I
Having just arrived home, Mom was standing at the kitchen sink, still wearing her pocket book over her shoulder while pouring herself a glass of water. Gazing out of the window, she saw the neighbour in the building opposite signalling.
Mom opened the window. “I can’t believe this heat.” She said.
“Meh, it's Summer. What ya gonna do?” The conversation was halted by, “Mom! Mom!” At first one child, then both chorussing,“Mom!” Their voices rising in fear. She hurried towards the sound. The son was pointing at an area a metre above the coffee table, the air shimmered like old glass. Insects, and specks of dust were being sucked into an invisible vortex. The room became hotter than an oven. A low hum projected from the area throwing off sparks as larger objects flew towards it and were absorbed by it. Terrified, the mother scooped up her children and fled the apartment. As they rushed down flights of stairs, Mom banged on apartment doors screaming,”Fire! Fire! Fire!” The inhabitants joined the family on the front lawn as they waited anxiously for emergency services to arrive. Mom remembered something her grandfather used to say, "Survivors keep moving." Her first impulse was to take the children to his home. The family left the onlookers and headed towards the Metro. As she raced away, she heard several loud cracks and explosions. A neighbour shouted, “Look!”
The entire apartment complex collapsed in on itself. Objects of varying sizes were being drawn towards an invisible force. Mom picked up the youngest child and taking the hand of the other, ran. A couple of blocks away, Mom glanced back over her shoulder to see roofs, the neighbours, their dogs and cats, cars and trucks, the power lines disappearing.
II
The trio alighted at the end of the train line where hundreds of people milled in the station. As an announcer declared a state of emergency, live news footage on the station’s television screens showed that an entire city block had vanished. A hole the size of a football field increased in size with every second.
Soon, the President’s face appeared on screen, calling for calm amidst the chaos. Nobody knew what the object was, though many were speculating.
Squeezing through the crowd to exit the station, Mom half walked - half ran with her children to the outskirts of town. A military convoy of munitions and men passed them with singular determination.
Night descended, and as they continued on their journey, houses and cars became sparse, giving way to wide, empty, roads, fields and farms. Mom followed a hedge that led towards a tree-covered driveway. There was a light on in a front room of an impressive double storied house. She knocked on the door but no one answered. She knocked again without response. Mom took her children to the rear of the property. She pulled back the squeaky screen door and found the back door unlatched. Telling the children to, “Stay there.” She warily entered the house. Near the centre of the living room, an elderly man lay dead on the floor.
Mom quietly sobbed as she regarded her grandfather's body and contemplated the events of the day. She decided to hide the body so that the children would not see and determined to deal with it before sunrise. Still crying and trying not to, Mom dragged the corpse into the dining room where she covered her grandfather with a rug and shut the door.
Then, behaving as though everything was normal Mom managed to avoid pointed questions to which she had no answer. She fed her family from the well-stocked larder, bathed them in the enormous bath, put them to bed in the master suite and told them a fantastical bedtime story. While they were sleeping, Mom found a wine rack with some promising vintages, opened a bottle and poured herself a glass.
Using the house’s phone, Mom called emergency services but an engaged signal persisted each time she rang. A bath then became the balm to her shattered nerves.
Crawling into the king sized bed, and taking her children in her arms, Mom fell into a dreamless sleep.
The black hole grew and grew and grew until the city, the countryside, the entire country, the continent, the planet, the moon, the solar system and sun were also absorbed in it's relentless gravitational field.
III
In another part of the galaxy, astronomers pointed their telescopes at a space where the Solar system used to be and remarked on the black hole that had so recently appeared. It was only 12 million light years away.
