Broken Sky 2:1

He'd invited us - me and her, that is - down to his folks' island house. Lots of trees, lots of wildlife, lots of windows - I'm a city boy, all right? My ideas of wildlife mostly involve pigeons, squirrels, and a few overambitious snakes. Went swimming and snorkeling, ate a lot, got a little too drunk on those dangerous mixed drinks his dad made - well, I did, anyway. He didn't drink much back then, and neither did she. Didn't make too big a fool of myself, not that it would have mattered.

Happened at breakfast.

That damned sound. It's there when the fucking nightmares hit, that split second right when I know there's no way out. That godawful tortured metal screaming, a bridge collapsing under a loaded freight train. The sky ripped open like someone was trying to reach in and didn't care about fixing it later. That damned sound just got worse, made my ears hurt and my teeth ache, and the sky convulsed, shredding itself until that rip stretched damned near edge to edge. Whatever the hell was in there wasn't dark, or light, like the stuff didn't know what dark or light were.

That bastard goes on about how it wasn't like anything, but it was like oil and water, food coloring in water, spreading stains - shit. The bastard's right. It's not like anything. Whatever it was, it tumbled out of that ugly rip in the sky and kept coming. All we did was stare, like gawkers at a wreck, and well, what the fuck else did you expect? It was too goddamned big to do anything else. I didn't have the faintest damn idea what the hell I was seeing.

It kept falling, that damned sound in my bones, and the closer it got to us the harder it got to remember color and sunlight. It's like the bastard said, they didn't matter. The stuff rolled over us like we were rocks, ran down her hair and over the bright dress she was wearing, and it took all the brightness with it when it tumbled down the rocks to the sea. Don't ask me where it stopped and the water started.

His ma said it was the waters between heaven and earth.