Chapter 1 – Chap 1

Christ these lessons are boring.

Not that I focus on them, anything the teacher tells us goes through one ear and out the other.

My name is Mathew, I guess you can call me the loner of our grade I have some friend’s, but I barely see them. One of them is a social genius who is friends with anyone and the other just got put under witness protection. In terms of hobbies, I like to browse Reddit. It’s a hobby that wouldn’t really attract anyone. The only reason I have friends is that the ones I have are kind and felt bad that I had to sit by myself.

It probably had something to do with my death stares or bad resting face, but I cannot control that when my home life is fucked.

I’m also 17 and in my final year of high school, something bizarre happened recently. A friend of mine, His name is Jordan. During the winter break, he was going through a rough break-up and decided to go hiking by himself. That by itself was weird but he is his own person, ever since he came back he looked on the edge and was looking at every turn. We were walking home one day and I noticed a guy trailing us, he was hard to notice but through my years of browsing Reddit, I learned how to catch a guy stalking you.

I told Jordan and he gave a weird look, when we parted the guy was no longer following me so I assumed he was following Jordan. The next few mornings, I’m told that Jordan has been placed in witness protection after a student tried to hire a hitman on him.

Something didn’t feel right about this, the scare of having your only friend get nearly killed was bad enough. Now I have a bad feeling, something about this situation didn’t feel right like there was something more.

I began to drift off as I fell asleep. My eyes grew heavy as I rested my head against the cold desk.

When I awoke.

I was in a different place, I was no longer at a desk instead I was lying on the hard wooden floor of the gym. I stood up from the floor and observed my surroundings. I was on the western side of the gym and on the eastern side was Tim. He is my other friend, he was a redhead and extremely nice.

Then I noticed Andrew, a stoner kid in the year below.

I realized they were looking at the northern wall of the gym.

“Guys?” I croaked out.

Tim turned his eye and looked at me and quickly diverted his shocked expression to the northern wall. I turned to that side of the wall and what I saw.

Managed to make a pit in my stomach.

Every muscle in my body felt frozen, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

What.

The.

Fuck?

In massive black bold letters that looked like they had been printed onto the wall read these words that will haunt me for as long as I live.

EVERYONE IN THE TOWN IS GONE.

NOBODY OUTSIDE KNOWS YOU ARE HERE.

DO NOT LEAVE THE TOWN.

“This has to be a prank, right?” Andrew was breathless and could barely get any words out.

“You said you fell asleep in your bedroom and now you are somehow here, this can’t be a prank,” Tim stated. “Guys?” I blurted out; I didn’t know what else to say. Tim turned his attention to my paralyzed body.

“Where did you fall asleep?” Tim questioned me, I looked at him and stuttered. “English class” Before Tim could speak any words, We heard Andrew’s footsteps running towards the gym exit. We followed quickly behind him, we smashed through the doors which led to a hallway. At the end was Andrew at the main entrance of the school. It was completely white out of the glass doors.

We heard Andrew slam the glass door open, with us following behind.

We made it to the door and left the school.

We were greeted by the car park, The school itself was the same as always but. Now there was a thick grey fog that was so heavy we couldn’t even see the end of the car park.

I then noticed the lack of sound; the town was completely void of any sounds. To be fair the town was always quiet, but this was different. The sound of cars, people, birds, animals, were all gone.

The town felt so eerie, a sense of dread was now emanating.

What the hell is this? Andrew broke the silence, “We need to check the suburbs, see if anyone is still here.” Before we could oppose the idea Andrew took off, we ran after him. We ran through the car park and heavy fog and soon reached the end of the car park. We could see a few houses up ahead but everything beyond that was a thick fog.

We ran through the streets, Andrew yelling at the houses “Is anyone there?!” We continued navigating our way through the suburbs going straight. Andrew eventually slowed down as we caught up to him and noticed he was completely out of breath.

“Nobody is here Andrew,” Tim said in a saddened tone. An idea came up in my head, If we could go to a highly dense region where everyone goes then we could truly prove that this is real.

I started this and the others agreed, at this point, I was hoping that it was a prank. That this was some large-scale prank that someone would put online.

Despite the fog, we knew our way around town so we could easily navigate through the dense fog. We had decided to go to the main shopping center, everyone goes there on a Friday, so someone must be there.

We stood at the entrance of the shopping center, the silence was still just as eerie and full of dread.

We began walking towards the shopping center.