Friday the 13th: The Nocturnis Arc - The Glitching Lights of Noir

 

Friday the 13th: The Nocturnis Arc – First Glimmers into the City the Glitching Lights of Noir

Friday, March 13, 1970: The Glitching Lights of Noir (Expanded)

Barely a month had passed since the strange static whispers had begun to haunt the airwaves of Nocturnis, and already the city seemed to be subtly, unnervingly changing. The perpetual gloom felt thicker, clinging to the rain-slicked streets like a shroud. The vibrant, yet decaying, neon signs that gave Nocturnis its signature noir aesthetic began to exhibit their own unsettling anomalies on this Friday the 13th of March, 1970.

It started subtly. A flicker that lasted a fraction too long. A momentary dimming across an entire block of glowing advertisements, plunging the street into brief pockets of deeper shadow. Then it became more pronounced. Individual letters in towering neon signs would sputter and die, rearranging the intended messages into cryptic, often unsettling fragments. "Welcome" might become "Woe Come," or "Pleasure Palace" could ominously blink as "Pale Lapse." These weren't mere electrical faults; there was a deliberate, almost malicious intelligence to the way the light danced and died.

More disturbingly, some signs began to display symbols that no one recognized. Glyphs that seemed to writhe in the glowing tubes, hinting at forgotten languages or geometries that defied earthly understanding. Faces, fleeting and nightmarish, would momentarily appear within the colored gas, leering out at the rain-soaked pedestrians before vanishing back into the electric hum. The city's artificial lights, once a comforting, if gaudy, presence against the encroaching darkness, now felt like eyes watching, judging, reflecting the unease that was slowly settling over Nocturnis.

Whispers began to circulate amongst the night shift workers – cab drivers, late-night diner staff, and the few brave (or foolish) souls still out on the streets in the early hours. Tales of entire blocks of neon pulsing with an unnatural rhythm, casting the city in sickly, shifting hues of blood red and corpse blue. Stories of signs that seemed to hum with a low, resonant frequency that vibrated in the bones and stirred unpleasant thoughts.

This wasn't the overt terror of a physical manifestation, but a creeping sense of wrongness, a corruption of the familiar. The Glitching Lights of Noir were a visual echo of the static whispers from the radios, another subtle intrusion of the otherworldly into the mundane fabric of Nocturnis. It was as if the city itself was beginning to glitch, revealing the alien code beneath its gritty surface, hinting at a deeper infestation that would only continue to grow in the years to come. The darkness was not just outside; it was beginning to flicker and pulse within the very lights that defined Nocturnis.

Yours for Now Captain Hedges