They hung it on refrigerators and bedroom walls. They sketched it in chalk that was smeared by passing feet. They drew it in the dust of the marketplace, the dust on the TV, the dust of the cathedral. Crayons, markers, pencils, pens, smashed peas, toothpaste, feces, blood—anything and everything was their medium.

It became known as The Vortex.

They grew in tandem, the image and the fear, in great swirling arcs and horrible symmetry. Mothers in Ecuador prayed over their children as they drew. French parents flooded doctors’ offices waving stacks of paper. In California, clinics offering flu vaccines went up in flames. The president of China was trampled to death by an angry mob.

Churches everywhere preached repentance. People reverted to faiths they had buried millennia before, sacrificing chickens in basements and staining the drawings with the entrails. The other sacrifices we shall not speak of.

Humanity was awash in weeping, wailing, prayers. When The Vortex finally appeared, its roar swallowed whole the thunderous noise of terror.

Now, there is silence. Pictures flutter to the floor, chalk washes away, dust gathers again. The weeping and wailing has subsided as the world listens for the laugh of a single child, a laugh that will never come.