They sat on the edge of the pier, a long stretch of rotting, barnacle-encrusted wood extending from the small town’s even smaller harbor. A few fishing boats floated in the water around them with their anchors down. A few people shouted, and their voices carried on the gentle wind. And still, the day was quiet as it came to an end. Isabella would learn never to trust that kind of quiet again.

Andrea passed her a joint from her bag, and Isabella lit it and inhaled the stuffy, dirt-flavored smoke. And slowly, the pier, carried by the shifting waves, began to rock her back and forth. Back and forth. The sky turned to cotton candy and the city behind them was wiped away by the smoke. The people’s shouting turned to splintering static noise.

Andrea had a sweet smile at her face, her focus on the sun as it set beyond the edges of the unsteady horizon. Isabelle stupidly tried to reach for her friend, to block her eyes from the sun so she wouldn’t hurt herself, but only managed to send them both toppling over onto their sides.

“A fly,” Isabelle lied, highly.

“Sure.” Andrea rolled her eyes, and hugged her.

Love, Isabelle thought, took the form of smoke that evening, and it was in the air!

They watched the sunset together after that, and the world was briefly dipped in a deep black shadow. The tide rose and lapped at the pier around them. Isabelle took off her shoes and let the water overtake her socks. She was back to back with Andrea and her eyes were closing. The ocean pushed and pulled. Back and forth. Back and forth.

“Wait, what the fuck?” Andrea whispered, and Isabelle’s eyes snapped open. It was really hot outside. She felt like she was right next to a bonfire.

“What’s going on?” She asked, rubbing the brief nap out of her bloodshot eyes.

“Look,” Andrea stood up. She put out her blunt and helped Isabelle up.

“Oh. Oh no.”

The sky was alight once again, so that they could see the clouds swirling around a single point in the horizon. Isabelle saw the top of a blood-red sun appearing over the water, filling the entire sky like a violent, dripping canvas of crimson and plasma.

“Was I asleep that long?” She asked, sucking in a sharp breath. It grew even hotter. Isabelle must have been really high, because it looked to her like the ocean was bubbling and steaming. It looked, she thought deliriously, like there were things floating, motionless, in the water.

“No. It’s midnight,” said Andrea, checking her phone.

A gust of wind knocked them both over, and Andrea tripped over a piece of wood submerged in the water. Her phone went flying into the hungry, bubbling waves. Isabelle reached into her pocket and found that hers was missing. In fact, her shoes were gone too, taken away by the ocean in her sleep. And the sun, or whatever this new malignant entity was, grew even larger at the edge of the world.

“We need to run,” Isabelle decided.

Andrea had to take a few seconds to mourn her phone, but when she was done, she nodded grimly and they set off down the length of the pier.

They ran for a few minutes before Isabelle blinked and realized why they weren’t going anywhere.

The pier stretched infinitely before them, and infinitely behind them.

“God, I’m so fucking high,” Isabelle giggled desperately, her eyes wide with fear and blurry with tears.

Andrea frowned, before looking back at the sky. Isabelle’s gaze followed, although panic was mushing everything together, making it incomprehensible. The sun, ten times as big as it should have been, had a goddamned face. And also the clouds made the entire sky look like a swirly lollipop.

“Me too,” Andrea said. She held her hands close to her chest to steady their shaking. Isabelle took her hands back and squeezed Andrea into a hug.

They decided to stand in place. The sun was now fully above the horizon, but it still grew, and the air was blistering with heat. Isabelle’s skin was beginning to grow tight and red. Andrea’s looked like blood.

The face, made of pointed features and eyes that may have been two and may have been a million, seemed to beam the bulk of its heat directly down on them. And it smiled, with a million carnivorous teeth. Was it trying to appear threatening, or was it trying to reassure them?

NEED ONE.

Isabelle burst out into uncontrollable giggles. Andrea had her mouth tight, and when they met eyes, Isabelle saw her crying. Her insides were boiling.

Its thunderous scream repeated:

NEED ONE.

They were quiet.

One person? One joint from Andrea’s bag? One sacrifice?

They stayed there, frozen and burning alive. It waited with a patient, evil smile. Its grinning eyes assured them of their fate.

NEED ONE.

“Look, I don’t know what it wants,” Andrea finally said, her voice cracked and wheezing. “But we don’t have a choice. We can’t run, and the ocean is boiling. We’re dying.”

“What do you suggest?” Isabelle asked. Her skin was bubbling. The wooden pier burst into flames at their feet.

“Rock paper scissors,” said Andrea.

Isabelle cried.

NEED ONE.

She chose what she always did. Paper. Andrea chose rock.

“Wait, is it who wins or who lo--”

NEED ONE.

“I’ll go,” Andrea said.

“No! No, please!” Isabelle cried. “I’ll go, please!”

She stumbled forward, holding Andrea’s arm. As soon as their skin touched, both of them screamed. Their skin melted off onto each other, sticking together like wax or cheese.

“Me! Me!” Isabelle shook her head of the white noise and the pain all over her body. She wanted Andrea to be alive. She wanted her to survive.

She addressed the sky. “ME! Please!”

And she was swept off her feet by a gust of hot air. The force of it was enough to smudge her flesh into wrinkly, sopping sections, her bones slipping apart, her eyes popping out of her skull. She felt the hot scream, her last sound, before her top lip fell off and into her disintegrating throat.

Andrea awoke in the hospital, having suffered severe heat stroke and disfigurement. The flesh melded to her forearm was identified as belonging to an outsider of the town, who was missing. Her report of a stolen person and a bleeding sky was disregarded as a hallucination resulting from her marijuana. The severe burn marks were attributed to her lighter. The dead animals floating in the harbor had an unknown cause of death, although most were disfigured beyond recognition. There really wasn’t anything she could have done.