I woke up in my bedroom. But this is not the world I know. Sort of.
This world is familiar but oh so different.
[author notes: English is not my native language. there might be mistakes]
That day, I woke up in my bedroom at the usual time.
Nothing seemed wrong at first. The sun is up, the smell of breakfast wafted from the kitchen. That's it, if not for the silence.
My house is not located near big street, but there should be some vehicles passing by, people walking their dogs or jogging. Its not that far from the city center after all. Moreover at 8am, no sound at all is odd. Even at midnight, cars and motorcycles would occasionally pass in front of my house. So for the sudden, total dead silence...
Not even the birds are singing.
Did I suddenly went deaf?
But no, I can still hear my own heartbeat, the sound of air when I exhaled and the ticking of the clock on my desk. I can hear it when trying to softly whistling.
I can make sound and hearing it. But there's nobody else making sounds. Nobody turned on the TV for morning news. No footsteps. No banging and clanging pots and pans of others making breakfast.
"What happened?" I whispered to myself.
Starting to get anxious, I got up and trying to investigate. What I found out is---
Well.
This is definitely my house. So, I'm not kidnapped like I assumed. The things are all where they are supposed to be. The only difference is the absence of any living things within except me.
My cat is missing, but his food and water bowls along with his toys are there. If it's only him I can assume he's roaming around outside. The thing is, my family are all absent too. My dad should be working at this time, but my mother and my younger siblings should be at home; with the pandemic, we siblings are studying from home. But none of them are here.
The stove is still warm. It's not long since everyone left. Left without me, and without telling me anything? Or are they vanished? All of their clothing are still there within their respective closets, and no food are missing from the pantry. Their shoes and slippers are still here too.
I went outside and knocked on the neighbors' door. There's no answer. No sounds whatsoever there too. Their door is unlocked. I came in. There's nobody here, and nothing is missing.
I tried turning on their TV. It won't turn on. I opened the fridge, turning on the lamp. The electricity is on. Weird.
I tried the same thing in my house. The result is the same. Everything operated as they should be except for TVs, it seems. Radio I can turn on, but no sound is out. There's only statics.
At this point I figured I was transported into other world or something. Weirdly, I don't feel panic or anything. All I can think is, "finally..."
Maybe I'm dreaming. Maybe I'm dead in the real world, and my consciousness transported here. I found that I don't care much. It's not that I hate the world or even my family, no.
It's just, nowadays, I kept wanting to disappear.
Being the only one not disappear from the world works too. Maybe only I was dropped into this copy of the real world, but I find myself content. Well, I'm just a burden in real world anyway. May as well keep living here where there are nobody to disappoint except myself.
This world I occupy now is really just a copy full of everything except human being and living animals. From what I see, the plants are still exist and growing. Our beta fish is missing from its residence in the aquarium located in the living room, but the shrimps and salmon are present in the freezer. And as I mentioned, my cat is also missing, along with the neighborhood cats that like to hang up in the front yard. I knocked on the other neighbors door without receiving any answer, so I think all of those houses are empty of sentient living things too.
I shrugged. Guess I'm totally alone in this neighborhood, then. Maybe even in this entire world. Good thing I can cook.
And that's how the first day pass. Well, only until the sun went down.
At dusk, suddenly the atmosphere changed. I was at home with all the doors and windows closed as it should be at my household during sun down when I feel something is amiss. Peeking out from the curtain, I find out what was wrong.
Monsters.
They are roaming the streets. Big and small and gigantic, humanoid or animalistic or plant-like, no two of them are identical. They went into houses which I knew were empty, doing who know what. Some climbed into buildings, trees, poles. Others simply walking around like humans strolling in parks.
All of them are terrifying.
Media often pictured some monsters as harmless. There are monsters who are scary, of course, but there also ones who are fluffy, cuddly, and friendly. Those things outside are anything but. My instincts are screaming that those monsters are dangerous and any contact should be avoided.
At the same time, I heard someone--something--trying to open the front door.
It was locked, thankfully. All the doors are locked already. It was routine from my childhood; once the sky start to darken, all the door, gates and windows should be closed, and locked if none are planning on going out again. The problem is, all the lights in the house are on. The sunlight is still somewhat present though, so the lights are not that noticeable yet. This house will be like beacon once the night have truly fallen. All the other buildings in the neighborhood are unhibited and thus, none of their lights are on except those with automatic lights that turned on during sundown.
Turning it off now will just signal those things that someone is here to be hunted.
Shaking, I turned around slowly and crawled into my closet. Trying to control my dear and my breath so nothing will hear me there, I waited.
Unlike in the morning when I first woke up, those monsters are noisy. They groaned and moaned and yelled and screamed, the bigger ones stomping around like behemoth and the biggest ones sent the earth quaking a little. All around there are sounds of something falling or stepped on. I heard the front window smashed and wondering why we never installed trellis on that big a window.
Because they are noisy, it was very noticeable when those monsters left. The world suddenly went dead silent once again once the sun was fully down. I went out of the closet and noticed it was around 7pm.
Peeking out from the curtains, the streets are calm once more. Those monsters are gone but I can't be too sure. I went around the house, flicking all the lights out and checking the locks once again while avoided the front windows. I grabbed a bottle of water, locked my bedroom, and settled once more in my closet.
My phone can be turned on, but there are no signal whatsoever. Good thing I have a ton of ebooks and fanfics saved there.
And that's how I spent the first night.
The noises came back around 5am, the time the sun start to rise. I didn't want to check but save to say those monsters are back. The closet has become cramped around three hours ago but it is safe. I just settled once more to listen without a peep.
They went away around 6, when the dawn breaks. I think it's save to say that those creatures might only roamed when the sun rise and fall, then.
Just to be more sure, I was on high alert the next two days. There's nothing unusual during the day and the night except for the absence of moving, living things. I noticed that while the creatures might destroy things during their roaming schedule, the broken things will return unbroken when they were gone.
A week gone by. I have developed a schedule to stay alive and survive there. Truthfully other than monsters that came every dawn and dusk, my life is content.
Maybe something is wrong with me. I don't really care, not anymore. Maybe if this happened around five years ago, I will be more panicked. But now I just take what I can and roll with it.
Being the only human left in the world is lonely, yes, but I'm never exactly an extrovert either. So I just keep on living my life. As a bonus, being here also erased all the heavy expectations placed upon my shoulders. So forgive me if I'm a bit happier here than I ever was.
Hey, I never claimed myself as the good guy. There's nothing else I can do anyway.
(not that I even try to get out of this world)
That is, until something else come around and change everything.
Or, someone, to be exact.
"Hello," he said. A boy around my age, with brown hair and furred jacket that knocked my door that day. "Didn't think there should be anyone else in this world. Wanna team up?"
__Fin?__
Risa S. Evita
Feb 21, 2021
Written as review of my upcoming novel "Here is Nowhere"
