It all began that Tuesday morning.
josh
They arrived and clocked in as usual, putting on their uniforms and filing into their stations. The low murmur of activity spilled out but as the morning crept on, something hollow hit the floor and a piercing reverberation sang throughout the hall. It was a noise unlike anything they’d ever heard before.
Jasper was the first to call out.
“What- what was that?”
A small group ran to where the object fell and studied it intensely, calling out their findings as they found them.
“It’s bark-like!”
“Yes, not quite a tree but almost like a tree’s cuff, torn from its sleeve.”
“Something’s transcribed inside!”
“Yes, I can’t quite make it out - it’s an alphabet of slightly skewed letters.”
“I can still hear the noise coming from it!”
“Yes, there is a low hum in the air, like an electrical current that won’t die out.”
They’d never seen anything like it in their lives. It was all so surreal that they decided to call it nothing more than a bizarre incident on an otherwise regular Tuesday. Jasper, a hypochondriac with an edge of paranoia, couldn’t help but feel that something about this object’s arrival wasn’t right. In all of their observations, nobody had asked where it had fallen from. There were no tree-like structures on the roof, and even if there were, the roof was windowless. He decided to keep those thoughts to himself as the small group of inspectors set the strange object to one side.
When everyone came back the next morning, nobody had been able to get the transcendent reverberations from their minds.
“I heard it singing in my sleep.”
“I could barely talk to my family at the dinner table, I was so obsessed with it.”
Something in those sounds had taken over everybody’s minds. As the group were putting on their uniforms and talking about that strange Tuesday morning, someone noticed that the hollow bark-like object had grown. It had gotten longer, and the strange inscriptions had bled from the bark to the surrounding floor. The scene looked like the inside of a madman’s nightmares.
“Have you seen this?”
“It’s incredible.”
“How has this happened!?”
The three who had inspected the object yesterday were keeping very quiet. As they had woken that morning, they had seen their skin change before their eyes. It became bark-like. It started in their hands, but soon crept up the length of their arms. Cloaked in long sleeves and gloves, they were lingering towards the back of the group. In a burst of bravery, Jasper went to approach the object, his hand outstretched. Before he could take another step, the three infected leapt forward to scream. However, instead of words of warning, what emitted from their mouths was a gargantuan chorus of the strange, melodic reverberations.
Their voices were amplified by the object and the sounds filled the hall once more. Everyone fell to their knees and watched their own extremities transform. They raised their faces to the sky and sang.