I didn’t see many people at all, and those I did see were either old men (a pair playing checkers outside of a barbershop) or children (a trio of boys and one girl playing with a frisbee in the tiny park at the center of the town square). That by itself wasn’t so strange. The really isolated small towns like this were often dead during parts of the day, and around here people were probably home getting ready for dinner.

What was strange were the sunglasses. I had seen the pair of old men first, and their large, wraparound sunglasses were comically big but not outside the realm of fashion crimes I had seen committed by the elderly in the past. Besides, my working theory was that once you got past a certain age, you earned the right to not give a fuck anymore. The men had just looked at me as I passed, and while they didn’t return my wave, I’d just suppressed a small laugh and went on.

I was still looking for an open restaurant or a decent-looking hotel when I found myself traveling around the town square. The kids were out there playing normally enough, but…they all had the same sunglasses on too.

My first reaction was to look up at the sky. Was there an eclipse or something that I didn’t know about? But no, the sky looked normal, and while it was growing darker, that was due to the lateness of the hour, not some astronomical event. I felt a twinge in my belly at the strangeness of it all, but I tried to ignore it. I was tired and hungry, and I couldn’t afford to get too easily weirded out when by my guesstimate the next closest town was nearly two hours away.

Leaving the town square behind, I sighed with relief when I found a moderately cute bed and breakfast the next street over. The sign out front said there was a vacancy, and while I doubted they could give me anything for dinner, I figured I could get a soft bed and good directions to a local diner or something. Parking my car in the small gravel lot behind the house, I went up to the screened-in back door that had a sign above it saying “Guest Entrance”. I felt a bit awkward ringing a stranger’s doorbell, business or not, and had to force myself to wait until an older woman shuffled out onto the porch and opened the door.

“Hey there, honey. What can I do for you?”

I could feel the words stuck in my throat. The lady seemed pleasant enough, but she was wearing the same fucking sunglasses as the rest. What was going on here?