Still Working on My Novel

April 2026 short story of the month

When an ancient tome goes missing from the rare book room of the Library of Congress, biblical plagues befall Washington D.C.

When it all began, no one really noticed because it was three in the morning.

It was supposed to be dark.

But, by 9 a.m. people were confused. The sky was pitch black. The sun wasn’t peeking out at all. It looked like night. It wasn’t cloud cover though. It was something else.

News stations were reporting on it within minutes, though they didn’t really know what to say other than it’s still dark. Weird, right?!

All around the world, the sun was rising and setting like it was supposed to, except for in the Eastern Time Zone. In that one part of the world, it was dark as night for three straight days.

On the first day, most people found it amusing and assumed it was some sort of elaborate prank. By day two, their amusement was gone. Everyone wanted to find someone to blame, and they wanted it “fixed.” On the third morning of no sunlight, people were truly panicking.

On the fourth day, the sun was up again. There was a collective sigh of relief, but it was short lived. The locusts arrived just after ten in the morning. Again, they were contained to the Eastern Time Zone. They devoured every shred of plant life in the zone.

Noah was walking along with his hands pushed deep into his pockets. He glanced up. There was a swarm of reporters talking frantically over one another. He glanced behind them and a smirk spread across his face.

They were reporting on the complete and utter devastation of the cherry blossom trees. The locusts had devoured all plant life in the zone, nothing remained.

All was going exactly as he’d hoped. They didn’t know it at the time, but the next day there would be a break in the plagues. Noah had to work. He didn’t have time to perform the ritual and pull a twelve-hour shift.

The time between plagues would give some false hope. Noah couldn’t wait for their hopes to be crushed.

One Week Before the Days of Darkness

Noah was sure he’d found what he was looking for. Now he just needed to make a swap. No one would know. The plan was simple and elegant and would never come back to him because no one even knew the truth. No one except him.

Noah was a practicing witch or warlock or mage, whatever you wanted to call it. In 2026 there were few who were still capable of using magic, though many wished they could. Noah didn’t have a coven or a mentor or any of that hokum. He had to learn how to use his powers on his own and over the years, he’d managed to fall deeper and deeper into the well of black magic.

His plan was fool proof. He had his appointment at the Library of Congress after careful planning. The goal was to get his hands on a journal by Lieutenant Governor William Stoughton. It was kept in the rare book collection. In order to prevent suspicion, he was going to replace it with a copy.

Or what would appear to be a copy. In reality, it was only a copy of the parts of the book that could be seen by the naked eye.

The book was actually a book of shadow, made by Stoughton during the Salem witch trials. Stoughton presided over the trials, all while being an actual witch. His journals were historical artifacts because of the information about the trials as well as Stoughton’s personal thoughts.

But there were spells on the pages and other magical information described within, but only if you knew how to look. Noah needed the book. There was a spell within the pages that existed nowhere else.

It was calling to him. It wanted to be let out of the pages. Spells were sometimes like that. They wanted to be used and set out into the world.

This spell would hopefully bring about destruction and chaos, and if Noah could pull it off, the effects would be long lasting.

Noah loved chaos. He fed off it. Chaos and discomfort were the two states of being that he thought the world needed more of.

He needn’t have worried. The swap went smoothly. No one suspected a thing. He had the book and the next morning he started the spells.

Shortly thereafter, the three days of night descended. Noah’s intention was to drop the plagues on D.C., but the spell had a life of its own and the whole time zone was being affected.

Noah didn’t mind that. More chaos and more pain were okay with him.

Day Six

The morning after the day of no plagues, the sky filled with storm clouds. The whole area was grey and overcast. Thunder rumbled and lightning streaked across the sky for hours before the rain actually started, followed shortly thereafter by record breaking hail.

Not only was the hail the largest ever on record, but it lasted for nearly six hours. It broke windows, destroyed property, and brought everything in the Eastern Time Zone to a standstill.

Once it finally stopped hailing, the damages were astronomical, plus there was the added problem of trying to get things up and running again when it was under layers and layers of ice.

Day Seven

The Potomac River turned to blood.

Finally, after everything, they started to report about the plagues being connected. And someone finally made the connection that they were some of the biblical plagues.

By this point, Noah was obsessed with finishing his spell. There was only one problem.

The more plagues he summoned into existence, the more energy it took to begin the next one. At first, a tiny spark from a match got the spell going. Then he’d used a roaring fire in his back yard, and the last one, the river of blood, had required him to go to a substation. He was worried he was going to get caught.

However, with the amount of chaos, everyone was distracted. No one had even been around while he worked his spell in the middle of the day at the substation closest to his house.

Day Eight

Noah started his day by traveling to the nearest nuclear power plant. He didn’t get there till nearly dinner time. Despite everything, there were guards, and it was being watched.

Luckily for him, he didn’t need to go inside, just near enough to draw power from the plant.

This was going to be his moment. If this spell worked, the rest of the plagues would spawn into being, including the death of the firstborn.

Noah was the third son of a third son of a third son. There was power in numbers, and it was this cosmic lottery that had granted Noah his magical ability.

He found a place to draw his spell circle and began his chant. He felt the moment when his power melded with the energy of the power plant. The spell took over from there.

Before he had a chance to get to safety, they started to appear. They were everywhere. Frogs. Frogs. And, more frogs.

There was no way the news could ignore the biblical plague connection now.

After the frogs, the next two plagues followed within hours. Swarms and swarms of gnats and flies arrived, filling the sky with buzzing.

Day Nine

The world was ending. At least it seemed that way to anyone living in the Eastern Time Zone.

There was talk about building a fence along the border of the time zone and sending the military to keep anyone from leaving.

No one knew what to do, and the remaining plagues were death of livestock, death of the first borns, and boils.

The news was reporting on it and trying to predict when they thought the plagues might appear.

Noah was locked away in his apartment watching it all unravel and loving every second of it.