The Night the Sky Exploded

I believe this was back in 2009, but this is a story that takes place in the very middle of the night. Normally, I'm the kind of person who goes to sleep extremely early. However, that was the night I turned nocturnal for most of it.

As I was sleeping soundly, I suddenly felt a door shut and dismissed it as just minor. Seconds later, my best friend, Ace, calls me at 1am yelling at the top of his lungs.

"What do you want?" I say as I'm waking up.

"It's the end of the world! There was this big explosion, and the sky is on fire!"

"If it were the end of the world, why the hell would you wake me up?" I replied.

"You got to believe me! There's this big ball of fire, and it's a mess everywhere. The sky is burning up!" he continued.

If I were awake, I would have noticed something was odd about this. Not because of the big fireball burning in the sky, but the fact that he was speaking clearly. For you see, my best friend stutters often when he speaks. His level of fear was so intense, he didn't stutter a single time. But sleepy me didn't notice it.

"Go look at the window," he said.

I stood up and walked towards it. "I will bet nobody is outside," I said as I opened the window.

"Odd..."

"What?" he said.

"There's people pointing at the sky."

I walked out of the house and stood in the middle of the street as I looked up at the sky, realizing there was a giant fireball up there.

"The sky is on fire. Who knew?" I said, oblivious to the situation. And right there, I woke up.

What I think my face looked like when I discovered the fireball.

That's when I realized what was going on. I quickly hung up on my friend to check up on everyone else and make sure they were fine. Not many answered, but my buddy Johnny did pick up.

"Go see the sky," I said.

"Why?"

"It's on fire! You gotta see this!"

"I don't believe you," he replied.

"Would I call you in the middle of the night to tell you the sky is on fire just to get some laughs? I'm serious."

He stepped out of the house, keeping silent for a few seconds. When all of a sudden I hear him taking a large gasp on the phone.

"I stayed behind!" he yelled, thinking he got left behind in the rapture.

"It's not the rapture, you fool," I said. "There's been an explosion and I'm just making sure everyone's fine."

The real cause of that night's "Armageddon."

He hung up as I heard him begin to yell in paranoia. Turns out, there was an explosion at an oil refinery nearby and the entire area woke up due to the massive blast. But of course, none of us knew that right away.

As for me, I spent the rest of the night calming both friends. Both thought it was the end of the world, and I had to convince them otherwise. What a night it was...