The Black Hole
As told by those who saw it
Kinda messed up, honestly. Ain’t the sorta thing you expect outta a house in the sticks. Yeah, we were pumped to finally see it with our own eyes, check out where all that crazy went down. When we pulled up, sky was real blue, like, weirdly blue. But the sun? Looked wrong. Dim, small, like a busted flashlight bulb hangin’ up there. Trees looked dead, all of ‘em, like somebody hit pause on life or somethin’. And the smell, man… God. You ever get a whiff of burnt meat mixed with motor oil? Like someone tossed bones in a fryer. Whole place was covered in ash. Fields, roofs, everything. Just blanketed. And no, that ain’t normal. I mean, I’ve seen my share of crop circles, buddy, but this? This was different. A reason? Hell no, that’s the thing: there ain’t one. That’s the part that eats at you. And that kid? Jesus. Don’t ask about the kid. I’m tellin’ you, don’t go there.
“Think there might be somethin’ on the other side, Richard?” said Jack.
“No idea. Maybe. Maybe not. How should I know?”
“But you gotta have an idea. It’s in your house. And that wall... it’s yours.”
“I got an idea, but it ain’t empirically confirmed.”
“Empirically?”
“In practice.”
Jack wanted to say something clever, but he wasn’t the sharpest guy in the room. Richard... he was, they said. Still couldn’t crack the damn thing, though. But when he dropped words like empirically, it made him sound like he had the upper hand.
“How long’s it been there?” James asked, stepping forward with a beer in hand. Probably the smartest of the bunch, but he never made a show of it. Less drama that way.
“Three days,” Richard replied.
“Three days ain’t long enough to figure it out,” Jack observed in an I know everything tone.
“But it’s long enough to figure out what it’s not,” Richard shot back.
“You mean you’ve already ruled some stuff out?” pressed James.
“It ain’t a door, for starters,” Richard replied, like that was obvious. “And it’s not a window. Otherwise, you’d see through it.”
Jack laughed. “Unless something’s covering it from the other side.”
“But then it would be… visible.”
“What?”
“The thing it’s covering.”
“Right, not a window then,” Jack concluded.
“Exactly.”
”Only way to find out is to stick your hand in,” James said, but he didn’t move an inch closer to the round hole in the wall.
Nobody answered. James took a sip of his beer. Quiet settled in. The three of them stood there, staring at that black mystery. Someone yelled from outside, but the voice came back all messed up, like it’d been chewed up and spit back out. Finally, Jack and Richard sat down. James stayed standing behind them.
“Who found it first?” he asked.
“My wife,” Richard said. Then he clapped a fly dead.
“And what’d she do when she saw it?” James asked.
“She hid it.”
“You mean she covered it up?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” Jack jumped in.
“She had her Saturday night pink-ladies club over. Sheriff’s wife was there too.”
“And the sheriff’s a nosy pain in the ass,” James added.
“What’d she cover it with?” Jack asked.
“A tablecloth.”
James looked around. No tablecloth on the sofa, chairs, table, or floor. No sign of it anywhere.
“Where’s your dog, Richard?” he asked. “Wasn’t he usually in here?”
“Dick’s vanished,” Richard said.
Jack and James exchanged a look.
“You mean he ran off?” Jack asked.
“He didn’t leave the house.”
“Then?”
“That’s the thing. Dick’s gone. So’s the tablecloth.”
“Well that’s messed up,” Jack said, trying to sound casual but clearly freaked.
“What do you guys think I should do?” Richard asked, voice low and shaky.
“Go in,” Jack said, motioning with his hands like it was no big deal.
“For real? You think I should go in there?”
“What other way do you have to see what’s in?” Jack continued. “Dick might be in there waggin’ his tail. Not to mention your wife would love to have her tablecloth back.”
“Leave my wife outta this. I’m tryin’ not to worry her.”
James laughed, swirling his beer. “You think you can keep a woman calm after she finds a freakin’ black hole in her living room? Mine would’ve already called a mason.”
They all went quiet, thinking about how useless they felt compared to their wives when it came to practical stuff. Richard hesitated, then looked at James.
