Nothing Left

You get out of school on a Friday. It’s the last day of school, and it’s hot. The summer had just begun. You're hanging out with some friends at a pizza place. It starts to get into the evening, and you decide you want to go to the mall to meet up with some more friends. You get up with your friends and walk outside the pizza place and you realize something is different. Everything seems empty. You turn around and....your friends are gone. The pizza place is empty. The lights are on, but the place is empty. The smell of the food is still there as if they were still cooking pizza, but there is no one. You start walking through the streets, and everything is empty. All the stores are empty, "But all the stores have their lights on." You say to yourself. But there's not one human around. No sounds of traffic, no sounds of planes, no sounds of birds, nothing. There are no cars on the road, and the parking lot of the movie theater is completely empty. Continuing on through the city, you find yourself at the mall. The mall parking lot is also empty. Panic begins to set in. The sun starts to go down, there are no sounds of crickets or owls, and you can't find your way home. You sit down against a building, stare up into the sky, and close your eyes. 

You awaken in your bed, relieved to find out that it was just a dream. You look through the window and see the neighborhood you grew up in. The sun is rising. You go downstairs, and once you are almost at the last step, you feel like something is off, it's too quiet. You reach the final step and realize that your mom isn't making breakfast. In fact, your mom is gone. So are your parents, your dog, and everything. No TV, no furniture, no pictures on the wall, nothing. Your house is empty. Checking through the window, you can no longer see your neighborhood. You go outside to see there is nothing. You're not in your neighborhood. Your crush's house isn't across the street. There’s no bus stop on the corner, there’s no convenience store at the end of the street. There are no houses, no trees, no street lights, no stop signs, or no power lines. It’s just an endless field. You go back inside and sit on the floor and start to panic. Pressure builds up, and at any moment you could cry. After a few minutes, you decide to figure out what happened. You decide not to cry and stand up accepting the fact that you're in a world with nothing left. You open the basement door and all you see is darkness. You attempt to walk down, but you never progress down the stairs, as when you turn around, the doorway is still right there. You think to yourself, "This is not Super Mario 64." You shut the basement door and think. You try to go back upstairs but you never get any closer to the top. You finally go outside, standing in front of a seemingly endless field. You look around until in one direction you see the tip of a tree. You walk straight in that direction but struggle to get any closer. After walking for many minutes, you turn around to see you are still at your house. You start to panic more but quickly regain yourself. You decide to walk backward. You see your house moving away from you, and after 5 minutes you finally find yourself under a tree. You turn around to see you are in a forest. You turn back around to see your house is gone, and the endless field has turned into an endless forest.

You wander for hours through the forest. It was dark, even though before it was just bright outside. There are no sounds of crickets in the forest either. The only sounds you can hear are the sounds of crushing leaves and twigs below you, and occasionally you hear the sounds of rushing water like there was a brook nearby but you can never get any closer to the sound. You wander for what feels like days until you come upon storm doors in the ground. You enter them, and you are now stuck in a basement. You turn a corner into a hallway. The basement has become a series of dark hallways. You navigate yourself through the hallways, hearing noises that can't be described. You finally notice that the more you panic, the more lost you get. You keep your head clear, and you reach a door and open it. You're back in your house, coming in from the basement door. Your family is sitting on the couch, and your dog comes running up to you. It’s late, so after a shower, you go to bed and wake up the next morning. You come downstairs to see....nothing. An empty house again. You go outside to see the endless field. But this time, you don't see the trees. You go back into your house and think. You stare at the basement door, you open it to see the darkness. With no more options left, you turn around and start walking backward into the basement. You find yourself in the dark hallways again, lost. You try to navigate, remembering to keep calm so you can find your way. You find the storm doors again, you turn around and walk backward through them.

You are now in this small room, with nothing but white marble walls and a door. You walk through the door and walk onto the street. You recognize the street, you turn around and it's....the pizza place again. It's still empty with the lights on, you turn around and you are back in the empty city. Realizing you weren't dreaming before. You start to wonder, but you feel more lost than before. Panic starts to take over and the sun starts setting again. You sit down against the same building as before, and you stare down the empty streets. A tear forms and rolls down your cheek as you realize that everything and everyone has been erased except for you.