‘What a wonderful evening!” a short but excited man excimed. He gripped onto his clipboard, and looked up at his boss. The tall, slightly intimidating man looked down at his worker.

  “Indeed it is, Morac. Beautiful sunsets come with a lot of customers,” the man spoke. Leonardo Garnish was a very famous chef. He owned a fancy restaurant near the top of a very tall tower pced in the middle of the city. He was talented of course, but his step-father’s money did help a whole lot.

  Leonardo scanned across his restaurant, looking first at the bar, then the tables, and out at the balcony. The prime spot for couples, especially for proposals. There was at least one every night. It bore Leonardo after a while. Men doing the same corny thing. They said some corny speech, basically re-confessing their love to their partner, then falling on one knee and popping out a small diamond ring. Leonardo promised himself that, for his future partner and wife, he would make the proposal extra special, whether expensive or not.

  Morac suddenly jumped into action, speeding to the front door of the restaurant to greet some more customers as he held his clipboard out in front of him to find the customer’s booking.

  Leonardo lifted one corner of his mouth, grinning to himself. He knew he had chosen right when he had hired Morac. Morac was diligent and hard-working, a bit clumsy, but his positive traits overrode any negative ones.

  He followed Morac and the new customers out to the balcony. Leonardo could already see the small bck box poking out of the man’s pant’s pocket. He almost ughed at the irony.

  He watched Morac take the orders of the couple.

  “Ah, I would like to order a rge dish of Boranzo Spaghetti. For us to share,” the man smiled at his partner as he ordered.

  One of Leonardo’s signature dishes. Well, all of them were in his restaurant. Although spaghetti wasn’t his creation, that specific one was. It was a normal spaghetti, with a sauce that Leonardo made himself. Only him and the chef’s at his restaurant knew the recipe. And of course, a herb to add some more fvour into it. It was a specific pnt imported from Brazil. The Boranzi pnt. Leonardo thought it tasted excellent on spaghetti, and so did all his customers.

  Later that evening, Leonardo eavesdropped on another cliche proposal.

  “Miranda, I cannot tell you how miserable my life would be without you in it. You light up my world. My love, you are my best friend, my partner, my comrade and best of all, my future wife,” the man said all of it with passion, one thing Leonardo did admire since the man was in a restaurant full of people who were most likely listening to the proposal.

  The man stood up from his chair before dropping onto one knee, while his partner gasped in shock, standing up herself as he took out a bck box, presenting it to her.

  “The love of my life, will you honour me by being my wife? Will you marry me?” He flicked open the box to offer her a small but expensive diamond ring.

  His partner burst into tears and sobbed as he put the ring on her finger. For the finale, they did the disgustingly sweet French kiss. Leonardo turned away to give them privacy, though he doubted they would get any anyway, with everyone’s eyes on them.

  But he quickly turned back when a customer squealed in excitement. The specific customer was a dy, maybe a young adult, who was leaning over the balcony, and had caught a blue glowing ball, just smaller than a soccer ball, in her hand. It was unusual. Very unusual.

  Leonardo walked onto the balcony, about to approach the woman, when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He turned to look at the city, only to see hundreds, probably thousands, of those same glowing balls, falling onto the city, like stars falling out the sky. They fell slowly, nding on the tops of buildings or on the ground.

  Everyone watched in awe, but Leonardo was skeptical. Morac saw his wariness and went over to the dy.

  “Miss, I think it would be safer if you handed that to me now. We don’t know what these could consist of so we’d prefer to keep our customer’s safe,” Morac tried to reason and luckily for him, the dy handed it over to him, albeit reluctantly.

  Morac held the ball, examining it closely. He got startled when it started to make a buzzing sound. All of them started buzzing. It echoed through the whole city. Everyone was soon restless, getting up to go to the balcony and see what was going on.

  Then quiet. It was strangely unnerving.

  Suddenly, all the glowing balls grew brighter until a white light was covering everyone’s vision, spreading across the whole city. It was blinding. Leonardo quickly closed his eyelids to prevent any damage to his eyes. He hoped others would be smart enough to do the same.

  When he could see through his eyelids that it was no longer bright, he opened his eyes once again. The whole city had bcked out. No lights in sight. But there was something suspicious. Multiple moving bodies, one every building and filling the ground as well.

  That’s when he heard a scream. Morac’s scream.

  He swivelled around, searching for Morac’s body in the darkness. He could make out a weird looking creature. It was a dark grey colour. Skinny. It stood on four legs, and it had webbed feet. And it’s eyes. Its eyes haunted Leonardo until the day he died. Big red eyes, basically glowing in the dark. It looked like a monster.

  And the monster was attacking Morac.

  Everyone in the restaurant was screaming and running in random directions. He tried to push his way through the crowd, but the force of everyone was pushing him farther and farther away. He could only watch as this monster used its sharp teeth to rip one of Morac’s fingers off his hand. Morac let out many blood curdling screams as the monster bit various parts of his body. Blood gushed out, making a pool around him.

  Morac’s screams died down to a quiet whimper. The monster took one st bite. A big bite at his neck. Leonardo closed his eyes for a couple seconds, wishing that that was all just a horrible nightmare. He opened them again to see Morac’s dead body.

  His eyes were gzed over and his body limp. A horrendous amount of blood filled the area around him. A chunk of his neck was missing, eaten by the monster. Leonardo couldn’t bear to look anymore. He turned and ran.

  He ran out the restaurant, using all his strength to push ahead of the people that were blocking his way. He could hear more screams from behind him. The monster must have not been satisfied with just Morac.

  Leonardo felt his heart clench with guilt for just leaving Morac’s body behind, but all he could focus was on one thing.

  He needed to get to safety. And fast.