The Returned

The library book sat quietly among my rations, a silent passenger in the new world. All the same, it screamed at me. I tried to gently remind myself that no one could possibly care if the book went overdue, because there was no one left alive to care. Such norms had died out with humanity. That proved a futile effort when I was immediately struck by the obvious retort. I was alive. I would care.

Introspection didn't help.

Although I was perfectly comfortable scavenging from the carrion of pharmacies and supermarkets, the book had somehow morphed into a looming shadow on the horizon of my new life. The feverish obsession it created was disturbing to me, twice over, because I had recognized the irony. I suppose I eventually forgave myself for that madness, given its context. At least enough to sleep at night.

The world had taken less than a week to end. Or maybe that's just how it seemed to me, and if I were only privileged enough to see the dark machinations which had led to this society of ghosts, I would find myself stunned by its aeons of planning. All I knew was that it seemed like something that only magic could bring about. On February 15th—the day after Valentine's—people began vanishing. Only to appear hours later, elsewhere.

Elsewhere, in the nude, and very much dead.

Like the final thrashes of an animal fighting to survive, civilization immediately erupted into chaos. Had the end times begun slower, over years instead of days, then maybe there wouldn't be such a panic. Something about boiling frogs. Instead, people tend to notice when a billion others suddenly disappear, as if whisked away by Penn, Teller, Copperfield, and every other magician on Earth, all acting in concert. They tend to do more than notice when—just as suddenly, if not more so—a stranger's naked cadaver appears in their bathroom or on the roof of their moving sedan.

Suffice it to say, no one really knew how it happened, and there was no checking Google for answers.

After the rapture—or whatever it was—I occasionally caught myself counting bodies. I kept thinking that there were fewer than there should be, as if any at all made sense. Finally, I rationalized that some of those who returned must have done so over the oceans, or in the middle of deserts. Scattered at random, rather than settled into towns and cities as they once were.

Maybe that's why the book had demanded such a prominent place in my mind; To spare me from brooding on the precise nature of magical deaths. Ruminating on the banal wasn't obviously better than the supernatural, however.

Although it was more difficult, I mostly traveled by night. As my own existence testified, not everyone had been claimed by the vanishing, and those who remained were often driven by more twisted obsessions than returning a book to its rightful place. Some even welcomed the apocalypse, finding a new license for depravity in the dead cities. Staring down at my all too scarce supplies—always too scarce—I once again questioned the significance of my quest. It didn't matter, but somehow it was the only thing that mattered.

The library was deeper into the city's heart, and I had deliberately chosen to keep to the suburbs. Less so for any practical reason than because of their familiarity. Walking out beneath the piercing silhouettes of the skyscrapers downtown, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was always being watched by someone from on high. I would need to overcome that dread if I were to put the book back from where I had taken it.

Picking up my burden, I briefly flipped through its pages. The subtle aroma, which every book seemed to possess, wafted up to fill my senses. The text itself was notably uninteresting. I took a deep breath, closed it, and began my journey.

It didn't take long to reach the border of that place which I dreaded. Awhile before sunset—a time which had become my new morning—the skyline had melted into those megalith structures of concrete and steel, each jealously pining for the orange and violet clouds above. In the early hours of the evening light, the inner city was lonely and oppressive. Though not quite lonely enough.

I was startled by a loud crack that echoed through the downtown streets. With the way it reverberated around, it sounded as though it had come from every direction. I could feel my mind reeling in terror, desperately straining to grasp onto any more benign explanation it could muster. Fireworks. It was only fireworks. Some excitable soul hungry for the mostly harmless flashes of light and flame, which were previously denied him.

Just fireworks, blazing magnificently in the darkness.

Tightening the grip on my heavy backpack, I continued on while nervously peering about. In a way, it was easier to navigate downtown. The streets were organized into an obvious grid pattern, somewhat unlike the modern mazes of suburbia. The mess of empty cars strewn about between the buildings was much less systematic. I found myself unsettled by the fact that certain streets were almost completely empty, even if they paralleled ones that were crowded out by traffic. It gave them the same eerie sensation of a school or shopping mall, long after closing; Empty and unfulfilled in its constructed purpose.

Traveling as cautiously as I could, it was still a few hours longer before my gaze finally settled on to the library. The building felt larger than I had remembered it, looming over me as I passed through its doors. The interior was appropriately quiet. There would be no stern hushing in the years to come.

It was not enough to merely set the book down on a desk and be done with it. The knowledge that no librarian would eventually file it away in its proper place weighed too heavily on my mind. So instead, I went to the index, and looked up where the book belonged. The tall silent shelves were clearly labeled, making my task somewhat easier.

Then something broke the silence.

It was a wet fleshy clapping, harmonized with a series of audible grunts; Intimately familiar, but alien in this place. Lunatic curiosity trumped fear, and I peered down through the corridor of shelves. A man writhed in ecstasy, buried between the alabaster thighs of an intact corpse. In those gruesome moments, the significance of the vanishing commanded my attention in a way that it hadn't before. I lingered on the reality that I might at any point be instantly snatched up into oblivion. Borrowed for some unknown purpose and returned to Earth later, stripped down and far displaced from home. If it happened to me, would I end up as a meal for rats or fish? Or would I be like this, desecrated as someone's revelry?

His head turned towards me.

Somehow I knew that he could see me clearly in the gloom, but his broken stare seemed apathetic rather than alarmed or threatening. I swallowed hard. Then, without looking back, I continued on through the library to finish my task. My heart pounded in my chest as I listened carefully for the sound of pursuant footfalls, but they never came.

Eventually I found what I was looking for, marked by an open space. As I slid the book in to fill the void, my eyes drifted slightly, noting several other copies along either side. Still, the weight lifted from me. Absolved by the ritual gesture, I left that forlorn house of knowledge—some of it sinister in its nature—and returned to life in the dying world.