stuck the ground across the clearing from the tent.The resulting flash of light and noise knocked the three of up to the ground. That was somewhat expected for a strike so close, the weird part was, where the lightning had struck there was a small orb of light. floating about four feet off the ground.

We just sat there in shock as we stared at the light.

" wh- what in the world..." Kim says  as the orb begins to slowly move in a circle around our campsite.

The otherworldly sphere started to go faster and faster. Soon there was nothing but a wall of bright light surrounding us. We held each other close, in a vain attempt to protect each other.

Then, just as soon as it had begun. It stopped. We all looked up at it just in time to see it wink out of existence, then explode into what can be best described as a black hole. This thing was easily 20 feet in diameter, it had a thin ring of light around it. And it sucked, literally. Within seconds it was sucking everything from rocks to loose tree branches and all of our camping gear. struggling to get away from this abomination we held onto each other and headed for the trees. Micheal made it to a tree first then pulled Kim and myself closer to it. We were almost to the tree when it seemed like the worst was almost over. Boy were we wrong, the vortex strengthened and started pulling harder. So hard that our feet were being lifted off the ground, pulled towards a sure death.

That's when my grip failed. As I started to loose my grip Micheal reached out and caught my arm.

" No, you are Not dying like this! You still owe me that fifty bucks!" He yelled through the cyclone, pulling me back to the tree.

Just as I was close enough to grab a hold of the tree again, a rock the size of a baseball flew by and stuck Micheal in the arm.

"Ahhh! Fuck, no! " Micheal cried in pain as he lost his grip.