Is Anybody Out there? Posted January 3, 2014
Anybody? Hello? My name is Melissa Haskins and I live in New York City. I’ve set up this blog to try and make contact. If there’s anyone out there reading this, please just comment or email or even call. My cell number is right there in my profile on the side of the page. Please just let me know you’re alive. I can’t be the only one left.
Can’t Stop There Posted January 3, 2014
One little post on a new blog doesn’t accomplish much, does it? You need post regularly to get up those pageviews!
Oh, God. I lol’ed, but it came out like screams. I can’t do that anymore.
I’m Back Posted January 3, 2014
Sorry I was gone so long. After the screaming incident it took me about an hour to stop shaking. Then I had to walk away from my computer for about three hours to stop myself from taking the whole website down, because I don’t want to do what I’m going to do next: I’m going to tell my story. I’d rather do almost anything else, but it’s what I need to do. If I keep this inside, I’ll go crazy (-er). Besides, I can’t think of anything else, so I can’t talk about anything else, and I need to keep talking. If there’s anybody reading this, feel free to put your story in the comments. I’m sure that all of our stories will be pretty similar, but that doesn’t matter. This is what people do when things like this happen: we get together and share our stories. And the fact we’re on the internet only makes that more important. It’s like the CB radios in The Stand, shouting out into the empty and trying to make a connection.
Breaker, breaker, good buddy, come on back.
New Year’s Day Posted January 3, 2014
I woke up beside my boyfriend with a pounding headache, a throbbing bladder, and aches in places I didn’t know I could ache.
With a groan, I rolled out of bed so I could go to the bathroom and empty out all of the booze (Lewis Grizzard once wrote that a professional drinker drinks every night of the year except New Year’s Eve, because that’s Amateur Night. Steve and I might not be professional drinkers, but no one can say that we didn’t make the most of amateur night). On the way, I found myself having trouble walking. Go ahead and snicker, it means exactly what you think it means.
After I finished taking care of business (more ouch…we must have been out of our minds last night), I returned to bed. Steve was still asleep – so deep he was still curled up facing the wall, instead of sprawled to fill the empty space like he usually did when I got up first. I wanted nothing more than to join him, but it was already past noon, and we both hated missing too much of the day, even for hangovers.
“Steve? Steve, baby – ” I nudged him. Not even a groan. How much did we drink last night?
That brought me up short. How much did we drink last night? I couldn’t remember, and that was weird. I’d been pretty seriously drunk in my day (for an amateur), but I’d never had a blackout. All I could remember after maybe ten o’clock – and we weren’t really drinking that hard at that point – was something about…bells. Tolling bells, counting down to Midnight.
I shuddered, then wondered why. Counting down to Midnight was a good thing on New Year’s Eve, wasn’t it?
Enough with the weird thoughts. I must still be drunk. I nudged Steve again, then harder and more until finally I’m shaking him. “Steve? Steve, wake up, honey, it’s after noon. Steve? Steve? Steve?” By then, I was shaking him hard and he was kind of flopping around and I already knew why he wouldn’t wake up but I didn’t stop shaking because I must be wrong it’s just not possible, he’s only twenty-eight.
“Baby, wake up, baby please!” I finally pulled him far enough toward me that he flopped over on his back, and that’s when I started to scream.
His eyes were wide open and blank, staring at the ceiling. Worse, the pillow was all bloody where his head had been. My first thought was Alcohol poisoning, but there was no puke anywhere – not even on his breath – and besides, alcohol poisoning doesn’t make your ears bleed, does it?
I didn’t know CPR, not really – we’d had a few days on it in Health Class in High School, but that was nine years ago – so I didn’t even try. I just snatched up my cell and dialed 911.
Nothing. No answer. It just rang and rang and rang.
How is that possible? They don’t have holidays off at 911.
After two or three tries, I gave up on that and tried calling a hospital directly. But I didn’t know any hospital numbers, so I dialed 411, then 0.
Nothing.
That was when I ran out into the hallway and started pounding on doors, screaming for help. I started with Mrs. Rosario, who’s a nurse at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt.
Nothing. No one.
Finally, I just ran out into the street, barefoot and still in my PJs, screaming for help from someone, anyone, my boyfriend was dead.
Which was when I saw the New Year’s revelers, lining the sidewalks of Manhattan, still tricked out in their party clothes and hats and streamers and sparkles, lying still on the ground with dried trickles of blood coming from their ears.
