The sky is missing.

The sky went missing on a Thursday.

No, the sky did not fall, neither did it just darken ~~~ it actually went missing. A clean, blank absence where blue should have been, like someone had peeled it off and forgotten to put it back. The sun still shone from somewhere, though no one could point to where... Shadows appeared without a source. Birds flew in neat formations across nothing at all.

Yet~~~No one seemed bothered.

At the bakery, Mrs. Halpern dusted sugar over her pastries, glancing occasionally at the empty expanse above the window.

“Supposed to be warm today,” she said, as if she could still read the weather from a sky that wasn’t there.

People lined up for their usual orders, chatting about errands, school plays, and the upcoming town parade. The parade, they said, would be especially beautiful this year ~~~ “with the sky so clear.”

Children played hopscotch on the sidewalk, tossing stones that made no sound when they landed. The chalk squares glowed faintly, though no one remarked on it. A dog barked at the horizon, which flickered like a faulty screen. Its owner tugged the leash and apologized to passersby for the noise.

At noon, the mayor stood on the steps of City Hall to give her weekly address. She spoke cheerfully about infrastructure, community spirit, and the importance of recycling. Behind her, the flagpole cast three different shadows, each pointing in a different direction. No one blinked.

Yet~~~ strangely only one person noticed: a young man named Ellis, who worked at the post office.

He stepped outside during his break, looked up, and felt his stomach lurch violently. The absence above him was too smooth, too deliberate. It wasn’t a cloudless day~~ it was a day without a sky.

He pointed upward. “Doesn’t that bother anyone?”

A woman walking her groceries home smiled politely. “Oh, you know how March is.”

Ellis tried again at work. “The sky is gone,” he whispered to his coworker.

She nodded sympathetically. “Seasonal allergies can make everything look strange.”

By late afternoon, the horizon had begun to curl inward, folding like paper. The sun~~ still source-less, brightened until the streets glowed white. People shielded their eyes but continued their routines: watering gardens, sweeping porches, locking up shops.

Ellis stood in the middle of Main Street, watching the world bend.

“Something is wrong,” he said aloud.

A passing jogger waved. “Have a good night!”

The sky continued to fold, slowly, neatly, as if someone were closing a book.

A smooth, depthless blankness prevailed, like the world had been built inside a room and someone had forgotten to paint the ceiling. Light still came from somewhere, but it had the quality of a refrigerator bulb: too close.

The horizon flickered like a dying fluorescent tube. Still...No one paused.

Ellis, on his coffee break from the post office, stood in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at the blank sky until his eyes watered. The light didn’t hurt - it simply felt too close, as if it were pressing against his pupils from the inside.

He whispered, “This isn’t right.”

A man walking his dog nodded politely. “Weather’s been strange, hasn’t it?”

The dog’s leash hung slack, the animal froze, one paw suspended an inch above the ground. Its tail twitched once every few seconds, like a clock hand. The man tugged the leash, and the dog resumed motion, completing the step it had begun minutes earlier.

Animals always know. Ellis thought as he backed away.

By late evening, the blank sky had almost completely fold inward at the edges. The light pulsed in slow, deliberate beats. Each pulse made the buildings shiver, their outlines blurring for a moment before snapping back into place.

Ellis stopped in the street, heart pounding. “Doesn’t anyone see this?”

The sky folded again, a neat, quiet crease. Ellis hurried home, not knowing what to do.

The town kept moving behind him, perfectly calm, perfectly polite, perfectly wrong.

And the world, lit by a sun that came from nowhere, a sun that creased so ominously... carried on as if nothing at all had changed.