MicroHorror

Bong… Bong… Bong… Bong… On the twelfth gong of the bell, my ears ring. I awake to the silence of the world. The sky is pewter gray.

Where have the birds gone? Even their nests lie bare. Trees shed their brown leaves coffined in the snow. No squirrels, no bark of dogs. Only the plaintive howl of a blizzard wind. I say to myself, Wake up! Even this is too surreal for dreams. But I am not asleep.

***

The phone ring-tones on the other end, Surely she must be up, muted bells echo into dead quiet. I swig last night’s tepid beer to wash the raunchy taste of stale cigarettes from my mouth. I forego the shave and head for Julie’s.

The country sky is now darker, I see the horizon, and the tall buildings loom out from its own kind of charcoal gray. The valley is full of New Year’s smog hugging ground. There, the cars swarm as ants, seem stuck in yellow amber head to abdomen trailing the sweet asphalt. But as I near, I sense the stillness–cars, trucks, immobile; trains frozen in tracks; barges on the river drift into bridge pylons. I can drive no farther than Fourth and Main. I walk to the nearest car, then to the next, and to yet another. Every driver is mummified, and stiff as crash-test dummies stuck to steering wheels; the passengers, too. People litter sidewalks as fly pupae on spoiled meat.

In downtown stores and high rises, the same scene: the now dead, cocooned and strewn all over the place. I think there must have been an alien invasion. One by one, I see each mummied thing poof as dandelion spores to the wind.

I find Julie, or what used to be her, wrapped in some Styrofoam-like shit. A semblance of her face presses through the smoke gray casket impervious to my touch or my prayers. She disintegrates to gossamer dust.

I am alone, too scared to scream. And my cries would go unheard.

***

The midnight moon falls below stark trees. I sleep again wishing only for her. When I wake, the morning sun is glazed in snow. It glints off the dust of what is left of my world… and Julie. The dead bells chime again; I suppose they toll for me. I hear a voice boom through the wasteland calling me by name saying,

In the beginning, the earth was formless and void. Your generations shall be as countless as the stars and the grains of sand, even the dust beneath your feet. And I shall bring forth a woman for you, and you shall call her Eve.