And that’s where I lose track of myself for a little while. All I can remember after that point is running through the slushy streets of New York, trying to find anyone alive. That, and something about the sound of bells.
The Rest of The Story Posted January 3, 2014
The next few hours are just…lost. I still have no idea what I did between the moment I started running and the time I woke up in a stranger’s apartment.
Well, that’s not completely true. There are a few fragments of memory, like bits of pottery dug up at an archaeological dig:
Running through streets, calling out for somebody, anybody, until my bare feet felt like dead, frozen fish slapping the pavement.
Calling friends and family, boss and co-workers, the guy I met in a bar and dated once back before I met Steve, my bank’s emergency number for if you get your card stolen – anything to make contact. Nothing.
Then I remember this…feeling. A pressure, like a vast weight hanging over my head or a storm front moving in, charging the air with something thick and dark and heavy and smothering, something that burned on the skin instead of tingled. Something that rang like bells instead of thundered.
That drove me inside when January in New York couldn’t. Some instinct told me that being outside under that pressure, that sound, the curtain of darkness advancing down Fifth Avenue, was the worst thing in the world, far worse than entering a dwelling of the dead. I was a mouse in a hawk’s shadow, and I took whatever shelter I could.
Anybody else know what I’m talking about? What was that thing? Could it have had something to do with
Because I Am Going To Finish This Posted January 3, 2014
I spent the next two days on autopilot: eating, sleeping, and going to somebody else’s bathroom. Mostly sleeping. Too grief-stricken, too depressed, too shocked to even muster the initiative to commit suicide. It wasn’t until today that I started thinking again.
And that’s all I have the strength for today. Time to do some more of that sleeping. If there’s anybody reading this, don’t be a stranger. The comments function is there for a reason.
Small Blessings Posted January 4, 2014
Thank all the gods that the owner of this place was out when…whatever…happened. The bodies don’t seem to be decaying (even the ones that are inside out of the cold, like the ones in the other apartments where I scavenge for food), so it’s not dangerous to have them around, but I don’t think I could handle sharing my living space with a corpse, nor could I handle hauling one away (Steve is still lying in our bed in the East Village. I haven’t been back, God forgive me, I can’t go back). Maybe that’s why I chose this place. I honestly don’t remember.
What I Tried First Posted January 4, 2014
When I first got my mind back, I picked right up where I left off in looking for signs of other human life. The TV was still working, but most of the channels were showing nothing but blank and black. They must’ve run out of things to broadcast when the preprogrammed programs ran out.
TV stations that had been showing live coverage – news, mostly – showed silent, stationary pictures: cameras pointed unblinkingly into streets and squares full of people lying still on the ground. Some of the pictures – from cameras lying on the ground beside fallen operators – were close enough to see that these people had bled from their ears, like…like Ste…like Steve had.
Judging from the vast crowds, and where those crowds had fallen (i.e. Times Square or the local equivalent), it seemed like whatever had happened, had happened at or around midnight.
But what was it? What had happened? I strained to remember, but all that came through was making frantic, desperate love with Steve – not the kind of cheerful, drunken sloppiness I would have expected – and the sound of bells. Those damn bells, counting down to Midnight.
What I Tried Next Posted January 4, 2014
After I gave up on the TV, I started surfing the Internet. It didn’t help. In fact, if you surfed around a bit before you found this blog, you know that it was weird and creepy. I actually finished more frightened than I started.
I’d hoped to find some signs of human activity – updated blogs (or new ones set up for the purpose of reaching out to anyone who might be out there – like this one), updated websites, a lone reporter posting stories at some newspaper, hell, even a new picture or clip at a porn site.
I expected to find nothing. Which would have sent me into a daylong frenzy of searching, followed by a sobbing collapse into bed at about three in the morning.
Instead I found…
All of the religious sites were filled with statements from leaders and true believers – from the Pope to the Dalai Lama to the guy with the badly-spelled homepage covered with glittery crosses – denouncing their old, false gods and welcoming the coming of the True Gods. Atheist and freethinker pages either had similar renunciations, they were covered with incoherent prophecies and prayers, or they were down entirely. 404 Error.
Although there was that one that was nothing but “I Was Wrong” hundreds of times.
The head article at every science site was about the hopelessness and worthlessness of all human endeavor, and how all of our knowledge amounted to less than nothing before the Truth that had finally been revealed to us.
