Alone in the Dark

It all changed today.

It began a little after two o'clock. I was sitting on my porch, wind whipping my hair back from my face, head raised towards the sun. And it felt glorious. It felt as if I didn't have a care in the world, like all the bad from my past had been erased from the happiness of that single moment.

Then, I opened my eyes.

The sun looked as if it was dissolving, breaking down right there in the sky, right before my eyes. I stared at it for a moment, the brightness of it like a white hot light bulb, ready to turn supernova and burst.

And that is exactly what it did.

It disintegrated, right in front of my eyes. The glowing light slowly dimming as it turned to night, right there at two in the afternoon. And for a second, I was frozen. I didn't know what I had seen, if I was dreaming and I'll wake up to the morning sun in just a few moments.

And then I realized that I wasn't dreaming. Not in the slightest.

-Journal Entry 1, dated April the Twenty-third, day of The Vanishing

Twenty Days after The Vanishing, somewhere in Northern Ohio

My eyes grow heavy as I look onto the dark streets below. The cold air chills me to the bone, but I know I'm not safe enough to light a fire yet. I clap my hands together to try to get the feeling back into them, but they're frozen beyond belief. S**t. I curse in my head, wishing these people would just stop following me.

Only twenty days after The Vanishing, and people have already gone crazy from the darkness. I had only left my apartment a couple of days ago, and yet as soon as I stepped out onto the dark deserted streets, I knew someone was watching me. And they had been for the past few days. It was getting colder outside, day by day, that much I knew. The power had gone out within the first few days of The Vanishing, and I guess the craziness had grown from there.

I took the pocket knife out of my backpack and flipped the blade out. It shined in the low light, silver glinting off the pale moonlight and shining through the dark. Good thing my dad gave me this. It might come in handy now.

I hear another rustle in the street and peer over the windowsill. Only blackness greets me far below.  I flip my notebook open and turned the pages for the umpteenth time, rereading all of my entries since the beginning of The Vanishing.

Did I even know where I was going anymore? After a few days on the run, I knew that nowhere else had power, and people were doing anything they could to either get more warmth or gather more supplies. And that meant taking what everyone else had. Which is bad for me, since I traveled alone.

I figured I would figure something out along the way, a game plan I could work with and go for. Where else did I have to go?

I lean back against the sill, trying to rest my eyes if only for a moment. Another rustle below. Just five more minutes, and I'll open my eyes to look down. Nothing will be there anyway. But this time, I hear footsteps coming up to the back of the apartment I'm camped in. And before I can even scramble away, grab the knife again, the door bursts open and a weapon is in my face.