The Sixth Earth
1802 Words
Every morning I woke drenched in sweat, my lungs tight, as though I had screamed myself hoarse in my sleep. The same dream had haunted me for years—sometimes skipping weeks, sometimes clawing its way into my mind twice a month. Each time, the dream dragged me further, deeper into something I couldn’t name. A darkness older than fear.
It always started the same. I was a child again, at a playground that felt like it belonged to a world suspended in memory. Sunlight dappled the grass, the laughter of unseen children floated on the air. I always noticed her—Tiffani—my best friend from third grade. The girl who had disappeared from school without warning. My soul had mourned her even as I made new friends. Still, a hollow spot in my chest bore her name.
We’d reunited once—years later, by chance—when I transferred to a new school in eighth grade. We had nearly every class together, like fate remembered the promise we made as children. But the joy faded with high school. Cruel words hurled at her in a hallway cracked her spirit. She left school. I stayed. Our paths forked like a tree split by lightning.
She had children. I had children. We found each other again online, fragile shadows of the girls we once were. She never replied to my message. But she saw it. She was watching, from somewhere just out of reach.
And then last night, she came back. Into the dream.
We were children again on the playground. But this time, something was wrong.
The sky twisted. A dark blemish bloomed above the horizon, sucking the light from the air. The other children vanished—gone without a trace. Silence spread like a disease. I turned, and there she was—Tiffani—perched on rusted bleachers that hadn’t been there before. She smiled, but didn’t speak. Her eyes flicked upward, toward the black shape in the sky.
We stared into it. Sunlight flared around its edges, but it wasn’t a sun. It was an opening.
A light exploded from within it, white and searing, burning through my closed eyelids. I covered my eyes, breath ragged, migraines surging behind my skull.
Then—arms wrapped around me.
Tiffani.
We clung to each other as the playground dissolved. Our feet left the ground.
We awoke in a white room. No doors, no windows. Just light—too bright, too perfect. We were no longer children. We were adults again, older, heavier with the weight of years. I looked at Tiffani. She was crying without tears.
That’s when he appeared.
A figure in a robe the color of grave soil stepped through the wall like mist. His face—if he had one—was obscured beneath a hood that swallowed light.
“We would like to show you something,” the figure said, without opening his mouth.
Who are you? I thought.
“We are the Watchers. We have observed your kind since the first breath was drawn. You and your friend have been chosen. It is inevitable now.”
Chosen? For what? My thoughts echoed.
“To understand. To remember. To prepare.”
He asked if we wanted anything. I found my voice enough to whisper, “Water.”
He nodded and vanished. When he returned, he held two cups. The water smelled...wrong. Metallic. Like rust and static. I hesitated. Tiffani didn’t. She drank.
I woke up drenched in cold sweat.
Still no reply from Tiffani. I messaged her again. “Just thinking of you. Are you okay?” Days passed. She posted nothing. No family updates. No events. I began to worry that something was deeply, terribly wrong.
Finally, weeks later, she posted a photo of her son. Relief hit me like a wave. She was still alive.
Then the dream returned.
It was the same playground. Same dark sky. But this time, there was no time for childhood memories. We were pulled immediately into the white room. He was already waiting.
“I apologize,” he said. “Time grows thin. We must show you more.”
The wall dissolved. He led us through a hallway that wasn’t made of stone or metal, but of light twisted into geometry that defied physics. The floor shimmered beneath us, giving the impression we floated above a void.
At the end of the corridor was another chamber—circular, cavernous, and impossibly vast. At its center, an opening revealed a world below. Tiffani and I stepped forward, trembling.
What we saw turned my stomach to ice.
A planet. But not one we knew.
Its surface was ashen and cracked. And from its grey crust, faces emerged—millions—etched into the land like petrified screams. Their mouths were open wide in agony. Their eyes hollow voids of eternal torment. The mountains themselves howled silently into the sky.
“What is this?” I asked, barely able to breathe.
“Earth,” the figure replied.
“No. No, it isn’t. That’s... that’s not Earth. That’s something else.”
“It is what Earth becomes. What it always becomes. This was the First Earth.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You are on the Sixth Earth now. The others are dead. Each time, humanity poisons the world. And each time, we watch it die.”
I reeled.
“How many more?”
“There will be no Seventh.”
