Shrimp Syrup

tags: cosmic horror | word count: 583

It was a sunspot.

That’s what they said on the news. The anchors tossed in other space facts to fill their times as they repeated it. There’s a meteor shower tomorrow. You can see Mars in the sky for the next month. Did you know the moon is slightly further from us than last year, by about the height of Vermont?

And there’s a sunspot.

“It’s the biggest seen in at least a generation,” a scientist said, mic to mouth. “The sun itself is quite active at the moment, too.”

The interviewer grasped for straws in the next question. Something sensational, a reason to have wasted our time.

“Dangerous? Heavens no,” the scientist said, head shaking. “It’s but a solar marvel for us to study.”

News of the sunspot faded from mainstream in a few days. The sun was still the sun, after all. It still warmed us and still rose from the east and fell in the west. We continued to circle it, for a year.

The sunspot was still there. It was bigger, now.

That’s what they said on the news. An update, on the anniversary of the first cast. They tossed us more space facts, too. The moon moved further again, this time the width of the Dakotas. A star of the Big Dipper had gone hundreds of thousands of years ago and the light of it finally blinked out for us.

And the sunspot had grown.

“It’s the width of Jupiter now, as tall as three–that’s the estimate,” a scientist said. It was not the same scientist as a year ago. “We’ve watched its progress, all the way from the size of Earth to a size that eclipses our biggest planet, in only one year.”

The interviewer, the same one, grasped for straws again.

“Dangerous?” There was a pause. “Absolutely not,” the scientist said, dismissing the question with a handwave. “Quite amazing, and a little strange, certainly.” The scientist smiled. “But just a marvel. One you may even want to observe yourself, with a telescope and sun lens.”

News of the sunspot’s growth fell from mainstream in a few weeks. The sun was still the sun, a year on. It remained unsaid that you could see the sunspot with the naked eye if you squinted and risked your sight. It remained unsaid that there was an uptick in blindness. We rotated and the sunspot moved and we lost sight of it, some months later.

It remained unsaid that those turned blind continued to stare.

It appeared again in half a year.

The sunspot faced us and dimmed the light of the sun in its magnitude. So large it was, it almost split the star in two, like the pupil of a snake.

The news did not report this. The news said nothing. The scientists were nowhere to be found.

Days, weeks, months went by in silence. We rotated and the sunspot followed us, watching. It never lost us again. The sun-blind grew. They began to block roads as they stood unwavering in groups, staring into the sun. They would collapse only after sunset, carted away by loved ones to care for their bleeding eyes.

But they were always back. Always staring. They clawed silently out of rooms and restraints to stand again under the dimmed light of the star. They never said a word.

It was another half a year before we learned the sun was no longer the sun. It blinked, and the sun-blind began to scream.