BAD AWAKE

By Erin Mann
Quickborn, Germany


Karen awoke suddenly. She sat up with lightening speed and clawed her hands into the sheets. She breathed heavily and her body was covered with sweat. It took her a moment until she understood it had all just been a nightmare that pulled her rapidly from her sleep. A nightmare she forgot when she awoke.

Karen looked about her bedrooms. The morning light began to fill the room through the window whose curtains she had forgot to close the night before. Karen realized she lay alone in her bed. Where was Kyle? She couldn't hear any sound in the apartment nor did she see any gleam of light coming from behind a closed door. However Kyle never turned on the lights at night when went to the bathroom or to fetch a glass of water for himself. Surely Kyle would come back and crawl into bed with her, he was just being quiet trying not to wake her. Karen lay down anew and closed her eyes. .

Time passed by without Kyle returning to bed. Furthermore it was odd that he didn't make the slightest bit of noise, even if he was trying to be quiet. To Karen the silence was unnerving. The was no rush of water from the neighbors taking a bath, no steps could be heard from the stair case or door slamming from other neighbors leaving for work. Outside, no bird sung and no cars passed by the complex. There was complete silence. Suspicious silence. But somehow all of that was interrupted by the shrill signal sound of the alarm clock. Karen opened her eyes. It was almost broad in the room. Still a little drowsy she got out of bed and turned off the alarm clock. Slowly she walked to the bedroom door. .

"Kyle" She called but she did not get an answer back. Karen began to feel uncomfortable. The fact that she didn't get a respond from Kyle and everything around her was utterly silent began to fill her with fear. Urgently she hurried though all the rooms in the apartment, hoping desperately to find Kyle somewhere. However he wasn't anywhere to be found. When Karen woke this morning she noticed that his clothes lay where he'd put them last night, on the chair in the bedroom. Only dressed in his boxers and T-shirt he certainly wouldn't have left the apartment. .

Karen hurried back into the bedroom and put on her clothes. Then hurried out her front door and listened for any noises in the staircase. There was no sound to hear. She saw no one coming or going. Not knowing what else to do she rang the doorbell of her neighbor Mrs. Means. But the old lady did not answer and that was odd because she was always home. Karen ran down the stairs to the second floor and knocking on the doors there. No answer. She did the same to the first floor. She called for Kyle panicking. Yet for all her trouble not one person answered their door. Karen could feel her heart pounding wildly under her breast. What did all this mean? What was happening? .

Confused and filled with fear she left the building and found herself on an absolute deserted street. Still there wasn't a sound anywhere that didn't come from her own two feet. Karen ran around the street corner to Mr. Brady's newsstand. Old Brady opened his business every day before the break of dawn. When she arrived, his newsstand was closed with no one in sight. The near by service station and the supermarket was also deserted. On her way back to her apartment Karen rang the doorbells of every possible house, but there wasn't activity in any of them. Desperate she posted herself in the middle of the street. .

"Hey anybody here? Where are you?!' she screamed as loud as she could and her voice sounded uneasily shrill. Her words echoed between the houses of the empty street. With her hand shivering, Karen stroked away a lock of her blonde hair from her face. .

"It's impossible for all of them to vanish during the night" She murmured to herself. Anything like that wasn't possible. Spontaneously she ran back to the building where she lived and stormed up the stairs to her apartment. Karen felt a touch of panic grabbing her but she drummed into her head to stay cool. It wouldn't help her if she lost her head now. .

Back in the apartment her objective was the telephone in the hall. Karen wanted to call her mother, her girlfriends, or whomever she could reach. Deeply hurt was she to find out the phone was dead. Although considering how this day was progressing, it came as no surprise. Frantically she pressed the cradle again and again but the line stayed dead. Nevertheless Karen shaken by desperation, dialed a number. Of course, it was useless. .

Excited she stumbled forward into the living room, grabbed the remote control that was lying on the sofa table and switched on the TV. Not matter what channel she chose the apparatus only offered her snow and white noise. The radio in the kitchen was just as dead with static or silence. It was everywhere. .

Karen started to tremble. All this couldn't be true. It seemed as if she was the only remaining being in the place. But where have Kyle and everyone else in this town gone too? They just could not have vanished into thin air! And if that's exactly what happened, why was she still here? Karen felt as if these thoughts would drive her crazy any second if she weren't crazy already. A fearful question came to her mind - if no one seemed to be here apart from her, how would it be in the rest of the world? She had to find out. .

She walked back from the kitchen into the hall and took the car keys that were on the bracket near the wardrobe. She hurried her car parked on the street in front of the apartment complex. She quickly got into her car and placed the key into the ignition and turned it slowly. The car started immediately. Karen put the car in gear and drove madly through the empty streets of the small town. She didn't care about the speed limit and would have screamed in jubilation if a cop would flash his light and tell her to pull over. But that didn't happen. .

Karen took the route to Baauville where her mother lived. When the boundary of her own hometowns urban area emerged in front of her she floored the gas petal increasing her speed to almost twice the legal limit. Suddenly a scream of terror dropped from her mouth. Out of nowhere appeared a terrible glaring light. Karen closed her eyes to avoid from being blinded, and instinctively put her hands in front of her face. It became clear to her that the car would go out of control, and any second she would find herself in a ditch, overturn or crash into a tree at the side of the road. Instead there was just a gentle yank. The car stood motionless, the engine no longer running and there was only silence. .

Karen dropped her hands and slowly opened her eyes. She couldn't believe what she was seeing - the car stood on the street in front of her apartment building. Right at the place she's left from a few minutes ago! Karen stated to gasp, low sounds of horror dropping from her mouth. With her hands trembling she started the car anew, ramming the car in front of her as she pulled away. Her tires squealed as she peeled away from the curb going the opposite direction then she did the last time. When she came closer to the urban boundary on the other side of the town, she fully treaded down the accelerator pedal and clawed her fingers to the wheel. The unavoidable happened. From out of nowhere can the glaring light. Because the light was too blinding, Karen closed her eyes but drove on resolutely. There was a gentle yank and the car with the engine turned off, stood in complete silence. Karen tore open her eyes and found herself again in her car before her own apartment building. .

Deeply stirred with panic she once again started the car and raced off towards Beauville with insane speed. But even the fact the she drove the car with full speed couldn't prevent that close to the urban boundary that glaring light consumed her once more. Then there was a gentle yank. .

"No," Karen screamed, " Nooooooooooooo..".

Copyright by author, 1998.