If We Weren't Alone

I was never meant to exist. Since I was a kid I’ve always believed that to be true.

I never really felt I belonged here on earth. Loneliness was just par for the course. Even in groups, a small part of me would always feel cold inside, like something was wrong. A puzzle piece stuck in the wrong box that didn’t quite fit with the others.

So when I was running to a home that had been turned to rubble on that fateful day the sky started raining fire, being the only person left around didn’t scare me. At first I searched for my parents and found no trace. Then I ran to nearby houses, some of which were perfectly unharmed, and felt a creep up my spine to find no one. Not even bodies.

There was no evacuation that I had known of, it all happened so fast. In the hours following after banging on every door on my block, I found an open door, abandoned like the rest, and dialed 911, only to get a dial tone on the other end.

With my house gone, looting other people's houses seemed reasonable. I took a backpack with water and food with me into the city, a few blocks out of my way. Not that staying the night there was the plan. There was no plan other than to get help but the only thing I found was debris.

I screamed for help, I cried and threw up. I even made a weak attempt at digging through the rubble for survivors but didn’t find any traces of life. Few places remained intact. The grocery store, the bank, the local pool, and the high school. But the meteors that had crashed landed from the sky destroyed pretty much everything else.

Now, a few weeks later I’ve gotten pretty used to things. I moved into one of my neighbor's houses. It’s pretty nice, damage-free. The family that lived there were borderline doomsday preppers. Not enough to make people concerned but enough that people in the neighborhood would laugh whenever the husband came home with a new survival kit in the backseat.

So it was more than move-in ready when I got there.

The first couple of days were rough. I mostly cried or sat numbly in the living room reading magazines. The TV didn’t work, all that came up was static, the same with the radio and phones. The Internet was down as well.

It was lucky the grocery store survived. I stocked up on as much as I could fit in the house during week two, pretty much clearing the place out. I should be good for a while. Eventually, I figure I’ll have to get out of town to find food. That is if there aren’t others outside of this city who have already cleaned everywhere out. That’s something that I had originally planned to do was leave the city to see if there were others, but it seemed safer to wait a bit. Maybe I was just hoping my loved ones would suddenly re-appear. I’m not sure.

The lights had started to flicker. I had figured this was coming, assuming there was no one to run the electric plants. I had been keeping them off during the day but at night I was too scared to leave them all off. Until last week when I didn’t have a choice anymore. I wasn’t even getting static anymore from the tv or phones, they were just silent. Without anyone around my fear isn’t being all alone. It’s what if I’m not.

I start to sleep during the day when I can, nighttime is always too deadly silent to sleep. There aren’t even any animals now. I think the fires and ash scared them off. I barred the doors and windows with wood from a bookshelf I pulled apart from the garage and kept myself locked in. Food was okay, I hardly eat nowadays. Water is what I had to worry about. It shut off in the faucet last week. I had a few cases of water, juice, and soon to be spoiled milk in the fridge, but I couldn't avoid the outside forever.

Depression had started to set in early on, paranoid feelings and anxiety a bit later. By week three I was kind of a wreck. I talked to myself a lot then, just to keep my sanity. I read most days. I had to cover the mirrors because I started to look scary to myself. I found an old game boy tucked in a closet somewhere with some battery life and used that to keep my sanity for a while until it died at some point in the early morning.

I had thrown the toy against the wall, so frustrated that it too had abandoned me. It didn’t break but the sound startled me. I had taken over the master bedroom as my own space. I had been thinking about isolating myself to just this room once everything in the fridge down the hall was gone. It was just getting too scary to wander around the empty house. I was having nightmares and daydreams about humanoid, demon-like, creatures following me. Shadows across the room start to look like people and would make me jump out of my skin.

Paranoia was probably to be expected. But I wasn’t lonely I don’t think. Reverse that. I was lonely. I had been lonely my whole life. But I wasn’t upset that I was lonely, I just missed everyone. My parents mostly. I try not to dwell on it.

Tonight, I light some  candles in my room like every night and start skimming over a book, only half paying attention. At first, I thought I had started to hallucinate, but it happened a few times more before I jolt upright in bed. There’s a dog barking outside the front door.

