The poorly lit lobby had a slippery floor, and I skidded along it like a novice ice skater. A few other night-class students were straggling behind but had vanished as I stepped toward the front stairwell and set foot into the warm, dark night. Then a voice, a raspy one, rang out from somewhere nearby.

“Do you have the time?” the stranger inquired.

“8:30,” I started to say, lifting my head from my phone. But I paused when I saw nothing, no one around. I was surrounded by only stairs and dark air. The whole college campus facing me was practically pitch black. Which brought to mind the recent hubbub concerning campus safety. The recent student and campus council meetings full of finger-pointing, arm-waving arguments and shoulder-shrugging bureaucrats quoting legalese but promising progress.

But I hadn’t yet noticed much progress. Aside from those new yellowy floodlights encircling the school president’s mansion ... Or that crisp white LED lighting illuminating the football team’s practice field...

“Do you have the time?” the mysterious voice repeated. But again I didn’t see anyone. Envenomed with fear that I might be getting stalked by ghosts, or YouTube pranksters, and wanting nothing to do with either, I decided to bolt, walked briskly down the remaining stairs and zipped off into the hot, soupy night.

Padding down the dark pavement, however, I stopped in my tracks when I spotted something peculiar- a curiously large pack of housecats about 10 paces ahead. The cats clumped, congregating, and occupying a whole square of sidewalk by my building.

Then I felt a presence, heard panoramic mewing. Looking to my right, then to my left, I saw cats coming forth from all sides. Cats crawling up from sewers, from bushes, from under parked cars. Cats leaping down from trees. Paws pounding the pavement. The cats scurrying up beside me. The cats picking up pace as I stepped forward. My brisk walk quickening into a trot.

More and more cats appeared. All were housecats yet of varying breeds, different coats, colors of fur. The cats’ numbers steadily increasing. So much so that they began crowding me, inhibiting my movement. Soon enough, the entirety of the street and sidewalk was cluttered. Cluttered with cats.

It was then that the rain started. But it wasn’t a drizzle. Or a light film of water. It was something else entirely.

Cats.

Cats were literally falling from the sky. Like a ticker tape parade. As if the cats were feathers, falling from the sky, that’s how lightly they descended before landing perfectly on all four paws.

The cats coming from the sky, the cats creeping, crowding the sidewalk, all the animals appeared absent of ulterior incentive. Their faces were ciphers. They were simply being cats. They were pawing at each other, rubbing up against my legs. None, though, were purring and none were hissing.

Paralyzed, unable to continue through this flash flood of felines, I froze in place and marveled as the hordes of cats formed a stream, not unlike an actual flash flood, the massive surge of cats branching off toward the president’s mansion.

The wave of cats, like a storm surge, washed into and under, soon smothered the bright yellow halo encircling the mansion ... The river of cats gushing, flooding into the mansion’s front doors, the doors open as outstretched arms...