“You just gonna drink beer the whole time?”
“Why not?”
“Ain’t helpin’ me.”
“Helps me.”
Richard stood up and started toward the hallway.
“Where you goin’, man?” James asked.
“Gettin’ my wife.”
“Didn’t you say you didn’t wanna involve her?” Jack said.
“We need to see the light here! I wanna ask her exactly how she found it, Mr. Shit-Jack!”
Jack clammed up.
“Sounds like a plan,” James said, settling into Richard’s chair.
Jack and James stayed quiet. They never had much to say to each other unless Richard was around. That trio was the glue. After a bit, Richard came back alone. He was alone, and pale.
“Allison’s gone,” he said.
“Where’d she go?” Jack asked. He always had a thing for Allison.
“Maybe she’s in the backyard,” James said, sounding less like he was joking now.
“She’s not back there,” Richard said.
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s go find her,” James said and set his beer on the table.
They all moved out like soldiers, checking every room, calling her name. They searched the yard too. No sign. Richard’s son, a chubby blond kid, stopped playing and watched them. The men were shouting, “Allison? Allison?” like ghosts desperate for a response. Their voices spooked the chickens and the stray black cat that used to eat scraps Allison left out. But the kid? He wasn’t scared. Not yet.
Then, silence fell. It was a dark, hostile calm. The kid looked around, expecting his father and the two men to reappear. It had grown darker… a murky darkness like that which gathers on one side of the sky before a storm, pressing down on the ground. The sun appeared smaller and dimmer, allowing the child to look at it. He sniffed the air. Smoke. Rain. Somewhere far off, he thought he heard a monster crying.
Where was Daddy?
He got up on shaky legs and toddled to the front door. Peeked through. Quiet. No voices. Just that burnt fish smell and gray mist floating low. He stepped inside and went to the living room, and stared at the wall for a long time with his large, round, liquid eyes: the black hole was gone. He scratched his leg, turned around, and went to find Mommy. Outside, the neighbor lady was pacing in her garden. Her husband sat on the couch inside, watching TV.
“Sam, come look!”
“What is it?”
“There’s something in the living room.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“Then I’m calling the mason.”
“What the hell for?”
“To patch up the giant black hole in the wall.”
Could a black hole appear in your living room wall?
No, if we consider a black hole in astrophysics, which is defined as a region of space with such a high concentration of mass that it curves space-time beyond the point of no return, called the Event Horizon. The object in my story doesn’t emit radiation or exert a measurable gravitational attraction. It also appears flat… It must be something different. But what?
Could it be a “wormhole” or a “brane page”?
Wormholes, also known as Einstein-Rosen bridges, are hypothetical tunnels in spacetime that connect distant points, or, even cooler, universes. They’re typically expected to be unstable and microscopic, however, some advanced theoretical formulations, such as loop quantum gravity and brane scenarios in string theory, propose stable, thin wormholes. A brane (short for membrane) is an object which can have any number of allowed dimensions, to simplify, imagine surfaces that behave like “folded pages” in spacetime.
The anomaly in your home could be the two-dimensional “mouth” of a wormhole stabilized by unknown local conditions.
Causal Set Theory
According to this idea, matter and space can actually have some pretty unexpected topological configurations. Some models, like the ones based on quantum gravity or causal set theory, suggest that spacetime is like a discrete network, kind of like a graph. In this model, “holes” or “quantum shortcuts” can form like glitches in a fabric. In this case, the “hole” would be a temporary disconnection between adjacent nodes in space. When something is connected to another part of the network, it “disappears”.
Such anomalies can only exist in a dynamic multiverse where different “layers” of reality can interact. If you could see one of these interactions, it would seem like a random change to the local geometry, where things you’re used to seeing might not exist, but they might continue to exist somewhere else. But I suggest you think carefully before entering a black hole...
Hope I didn’t bore you with the story’s background info.
Thanks for reading!
I do like the idea of three blokes deciding to just sit down and drink beer when something so utterly bizarre happens. Great dialogue too.
Oh, and as far as I am concerned, explanations are good and never boring...
Very atmospheric! And the dialogue is great.