. . . on drugs. It shivers, colors quivering like harp strings plucked by an invisible hand. Beneath it, the rocky terrain of a small, backwards culture is warped and twisted, tortured by the sound of the strange harp's music.
Suddenly the universe sighs. The rainbow pops. The land beneath it, disappears.

Elly seemed the first to notice everything suddenly stop. The bus froze, the dim street lights died and the moon in the sky was gone. Watches ceased counting their seconds and cell phones went silent. Even the sun winked out, leaving a terrifying darkness. Not the terrifying darkness of a darkened alley way, nor that which lurks within the closets and beneath the beds of small children, though these were perhaps the distant descendants of this darkness. This was no mere shadow, no temporary obstruction of light. All the darkness mankind knows, or knew until then, holds the promise of light around the corner, or in the morning, or in the palm of a parent's hand. Here was the shallow, dusty hollow where light made its grave, a dark that crept into the sockets of your eyes and through your brain, leaving an indescribable, sanity threatening blankness . . .
And then light at once broke through, the sun returned to its rightful place. Except that it was not one sun, but three, one of which seemed to be making very small circles behind a strange contraption which gave off the strangest of light. The bus continued as if nothing had ever happened, at least until the bus driver hit the oak tree.
"Jesus H. fucking Christ!"
Elly had never heard the woman curse before, except occasionally to ask Alex to stop making an ass of himself. Now she stood, something else that was new to Elly, exposing her hidden height.
"Everyone out of the bus. Out! That way--Alex, stop making an ass of yourself and get the door, will you?"
This tiny portion of normality seemed to even the roar of panic to a sort of white noise chaos. Slowly, they began to shuffle off the bus.