I had a weird dream, or rather series of dreams one night. In one I was

Cyric from the Forgotten Realms, I was being burnt alive but I escaped

and ran away from the mob to a market place which had appeared in

one of the (real) parks near my house.

I ran in and hid in a used books tent, pretending to be browsing the

books, when I saw a large (A3 size) book. It looked like a Jules Verne

adventure story and was called 'The Day the Sky Opened', on the cover

was a picture of a frozen landscape with an arctic scientist cowering from

a death's head hovering in the clouds, breathing ice.

I wanted to read it but I had been spotted and had to run out the back

flap of the tent.

After a bit more of this chaos, I woke up, and was inspired, I was sick of

those books where the heroes save the world in the nick of time.

So this time, they don't.

The Day the Sky Opened.

It was easily the biggest disaster planet Earth ever suffered, the fact that it

was the last might explain the confidence of that statement.

It had began in a top-secret English base in the arctic, on the north pole,

desolate and isolated, the only victims of the numerous nuclear explosions

were several unfortunate seabirds and a polar bear, so far.

It was on one such test that everything went wrong.

The bomb that was set off was more potent than any other ever made,

more potent even than any in the United States' arsenal.

It was sent up, into the clouds, through the clouds and into the

stratosphere, where it was detonated.

The test was only meant for the scientists to estimate the fallout caused

by the weapon, so as to check how far allied troops should be from the

point of explosion in order to be safe from radiation poisoning.

Good intentions are the road to hell.

The bomb exploded alright, and the force of it blew all clouds for miles

around away.

The smoke from the bomb, however, hung eerily still in the dawn light, it's

amphorous shape tinted gold as it shifted from shape to shape, before

forming itself into a hideous, grinning skull.

The stunned scientists, who had rushed out in amazement to watch this

most impossible of results, began arguing over what could have caused to

shape in the clouds.

Then the death's head's jaw opened and their voices were halted forever.

No one knew of the spreading threat, the explosion has scrambled all

communication before it was too late.

It was a Newfoundland lighthouse who first reported the slowly moving

tidal wave of solid cold moving relentlessly south. It resembled, they said,

a huge bank of cloud, white as bone, sliding like a monstrous slug over

the landscape.

On the other side of the world, in Siberia, an outpost reported the same

wave of cold.

In Iceland, Canada, Lapland, everywhere it was the same, a huge bank

of frozen cloud was inching unstoppably south.

They were told to stay where they were, wrap up warm, and keep them

updated on the progress of this phenomenon.

Helicopters were sent to observe, none returned, the moment they had

approached the cloud like glacier the blood in the pilot's veins froze, they

crashed to the ground and the metal itself shattered like thin ice once the

deathly cloud reached them.

Satellites above the North pole spotted and sent back pictures of the

death's head still floating, exhaling it's deadly cold.

Probes were sent to try and either destroy the ethereal skull or learn

enough about it that it could be stopped. All shattered before they came

within a mile of the death's head due to the frozen vapours.

It became obvious that the cold emitting from the death's head was

colder even that absolute zero, the lowest temperature known.

Panics began as the ice cloud drifted inexorably south, swallowing houses,

towns and people in it's perfect white embrace and leaving it to an

unknown fate (none had been able to pierce the snowy shroud that lay

across the frozen landscape).

As it became apparent that no amount of effort could slow the ice cloud,

bunkers began to be built at the earth's equator, bunkers for those that

could afford it.

These were then filled with enough food to feed the entire third world,

top of the range equipment and the rich and famous.

Everyone else did the best they could, storing food, hiding in cellars when

the death cloud approached.

They died anyway, the icy air seeping into even the most closely guarded

hiding place.

The cloud drifted further and further south, until it had nowhere else to

go, overlapping itself as it covered the whole of the world.

The rich survived for a while, but the inability to go up for air finished

their lived, first it became stuffy in the protective bunkers; many were

killed in order to 'free up' air for more important members.

They were the lucky ones.

Those left spent their final hours gasping for the barest wisp of oxygen,

until one man, nearly unconscious from asphyxiation, wrenched open the

doors holding the cold at bay.

Death was much swifter that way.

Earth was now a lifeless ice ball, floating though space, it slowly

expanded as more and more cold slid through the gaping jaws of the

death's head.

The moon was drawn in by the increased gravity, and swallowed up.

The other planets began edging towards earth, dragged out of their orbits

by the swelling ball of ice.

The sun flared and was swallowed.

Up to date, forty stars and their solar systems have been engulfed by the

cold, now the size of a small nebula.

No one really knows what happened on earth, but the Gkl^T'z, an

intelligent race of insects from a planet in the Scorpio constellation have

an explanation. That the bomb somehow tore a hole into a parallel

universe, a universe much, much colder than this one.

The is no way to mend the rent, any more than one can stitch up a black

hole.

It probable, the Gkl^T'z reason, that the cold draw from that universe

has caused the deaths of billions of beings who depended on the cold to

live.

They're also having to leave their world in order to avoid being frozen.

Let's just say that Earth isn't exactly popular at the moment.

It scared me to write this, not a pretty story at all. I made the English

responsible for the disaster because having Americans doing it is cliché.

Skull Bearer.