The streets are empty.

I had this weird dream, and then I woke up. I got breakfast. Turned on my television, and no news. Checked my phone and no new videos. Checked my messages and no notifications. Checked outside. Knocked on my neighbor's door. Drove to town. Nobody at work. Nobody behind the gas station counter. Nobody stocking shelves. Nobody not smiling at you, nobody walking by, nobody operating shops or having a breakdown on the sidewalk or asking for money. Nobody bagging your groceries. Nobody's groceries to bag. Nobody's here. I've broken into homes. Called the police. Called the FBI Helpline. Called my boss. Called my girlfriend. Nobody's picking up.

It's like some elaborate prank the world's decided to play on me. On a random day, everyone's going to disappear, and we're not going to tell this random guy about it. I don't know if it's that there was some gigantic announcement and maybe I missed it, or I just wasn't really paying attention when some angels descended from the sky and took everyone by the armpits up into the air and away from me. If there was anything, I'd probably hear about it from my friends or my email, maybe. Social media. My phone. It still goes, still spitting up information and videos and things to catch my attention, but nobody is tracking it anymore.

The water is still running. The first thing I did this morning was take a shower, and while I don't know when everyone left, I've turned on the tap a couple times after finding out, and it still works. I've got buckets full. I spent the afternoon draining my neighbor's pool and now I'm funneling the water from the tap into it. The power's still on. Everything still works, but nobody is here. I think I still might be dreaming, but I've read the clocks. I know the time. The lines of my palm don't shift. It probably clearly spells out my unfortunate future, but I can't read them, so I can't be panicked by it. I can't dread it, mostly because I don't know how to read palms.

I'm taking regular showers until my time runs out. Once in the morning. Don't flush the toilets. Preserve the A/C and heater for winter; leave the windows open. I'm saving water, stocking nonperishables. I can't find any keys nearby. I've ransacked beds. People's wallets and belongings are gone. It's like they packed all their stuff into a suitcase and left in the middle of the night. Well, okay, they didn't take their clothes, so they didn't pack it in a suitcase, you don't just throw your wallet and keys in a suitcase. If they took their most valuables, then it would probably be more like they ran out of their house in the middle of the night because it was on fire. A gigantic house-fire on Earth, and I'm sitting here in the smoldering remains.

I kind of thought of scenarios just like this before. They passed occasionally, while I was face-down drunk in a ditch. 'What if the world ended? What if there was some gigantic apocalypse and everyone died or hated each other and it was just me, alone?' At least, in my head, there was some overture to the apocalypse; some grand, elaborate opening where you could feel the appropriate amount of dread and repentance. Some zombie disease riddling the Earth, carried by bug infestations and worms that wriggled deep into our heads and decayed our brains into soft soup that craved bloodshed and brains. Or maybe God would come down and leave all of us to writhe in pillars of salt, each grain rubbing together and festering in the rotting wound of our damned planet. Maybe we'd all turn to dust in the face of nuclear warfare, parts bigger than us moving in a catastrophic tango. You'd feel the heat of the bombs on your face before your existence was captured in a shadow right behind you. You'd hear the trumpets of Heaven. You'd feel your consciousness slipping away from you until you didn't know you were supposed to be scared of losing yourself.

But everything is quiet. I didn't realize how noisy it was until I stopped and really listened. I've strained my ears for miles and there's nothing. The wind is the only sound, rustling my papers on the desk. It's a prolonged, quiet death. Which means I have to prepare for each stage of the corpse decaying appropriately. This is rigor mortis: my shock setting in, restricting my movement, binding my muscles in statuesque posture, a taxidermied idiot.

There's probably something else I should be doing, but I think I'm still in shock. I've been staring at the wall for hours, writing down thoughts in case they escape me. Things someone else needs to do but me; the current me, the me that's sitting and looking at white paint like an idiot. What are the people who aren't here doing? Every time I think about it, I get this burning feeling in the back of my head that sears and sizzles, so I stop thinking about it, but then I keep thinking about it. The stains on my windowsill refract stars of negative space on my ceiling when I lay on my bed with the blinds open. I haven't opened the blinds for years except to clean them. Everything is dusty, like I just invaded the house of someone who used to live here and now I'm lying in their bed, staring at their ceiling, looking at their stars. Their stars are a darker gray than the moonlight.

It is 2139 right now. I'm gonna try to sleep. My alarm is set for 0700 tomorrow, but I don't know if I'll still have power by then.