On the news sites, every single story had something to do with the Gods From Beyond the Stars. And I do mean Every. Single. Story. On the front page, Obama and other world leaders surrendered en masse to the Heralds of Silence. In the Lifestyle section, Lindsay Lohan was the chosen bride of the Lord of Sounding Bells (a name that gave me chills as I thought of New Year’s Eve’s Midnight bells, and the strange dark thing passing overhead).
And not one of those sites – not one – had been updated any later than 11:59, 12/31/2013.
Thoughts During Another Night Alone Posted January 4, 2014
I’m starting to wonder about the things that aren’t happening as much as the things that are. Why aren’t the utilities shutting down? Why is there still electricity and gas and water and power and TV and Internet?
Why aren’t there fires raging out of control because someone left a gas burner on?
By all rights, I should be fleeing the City and heading south just to survive (though I have to say: fuck that Stephen-King-The Stand-Larry-Underwood-walks-through-the-Lincoln-Tunnel bullshit. If it comes to that, I’m heading for the George Washington Bridge). Who’s keeping everything running?
(Untitled) Posted January 5, 2014
Contact!
There’s someone out there!
I’m not alone oh thank you God I’m not alone!
Thank you God thank you thank you thank you!
Not Alone Posted January 5, 2014
I’m a bit calmer now – a bit – but I’m still more excited and happy than I’ve ever been in my life, ever imagined I could be. If Steve and I had married, if I’d had babies, if I’d knocked Stephen King off the bestseller lists, I don’t think there would have been a single moment in my life as pure-and-shining joyous as the moment I realized there was someone else out there.
I found his blog.
I was just surfing aimlessly, trying to find something that wasn’t…”tainted” is the only word that I can think of that even comes close…when I found it.
He’d set up a webcam, and he was ranting into it nonstop, the kind of craziness you’d expect from someone who’d woken up to find himself on the endangered species list:
“The Heralds of Silence have come down among us, ringing their great bells to announce the coming doom! But I knew they were coming, my friends! I knew they were coming! Their arrival was foretold in the Tarot from the moment the Tower fell and the Fool Reversed came to rule!”
And on. And on. In the same vein for hours.
He was dirty and unkempt and he sounded like a street preacher and I watched him for hours. I only moved from that spot once in that time, because my need to pee was absolutely desperate. I would’ve skipped meals and slept in that chair if he hadn’t eventually gotten tired.
But I guess all that ranting must be fatiguing. After hour six or so, he wrapped it up and started sounding remarkably normal – which was, of course, a bit disturbing in its own right:
“That’s all for today, children,” he said. “Come back tomorrow for another sermon. Don’t worry about me not being here – ”
Which I was.
“It’s a new world with a new Truth, and I need to tell it just as much as you need to hear it. Until then, this is Town Crier, signing off.”
Turning This Into A Fan Page Now… Posted January 5, 2014
About an hour after he signed off, Town Crier posted a recording of today’s “sermon”, for any who’d came in late or missed it, just like any televangelist. Here’s a link.
I watched it up until the point where I came in, then turned it off. I need to get some sleep. As much as I want to watch that precious bit of contact over and over again all night long, I don’t want to oversleep and miss the beginning of tomorrow’s “broadcast”. Let a recording mess up my chance of hearing a real, live human voice? Not going to happen.
And maybe by tomorrow, I’ll get over the terrible fear that it was all a hallucination in my loneliness-crazed brain, and actually send a comment to him or something (like you all should be doing!). Let him – and any other people who might be out there – know I’m here.
(Untitled) Posted January 6, 2014
Can’t sleep. Still shaking. The bells. The bells came back.
Deep in the night, the bells started to sound again. I hid under someone else’s blankets in someone else’s bed until they passed on.
Epiphany Posted January 6, 2014
Town Crier didn’t waste a moment before getting right down to business this morning. Much to my dismay, his precious, scraggly-bearded face was only onscreen for a moment before he said:
“Today, my children the Town Crier has some visual aids for you.”
He fiddled with something offscreen, and suddenly I was looking at a satellite’s-eye view of the Earth. I almost started crying, but then his voice came back:
“Behold, my children, the gold and silver stolen from the Pharaohs of the old world! What you see before you is the view United States military spy satellite. Yes! Back in the days before the Heralds of Silence came down from the stars, this very satellite or one just like it was watching you at all hours of the day! But now…”
I stopped hearing him. Everything narrowed to what I was seeing on the screen.
