The moment the eel painting spun into existence on his arm, unadulterated fear enveloped him. It was like a piece of mythology edged into reality.
***
Pluto had noticed the abnormalities in the world, long before he realised what it meant. It started with little things, like the flickering of street lights and the insistent sharp hum of electricity that seemed like it had an awareness. He couldn't grasp the nature of the happenings yet. The usual patterns of life – the rhythm of traffic, the predictable chatter of neighbors – had begun to feel... wrong.
At night, he would lie in bed and listen to the silence. Not the usual breaks between sound, but a type of quiet that pressed on him. As if the air had weight. It made his spine tingle and the hair at the back of his neck stand up. Sometimes, he swore that the shadows in his room twitched when he wasn't looking. It was just like the theory he had come up with when he was younger, although it was just a theory then.
At first he told himself it was stress induced imagination, maybe too many late nights at work. An hour too long on his phone scrolling newsfeeds that reported on disappearing people across the globe. It was nothing too catastrophic, until fan favourite celebrities and politicians vanished spiking rumours. Something in him told him it wasn't just news or coincidence. It was a causality.
He sat at his desk, paperwork aside. His fingertips brushed against the edge of his mug of coffee as he watched a news recap. The screen glowed dimly with an article headline: " Thousands Disappear Worldwide; Authorities Baffled". Images flickered – photos of the missing, empty apartments, abandoned cars in the middle of the road, from Asia, Europe and Africa. And yet, nothing from his environs. Life continued without worry. That was the part that made it so unnerving.
The air had shifted. Subtly, but undoubtedly.
He felt a weight form in his chest, a subtle tightening like static electricity crawling under skin. He stopped for a second to feel it, but it was gone. He flexed his arms. Nothing. Then rubbed them against his wall. Still nothing. Yet the sensation lingered, a heat creeping slowly up his right arm. A kind that made him aware of his pulse in a way that wasn't normal.
Outside the window, the city moved in half-light. Streetlights hummed softly, in the tune of a music he couldn't hear. Some imperceptible rhythm. The cars were quiet, engines idling without movement. For a moment, he swore he saw the hum in the power lines bend, shudder, like erratic threads of light bending to some unseen conductor. He blinked. Nothing.
But the crippling unease remained.
The next day, he woke up to the faint tang of ozone in the air, barely noticeable, but like the prior of a brewing storm. It made the back of his throat itch. Sunlight streaming through his windows seemed sharper, somehow more penetrating, cutting across in angled shafts that seemed to glitch midair before dispersing.
He sat up in bed and noticed a flicker at the corner of his view. A foreign shadow belonging to nothing. It moved slowly, dispersing and gathering back whenever Pluto turned to look at it directly. It moved through the other shadow, inspecting him. Pluto held his breath, felt the beads of perspiration fall down his back. When he focused nothing moved, but the feeling of being watched didn't fade.
***
As the next few days unrolled, the sensation of the world thickening, humming and vibrating to the will of the mysterious conductor grew.
He didn't say anything to anyone. What could he say if he wanted to?. His friends were either too ignorant or unaffected by this. None felt this electric pulse that swam in the air. He did. He felt it in the movement of the hairs on his arms, in the prickling at the back of his neck, in the subtle vibration that communed with the ozone in the air. The way the floor creaked under his feet when he walked.
And then, almost imperceptibly, it began to envelope him entirely. Not the shadows or the electric hums, but something for within.
It wasn't as dramatic as a switch flip would be. It was slow, like the movement of sand in an hour glass. The air thickened, clinging to his skin, and the electricity he felt under his flesh wasn't just a physical sensation anymore, it became aware and sentient. It brushed over his senses, tugging gently at his thoughts, whispering without words. Colours seemed to jump onto a higher resolution, taste more diverse and sound more intense. The morning coffee burned a little more fiercely down his throat, and the mug left a bigger impression with its cold feel.
It was mesmerising and unnerving in equal measure. Pluto tried hard not to slip into fear.
By the seventh day, the apartment itself felt alien. Shadows clung to corners longer and longer after the object that cast them was removed. The walls vibrated like they held their breaths. Pluto felt the temperature of the room fluctuate, constantly shifting between hot, warm and cold. And yet, he wasn't hot or cold himself, just held under the invisible pressure of the air, like chains that bound a prisoner.
He noticed it then: the small pulse of heat along his arm. He looked down again. Nothing. But he knew the sensation signalled somewhere. It coiled under his skin, brushing against his nerves with a gentle insistence.
For hours, he sat still, staring at his bare forearm, waiting for something to confirm his suspicion, waiting for the impossible.
And then the world changed. It didn't bang or flash away. He didn't walk away from it, he didn't cross any threshold. It entered him like water creeping into sand. The outskirts of the city faded first, edges blurring into sketches and sketches being smudged. The electric hums no longer hummed, they roar in a cacophony. Light bent and warped around him, curving at impossible angles, refracting against nothing.
And then the mist arrived.
Not from the streets. Not from trees, or river bodies. It came from the air itself, curling in from nowhere, pressing against him, filling the room with a green tinged haze. It felt alive, its rhythm suggested so. Electric pulsed in its motion, the one that had been building all week. It whispered faintly against his senses, tugging him forward, bending perception until the room, and everything familiar, slipped away.
Pluto staggered, gripping his desk in desperation. He could feel the pulse intensifying, radiating now from the very air, threading through the mist that now enveloped him completely. A weight sank into his chest, and he breathed shallowly, agonisingly aware of every twitch his muscles made, every tiny shift in temperature of the room, every scent that shouldn't have been there.
It was then he noticed a line on his arm, subtle at first, darker than the surrounding skin. A small mark hued in dark paint moved across his skin, shifting and dancing in what seemed like slow motion. He froze. The mark grew, curling along his forearm, finding anchor on the flaps of flesh. Gills formed along the mark, faint but glinting with mysteriousness. Slowly, an eel-like painting took shape from the mark, stretching and twisting around his arm. Pluto's almost had his heart in his mouth, unable to tear his eyes away from the unreal scene. The warmth along his nerves intensified, and the eel, if it could be called that, seemed aware of every square inch of him. It reacted to his breath and synchronized with his pulse, with the mist around it.
He wanted to touch it, but hesitated. He could feel life brimming in it. Not alive like a bird or a dog, but sentient, aware, present. His heart raced. He was afraid.
Time stretched. Minutes lost personality and blurred into hours. The city was gone, the electric had silenced, the assuring soft breeze faded. Everything now seemed distant. Only the mist, the radiating pulse in the air, and the eel on his arm existed. Pluto drew a slow breath. He felt a connection he couldn't name. The eel traced itself along his wrist like a guidance, protective and patient. It didn't strike. It didn't wriggle in aggression. It simply was. It was aware of him in ways he could not yet understand.
***
Outside, in distant countries, similar pulses threaded the air. Randomly, people disappeared, all swallowed by the fog. No one knew yet. No one knew of the selection and awakening. Not of the presence that had been shaping reality all week, molding the world in preparation for something beyond global scales.
Pluto didn't know that others somewhere nearby had also begun awakening. But definitely not with an eel that looked like it plucked out from the Mona Lisa.
Pluto stood in the thickening mist where his apartment had been a moment ago. The impossible world revealing itself around him. Fear almost tore him apart, but he tried to keep his pieces together.
He exhaled slowly, a single thought forming in his mind, faint and hesitant:
"Whatever this is... it's only beginning".