We were laughing. Yes, laughing — or at least, pretending to laugh. My father chuckled in that way of his, short, breathless, more like clearing his throat than amusement, but still he laughed, because silence would have meant something else, something dangerous. My mother folded laundry as though each shirt were a piece of her own flesh being pressed into neat, suffocating squares. And I, Edward, I lay sprawled with a math book open on my lap, staring blankly at the grotesque dance of numbers, pretending to study, pretending to be alive.
The television carried on like a drunkard, the host mocking some politician's haircut. The audience shrieked with laughter, a thousand hysterical throats tearing open at once. Even in that moment — before anything happened — the laughter had already begun to sound wrong to me. Too sharp, too insistent, too much like a demand: laugh with us or be cast out.
And then it happened.
The world fell silent.
Five seconds. That was all. Five seconds, yet it was enough to unmake the world.
The screen went black, not like a television turning off but like an eyelid slamming shut, hiding something too unbearable to see. Then the letters appeared: three stark, merciless symbols — CIA.
Something in my chest recoiled. I felt as though those letters had always been there, etched beneath the comedy and laughter, hidden in plain sight, waiting for the right moment to surface.
Then the voice. Calm, merciless, without inflection — as if spoken from a mouth that had never belonged to a man.
"Warning. If you are hearing this announcement, please be attentive. If someone you know has stopped blinking, and keeps smiling strangely—stay away from them. He is not the same person anymore."
My blood froze. My mother's hands paused mid-fold, a white shirt dangling, limp as if it had died. My father's mouth twitched — not a laugh now, not even a breath, just a tremor of something he did not want me to see. And I—I felt the terror not of death but of recognition. The terror of realizing something had already been wrong long before the voice appeared.
"Do not look at them for more than three continuous minutes," the voice droned on, inevitable, eternal. "If they linger near someone for more than three days, they are no longer the same. If you are in a room where everyone shows these symptoms, call +3364. Keep your microphone recording. Describe what they do. After three minutes, the call will cut."
The room was silent, so silent that the fallen shirt struck the carpet like a gunshot. Mother's eyes flickered toward me, quick, guilty, as if I might accuse her of something she hadn't yet done. Father sat stiff, rigid, almost dignified, like a corpse remembering its posture.
And then the words that sealed it all:
"If you are still hearing this announcement, please stay at home. Leave work. All customer activity will be free. All jobs are suspended. Stay with your families. Check their sanity. Similar announcements are being broadcast across the world."
The screen flickered again. The comedy show returned.
The audience was still laughing. The host was still laughing. The haircut was still ridiculous. But now — now the smiles were wrong. Their mouths were too wide, their eyes too empty, and their laughter too endless. And my God, how endless it was!
My father inhaled suddenly, a sharp breath that cut the silence like a blade. My mother still clutched the shirt, though now her hands trembled, trembling as though the fabric itself might bite her.
I could not stop myself from looking at their faces. Just for a moment. Just for a second. But what if it was too long? What if I had already looked too long?
The comedian grinned on the screen, his teeth bright, his eyes wide, his lips stretched to inhuman length. And I understood. The five seconds had not ended.
They had only begun.