I’d heard that those satellites could watch you pick your nose from orbit, but apparently this one was zoomed way out. I could see the whole Earth spinning before me like a blue ball on black velvet.
And there was….something…moving across the surface of that blue ball. Something that rivaled weather systems for size. It was iron gray and featureless and looked maybe like some sort of crab with too many legs…but no, it wasn’t walking but drifting…like a balloon, or a jellyfish. Then, just as I was watching this immense, nameless thing drift across the face of North America, I saw another starting to come over the North Pole.
And that was when Town Crier said “That isn’t for your eyes to see, my children,” and the picture zoomed in sharply.
Over the next few hours, I watched the Earth roll by beneath me – beneath the satellite. I watched cities burn and saw whole countries on the night side that had gone dark. Whatever was keeping everything going all smooth and shipshape in the part of the world that I and the Town Crier seemed to share apparently wasn’t working everywhere (but why was it working anywhere?).
Sometimes Town Crier would zoom all the way in, and I learned that yes, it’s true – you could see someone pick their nose from orbit…if anyone was moving.
I spent a lot of those hours crying, barely hearing the words of Town Crier’s “sermon”, even as I let myself be comforted by the sound of his voice.
I don’t know how long it went on like that, with me so lulled by the cadence of Town Crier’s speech that I didn’t hear what he was actually saying, but when I finally surfaced, I was in for a shock:
“…behold, my brothers and sisters, the Unrighteous laid out before you in their rows and their heaps! They were not worthy of the blessings that the Heralds of Silence have rained down on we, the chosen! They were not worthy of the new Eden – ”
He was gloating!
I know there’s a long religious tradition of the Elect gloating over the Damned, from Thomas Aquinas to the Left Behind novels, but in the end those don’t add up to much more than nasty revenge fantasies: “You’ll be sorry you didn’t listen to me!” We were looking at real, actual, lying-on-the-ground-all-around-us dead people, and he was gloating!
Then, just as Town Crier was reaching Full Gloat – something about the weeds of the old world withering away so the new world could grow strong and bear fruit – the bells started to sound again.
As I felt the approaching pressure, the growing charge in the air, I felt same old mouse-in-the-hawk’s-shadow fear, and I briefly wondered if I had time to run for the basement, or if I should just dive under the bed.
I was just getting up to try for the basement when I noticed something: the sound of the bells wasn’t just coming from outside – approaching from downtown, as best I could tell – but from the computer! The bells were sounding on Town Crier’s end as well!
It was too much of a coincidence. As big as those things were, it was a bigger world, and there couldn’t be that many. I’d seen (well, glimpsed) the two, then there’d been a few shadows that I thought were a bit too sharp-edged to be clouds, and that was it.
Town Crier was in New York.
“Uh, children, I’m afraid Town Crier is going to have to cut today’s sermon short. As you can hear, the Heralds are passing over me in all their glory, and not even Moses could look upon the face of God. Be back tomorrow, same bat time, same bat channel.”
And with that he was gone. Just a blog, and yesterday’s recording.
Town Crier was in New York, and he was a coward.
And didn’t that say something?
This was his new Eden? Fine. Adam and Eve were able to look upon the face of their God. It was when they became afraid to that Eden was lost. Hell, even Moses got a look at God’s backside.
With that, my feet were moving again. But not toward the basement this time. Toward the roof. Where I am now.
Because I remember now. I remember why Steven and I had made love so fiercely that last night, when the bells were counting down to midnight and we left each other bruised and aching and raw.
We’d seen it coming…heard it coming…and instead of hiding or committing suicide or taking refuge in denial and running out to welcome the Heralds as our Space Brothers come down to meet us – options others had chosen – we decided to meet the End on our own terms.
I’m looking up at the sky now, and I see…something…coming in over the city, coming up from downtown.
It’s huge. Impossibly huge. And dark, gleaming like dull metal and unpolished quartz. It has spines – or maybe they’re limbs, legs or tentacles – as long as skyscrapers, and those limbs are twisting and writhing, lethargic and febrile like a drifting jellyfish or an insect twitching in the Sun. And whenever those limbs touch, they chime.
Maybe I’ll be destroyed when it passes over me this time. I still have no idea why I was spared before. Or maybe it’ll just pass on by, taking no notice of something as tiny and insignificant as me.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. I’ve already made my choice: hide in my mouse hole like Town Crier, or remember Steve and be brave.
Either way, I’m going to get a good, long look at God’s backside before I go out.