Janice Waters turns on a desk lamp in Akron, Ohio. Heat builds as she surveys her magazine’s galleys. She leaves for a glass of orange juice, and returns to the roar of dark cedar shelves burning up the walls, across the ceiling fan, and onto the door frame that looms over Janice’s mousy blonde head.
Flea Leibowitz flips on his black light in Harwood, North Dakota and is surrounded by gleaming velvet mushrooms and skulls. He takes four hits before he realizes the florescence is taking over the room. He switches off the 100-watt bulb, pulls the plug from the socket, but the light doesn’t cease. His skin begins to feel thin, translucent, as he throws the lamp against the cement basement floor. He drowns in the unceasing ultra violet flow.
Attendants at a concert in Austin, Texas witness a light display grow brighter and brighter every second. Bulbs explode from the heat while the swell continues. Everyone closes their eyes, but the light drips in the corners and seeps through the small panes of flesh until they can’t tell if they’re burning from the inside or out.
This was the first wave of the flood. The Coming Light.
Vegas, L.A., Indianapolis, New York feel like the air before a storm. Like holding your breath or tensing before an impact.
The Nuclear Man, in Cataract Falls, Indiana is trying to solve how someone with The Glow, someone who crusades with poisonous light, can control himself enough to face a photonic ocean of screaming.