There's a hole in my backyard.

I'd been hearing stories for a while. That the holes happen while you blink, neat gaps where there used to be farmland. First one, then many. One, a hundred. While you blink. Smooth and perfectly round, surgical, and going deeper than light can reach. I hadn't given them much mind. A folktale. A hoax. Some bored kids wanting to be in the news or prove UFOs are real.

Then I blinked, and half of my cherry tree was gone.

My brain raced to justify it. A sinkhole, I thought. But why had the tree been bisected so smoothly? I told myself it must have been old, falling apart. It was my way to cope with something I had no explanation for.

The singing started a few hours later. Gorgeous, beautiful singing; mocking, like the voices of children. I was in my bed by then, trying my best to sleep, hoping that the next time I looked out my window, I would have the strength to disbelieve this hallucination. Instead, they sang my name. I think it was my name. Against my better judgment, I came to the window. I should have run. I should have up and run, left the place behind, and come morning called the police, an exorcist, a shrink. But they called my name, and I guess I hoped, or prayed, that it wouldn’t be real.

I came to meet the children outside. They spewed out from the hole like pus from a wound; one, two, five, ten figures aglow with green sickness, laughing and frolicking like fairies of folklore. Their feet left trails of glass as they danced, their hair trailed off into embers, and they smiled, they all had faces like smiling masks.

They invited me to their dance, I didn’t want to, but I couldn't deny them; they knew my name. They taught me their song. When I sang it with them, my lungs burned and my eyes itched, and one by one they joined me, swelling up with color and heat until they were like diseased stars. Their flames caught on the grass. In the middle of the inferno, I carried a tune in honor of their apostate warmth from below.

Before dawn, they thanked me for joining them. They left me the gift of ash and a promise of their return, and in exchange they took only my name, so that they might feed it to their mock Sun.

I haven't been outside since. The sunlight gives me nausea and fills my heart with shame; it's as if I've betrayed someone that night; betrayed them for something warmer and more beautiful still. When the skies are cloudy, I feel more at ease--but only the night allows me respite.

The scars of the world will not heal. What lies below mends itself; I have given it all without even noticing, and now I'm happy, so happy, and so at peace. When the children sing for me, they don't need a name anymore. They need only call, and I will dance with them on a floor of ash and glass until the night hours have bled away.

There are a hundred holes in my backyard. They smell like hardboiled eggs and jealousy, and they will devour me someday.