I’m writing again?!

I wanted to try something a little different, seeing as this is a blog all about writing and books and a little bit of everything in between. I’ve been working on the beginning stages of a short story for a little while now and doing my best to get all of the ideas down. Writing is harder than it seems, especially when you have the tendency to second guess yourself every time you finish a paragraph. If only I could furiously and excitedly type out everything running through my head BEFORE the urge to go back and edit overtakes me.

It’s been a few years since I’ve shared anything more than the brief poems I like to write about my observations of the world. Creative writing workshops in college cracked open my shell and showed me why I shouldn’t be afraid of sharing my writing with other people. A lot of them aren’t going to interpret your words in the same way or they might even have a suggestion that sends you on a different course altogether for the better. This short story was born from a sudden thought I had while daydreaming, which I often do, and it became lodged in my brain. What would happen to the world if people started disappearing? What if they went to sleep on place and woke up another? And how would this change the way we live?

You could probably call it science fiction, which I’ve considered to be an intimidating genre to me. This is a rough and jagged draft with no edits, so be kind or don’t bother saying a damn thing. Here is a little preview of my new short story; if you like it share it with someone or leave a comment.

The Vanished

It started suddenly on a winter night with a story on the ticker scrolling through news headlines at the bottom of the television, repeating the same sentences every 30 seconds. The GDP is plummeting toward lows not seen since the Great Depression, US military hero released after 8 months held captive, Delirious man stumbles out of a remote stretch of wilderness riddled with puzzling symptoms. 

At the beginning, no one noticed the last line out of place. I remember it clearly, that night seven months ago, where snow dusted every inch of the world visible beyond my living room window. The cloud smudged sky was shrouded in an eery glow, the way every winter night looks in the midwest, refusing to be cast into near total darkness. I drew the curtains closed and let myself drift off to sleep on the couch with the low hum of the news anchor’s voice buzzing in the background. 

Soft morning sunlight worked its way in through the gap where the curtains didn’t quite meet, pulling me out of a jumbled up dream. I fought the grogginess, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes with the backs of my hands until the world was a bit more clear. Charlie, my orange tabby, wedged his way up onto the windowsill, his fur smashed against the foggy window pane. A different news anchor mouthed a string of words I couldn’t understand with the volume turned down low, so I rummaged around for the remote in the couch cushions, squinting to read the headlines moving across the bottom the screen. The man from the forest had been taken to a hospital where his condition remained stable, other than a fog of confusion hanging over him. Experts had been called in for further examination, leaving local authorities in an anxious holding pattern. 

Later that morning, my mom called, asking if I’d been following the news. The unidentified man from the woods had vanished from his hospital bed. Police detail stationed outside of his room would reveal nothing other than the situation had been turned over to the FBI. By the afternoon, a fuzzy surveillance video from the hospital had been leaked onto the internet by an anonymous source. I resisted the urge to open the video, convincing myself it must be doctored like the terrorist execution videos from a time when I was much younger. Boys would sneak onto their family computers when everyone was asleep to watch them out of morbid curiosity. I guess you could say I finally opened one of the dozens of links found scrolling through my Facebook feed for the same reason. I clicked play and watched the seconds tick by as a man lay on his back staring at the ceiling blankly, covered with a thin, white blanket. I watched and watched until suddenly I was looking at an empty hospital room, sheets undisturbed and a heart monitor flat lining on the screen. 

I scrubbed the video back, sure I had blinked at the wrong moment or watched the time stamp a fraction too long and missed the man exiting his room. But no one had seen him leave; not the nurses on the night shift or the officer sitting just outside his door all night. Was I going to be one of those gullible people who fell for a deep fake video doctored just right? I watched a few seconds longer as the video cut to another camera angled to show the view from the other side of the door. A chill prickled across my skin, raising the hair on my arm as I shut my laptop forcefully. Life went on as usual after a few days, and it was weeks before the incident with the stranger from the woods strayed back onto my radar. 

When police responded to the husband’s frantic call his wife’s car was still sitting in the driveway. Her phone rested on the end table next to the couch where it seemed she’d been taking a nap, or so they assumed. Nothing on her phone pointed to any leads regarding her sudden absence, and her husband maintained there was nothing beyond the normal tension in their relationship. He was questioned, for hours, neighbors were interviewed about what they may have seen; in the end, the police labeled her a runaway, as if it were an everyday occurrence for women to leave their children without a trace. Her husband did an interview with CNN a week later, pleading for anyone with information or leads to come forward. He appeared as if he hadn’t slept in days; a five o’clock shadow spread across his soft jaw and hues of purple spread out over the skin beneath his eyes.

A few days after his interview, news broke of a train derailment somewhere in Pennsylvania. After blowing through a stop at a platform along its usual route, the train took a curve too fast and rolled off the tracks. Dozens were injured, a few twisted, lifeless bodies were found just beyond the wreckage, ejected through the shattered windows. The train operator was nowhere to be found beneath the crushed metal and wreckage. Some theorized he fled, despite the insistence of medical professionals he would either be critically injured or spread somewhere among the dead. Reports began to trickle in like this at first, until they steamrolled in like an avalanche.