May 31, 2037
2:13 pm
I’ve always kept good notes, and it’s a good thing. Kept a diary when I was a kid. Started when I was just seven, and made an entry every day until the day I turned 15 on May 1, 2020. As a 7-year-old kid, that was the day I predicted I was going to stop keeping a diary, and I kept my word. Because that’s the kind of kid I was. Nerdy, but reliable. Always reliable. My mother said you could set a watch by me, which I thought was pretty funny. My dad only thought I was strange, but at least he accepted me for who I was. Tried to.
Anyway, I had no plans of starting up my diary again until the day it happened. Because once it happened, I didn’t feel like I had a choice. There has to be a record, there has to be, and it seems like most folks want to act like none of this is happening.
Just last week I was at Coco’s Coffee Shop? With Gerry? This is someone I’ve been friends with since before I started keeping my diary. We were sitting by the window, not really talking about much of anything, just chatting, looking out at the gray weather which is always Michigan this time of year in the early part of winter when the sun goes into hiding. Then I looked right at Gerry and asked him what he thought about the egg, if his life had changed at all since it had shown up. Gerry kept staring out the window as if he hadn’t heard a thing. So I leaned forward and raised my voice; asked the same question. I could feel his fear more than I could see it, like a psychic warning. The desperation. I looked around the room and noticed some of the other patrons looking/not looking at me, as their conversations shut down tight like the lid on a mason jar.
“Gerry…”
But Gerry didn’t give me the chance to ask a third time. He grabbed his jacket from the back of the chair and walked away quick, like he’d just gotten word of an emergency somewhere else. Anywhere else but near me. I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.
Today is Day 364. Tomorrow, Day 365, is the day we have been told will be The Opening, when the egg will make itself known to us. One full year to the exact day after its appearance.
We haven’t been told what to expect after Day 365. Or whether we should expect anything at all.