I had seen birds in the weeks before, a few squirrels maybe. But no pets like cats or dogs. I figured one must have stuck around and just now was figuring out where all the food was. I take a candle with me to the main room, trying to be quiet and listen. The barking stopped but I could hear something on the other side of the door. Slowly I press closer, trying to get a better listen. Silence hung in the air for a couple of seconds before the doorknob jiggles. I lurch back and fall hard on the ground as whatever was on the other side knocked loudly.

“Please, I’m alone out here!” a male voice cries out. My heart is pounding in my chest and tears trickle down my face. Was this a trap? A joke? A hallucination? Was it really another human being on the other side of that door or one of my demon nightmares? The dog barks again. I cover my mouth with my hands and stand as quietly as possible. The stranger knocks again. “Please, is there anyone in there?” I step into the kitchen to grab a knife, the biggest one I could find. I grip it tight in my fist and stepped over to the door to see through the peephole.

“What do you want?” I croak out, my voice sounding so unfamiliar to me. The guy on the other side of the door breathes out with relief and ran his hands through his hair, the golden retriever beside him is sniffing the door. “So I’m not the only one here! I’m- I’m Andreas, I’m from the next town over. I thought I was all alone,” My grip on the knife starts to weaken. So there are others still alive. “What do you want?” I demand again.

“Please I just need some food and water, then if you want me gone I’ll move on,” I unlock the door to peak out. He doesn’t force his way in, just gives me a small smile. I study him for a moment, wondering if this was some trick and he was about to kill me, or if he was an alien disguised as a human looking for another host.

His dog comes up to me, tail flicking back and forth happily. I figure they didn’t have dogs on mars and open the door all the way.

“How did you find me?” I ask while he and his dog are settled in the living room with some food and water. He points to the window. “I could tell the place was boarded up, and I didn’t think the house looked like it was abandoned before all this. Maggie and I had been scoping the place out for the last couple days,” He points to his dog. Days? “I never noticed,” I muse thinking about how under normal circumstances how creepy that would be.

He had looked creepier outside with nothing but shadows on his face. Now in candlelight, his features were softer. His wavy hair is tied up into a dark bun. Light facial hair had started to grow around his chin. I could tell he was about the same age as me.

He turns to me with soft eyes, “Thank you for letting us in, I’m sure we must’ve freaked you out…” I nod and sit on the chair opposite of him, watching as he sips on the water I gave him. He had already scarfed down the canned corn I had to spare. All the food in the fridge was rancid by now.

“So, what happened to you? I mean, how did you…?” He asks leaning forward.

I pull the sleeve for my shirt over my hands, the air was getting colder every night. “I was walking-- well, running, more like, home from school and this part of town had already been destroyed, I found it as is. No one was around.”

“Yeah, same here. I was waiting at the bus stop when the meteors started falling and ran for it. My apartment building started getting hit just as I got there. I couldn’t get ahold of my parents, nothing,” He scratches his dog behind her ears. “She was the only one I found when I got there. She was outside with her leash on like my dad had been walking her,”

“Why did you come this way?”

“I figured maybe in town something would be left...then I saw your house and-”

“This isn’t my house, my house is down the street, the one with the giant rock in it,” Andreas shrugs, “I mean, it’s your house now, right?”

“I guess so…” It still felt wrong though. Maggie wonders over to me and sniffs my hands and feet. “It must be nice to have her around, huh?” I run my fingers through her fur as she sits patiently on top of my feet, looking up at me innocently like she wasn’t holding me hostage. Andreas nods “Yeah, it kept me from losing my mind I think,”

I wiggle my feet out from under her and get up to take his cup and empty can of corn. “What about you?” The words come out of his mouth strained as he stretches. I toss his cup in the sink where I’ve been putting the other dirty dishes that won’t probably be done anytime soon. Not until there’s enough water to spare. “What about me?”

“Sanity-wise, how have you been holding up the last couple weeks,” I shrug, feeling that chill up my spine when I turn back around to him. “Okay, a little jumpy, but I think alright,” I watch him as he struggles not to yawn. “Where have you been sleeping?” I ask. “Down at the park, on the benches during the day-time, when I can,” He turns around to face me, resting his chin on the top of the couch. “I guess I better get out of your hair, huh?” I shake my head before thinking. “If you want I’m not using the couch. You can stay here tonight,” One night wouldn’t kill anyone, besides the bedroom has a lock so it’s not like I wouldn’t be safe at least until morning. His face lights up “That would be perfect, thank you,”

It wasn’t one night though. Turns out, maybe I did mind being lonely. After the first night, I woke up to a bowl of dry granola and a note saying to head to the grocery store once I finished. It took some self-convincing, but I got the courage to buck up and walk there, my eyes jumping around the entire way.