He waved his hand and the image shifted. The surface of the world below darkened. Ash clouds covered the land. I could see cities—crumbling, burning. The same silent screams emerging from the land itself.
“The sickness has returned,” he said. “It is not the first time. The plague comes with each era, a consequence of imbalance. Your kind creates it, even when you believe it is natural.”
“The virus,” I whispered.
He nodded once.
“The strong are weakened. The old are taken. The young suffer. Desperation spreads like fire. Panic opens the door. And something ancient always walks through.”
I thought of the panic. The confusion. The bodies. The fear.
“What do you want from us?”
“To remember. To carry the seed of truth. One day, when the veil thins, others will listen. And when the Earth dies—truly dies—it is your memory that will whisper the way forward.”
He touched our foreheads. The cold was infinite.
We fell.
I woke up screaming.
The next morning, I checked my messages. Tiffani still hadn’t replied.
But there, nestled between old posts and photos, was a new one.
Just a quote.
> “Not all dreams are just dreams. Some are warnings. Some are memories. And some… are maps.”
I stared at the screen for a long time.
Those words didn’t feel like something Tiffani would post. Not the Tiffani I remembered, not the Tiffani who once danced barefoot in the grass and cried when her dog died in third grade. This felt... implanted. As if someone else had posted it for her.
That night, I didn’t dream.
But when I awoke the next morning, my curtains had been drawn open. I never left them open. I lived alone. My bedroom door was still locked from the inside.
Then I saw the dirt on the floor—two streaks, like something had slid in, then back out.
I chalked it up to stress. Anxiety. A lingering hangover of the dream.
But it kept happening.
The next night, I didn’t drink any water before bed, but when I woke up, a glass was half full on the nightstand. It smelled faintly metallic. Just like in the dream.
I dumped it in the sink. The water swirled red as if mixed with rust—or blood.
My phone buzzed. A message.
From Tiffani.
One word:
> “Soon.”
My hands trembled. I clicked on her profile.
Gone. Deactivated.
The message? Deleted. No record of it.
That night, I locked every door. I wedged a chair beneath my bedroom handle. I didn’t sleep. But at some point—some impossible moments between blinks—I opened my eyes and found myself standing outside.
Barefoot. In my backyard. The stars above me weren’t our stars.
The sky was wrong—too many moons. Or too few. Or maybe... just the wrong color.
Tiffani stood across from me.
But it wasn't her anymore.
Her skin was pale, almost translucent. Her eyes were milky white, glowing faintly. She opened her mouth to speak, but her voice echoed inside my head like it had been flung across galaxies.
“You are slipping. The veil is thinning. They are coming.”
“Tiffani?” I whispered, voice cracking.
She shook her head slowly. “Tiffani is... dreaming. You are the one who remembers.”
Then the sky split open.
A thunderous, silent rupture—like space itself was tearing in two. Light poured out, not gold or silver but something else, a spectrum that didn't exist on Earth. My body collapsed. I hit the grass—but when I looked down...
...it wasn’t grass anymore.
Ash.
The ground beneath me was grey, dry, and cracked. Beneath the cracks were those same faces I had seen in the dream—twisted, screaming up at me.
I was on the First Earth.
The Watcher stepped forward.
“You were warned,” he said. “This is no longer a dream. This is a memory. This is prophecy.”
“Why me?” I rasped.
“Because you listened.”
“I don’t want this,” I sobbed. “I didn’t ask for this!”
“Neither did the Earth.”
I woke up on my bedroom floor, bruises forming along my arms. My fingers were blackened with soot. I crawled to the bathroom and vomited.
In the mirror, my eyes were bloodshot. But that wasn’t what made me scream.
Beneath the surface of my pupils, for just a flash, I saw them—tiny faces. Screaming.
---
Since then, I haven’t slept properly. Because now, the line between dream and waking has blurred. My phone glitches. I receive voicemails with static—and beneath the noise, whispers. I see people in crowds who don’t move right. Like puppets with broken strings.
Sometimes, I think I hear Tiffani’s voice through them.
Sometimes, I hear my own.
I avoid mirrors. I avoid sleep.
But every so often, I swear I feel something watching from the walls. From the corners. From beneath.
I was chosen. I don’t know for what.
But I know this: the Sixth Earth is dying.
And when the Seventh rises...
I’m afraid I’ll be one of the voices screaming from the ground.
- Writer