When I pry my way in through the disabled doors Andreas flys by me on the back of a shopping cart, full of supplies. “Good morning!” He calls, Maggie barks and chases after him. “Morning,” I slip the coat I brought off my shoulders and toss it on the front counter, with the leaves the color they are, I thought it’d be cooler out. He skids to a halt beside me. “I figured I’d help you shop since you helped me out last night,” I look through the cart, finding chips, chocolate, dried fruits, and canned food. At the bottom, he had a couple cases of water bottles. “The freezer stuff is mostly still good, I’m guessing they have a generator here, so if you would want some meat or ice-cream-'' My eyes dart to the back of the store where the ice cream coolers are. “I’m going to say that look is a yes, come on!” He pumps the ground with one foot on the cart and zips off.

The best kinds of shopping trips are the ones where you don’t have to pay for anything. I think that’s going to be my new motto. Andreas is like a breath of fresh air after being alone for so long. He’s surprisingly cheerful about everything. We had a very deep conversation about whether aliens are to blame for everything while we sat with our backs to the freezer doors, eating pints of ice cream with our fingers like animals.

We came to an agreement that aliens would have to be to blame. “I mean, they left us here. So my guess is they came to take away all intelligent life forms and said ‘Nah, not them,’ when they got to us,” “Woooow,” I muse, picking at a chunk of ice cream on the lid of my pint. “I mean, honestly though, the moon was hit by an asteroid, right?” I ask. He shrugs. “I don’t know, I mean there's obviously space debris everywhere, and I saw something hit the moon...but I feel like things would be a lot worse if that were true,” 

“It’s August. It wouldn’t be 95 degrees in August if things were normal,” He shrugs. “It’s been getting warmer and warmer and colder and colder every year,” My turn to shrug. “I don’t know. Somethings up,” He snorts and wipes his hands on his jeans. “No kidding,” He stands up and I follow him, waving Maggie over from wherever she was sniffing.

We had filled a couple of carts full of stuff to take with us. “We could come back in a bit to grab the rest of that water on the shelf if you want,”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” I start pushing my cart up towards the front of the store and park it next to the doors that Andreas has to help me pry open. “Oh, my coat, one sec,” I mentioned on the way out. I jog back in for it, Andreas holding the doors.

The counter at the front was empty, so I searched around on the ground before checking the other registrars to see if I had mixed it up. “Can you find it?” Andreas asks. I shake my head. “I left it right there,”

“I know I watched you,” He helps me look for a couple more seconds before a terrible feeling in my stomach kicks up. “Hey, we should go,”

“Why? We’ll find it, it probably fell in a weird spot or something. Did you grab it when we headed to the freezers?”

“Andreas we should leave,”

“It’s just a missing coat it doesn’t mean-” I grab his arm and point to the back offices. There's a dark tinted window on the side and through it, I can see my coat hanging on a rack. It didn’t walk there it’s self. Quietly he realizes how odd this whole thing is and agrees we should get out.

We start to head for the doors, Maggie waiting outside for us. When a crackling sound from above makes us pick up the pace. “Attention shoppers,” an overly friendly voice coos “Will the customer who forgot their coat please come to the offices at the front of the store? We have it waiting for you,” We dash out the doors, grabbing one of the carts on the way.

“I’ve seen enough horror movies to know that that’s not right,” Andreas mutters pushing the cart while running beside me. Tears were streaming down my face, I’m not sure if it was from the hot wind in my face from running or from what just happened.

Someone was trying to lure us away from each other. Not actively enough to make me feel endangered at the time, but enough to make me never want to go back there. And when we went to my block, I knew it was from what just happened, because the front door is kicked in and the place is literally torn apart, with large gashes in the walls and furniture. Maggie was barking like crazy, but after scanning the house and using knives for protection, we found no one was inside.

A couple  things were made abundantly clear to me that day. One was that for whatever reason, the two of us were being violently hunted, and two, that we were not alone.