"You and I"

 

If you're reading this, I'm sorry to scare you, though chances are that if your day has been anything like mine--let's be honest, you've probably pissed your pants at least once. At this point, I'm not ashamed. Because if you're reading this, there's a small chance that you and I are the last two people alive in the world.

There's nobody else here. No one is answering the phone, and the websites I visit haven't changed since yesterday. I have a pedometer. It tells me that I walked eight miles through my town today. Eight empty miles, covered without anyone else coming outside to answer the door or silence the car alarms that I kept setting off or see why there was some crazy girl walking down the middle of the street with a baseball bat and a chef's knife, crying until her lungs were in shreds.

What you see above is the one thing I've found that might be a clue. Someone left that camera there in the middle of the sidewalk. The view screen or whatever it's called was open on the other side. I think someone recorded video.

I have the camera with me. For what it's worth, I left a note on the door of the house next to where I found it. I'm not a total savage--not yet, anyway. But if you're out there, please let me know. I don't care where in the world you are; when I take a look at whatever's on the memory card, I don't want to be alone.  

"Shadows Are Just Ghosts with Really Bad Manners"

 

That was what my niece told me, anyway. Of course, she doesn't like it when anyone gets too close to her; that was what I thought about when she spoke. Hugs have long been an issue between her and her mom.

Just for a laugh, though, I glanced down at my shadow while my niece and I were out walking today and said, "You know, for as long as you've been hanging around, it would be nice if you at least said 'hi.'"

In response, my shadow leaped away. I saw it dart beneath a bush and couldn't find it after that.

The sun kept shining the rest of the afternoon, but I was stuck shadowless beneath it. My niece gave me a hug at one point. That same moment, I saw her shadow shrug. I'd never felt so cold or, despite the absence of the ghost that had followed me my whole life, so haunted.

"I Think I Met My Reaper"

 

At one point when I was close to home and almost finished with my walk, I heard the sound of twigs snapping behind me. There was no one else nearby that I could see, so I kept walking. But then I heard a voice, shaky and somewhat distant, say, "Nice night for a walk, isn't it?"

I turned around. A middle-aged man in a t-shirt and shorts was riding a bike in the deepening dark, down the street I had just crossed. He was headed south, traveling from my right to my left, and only tossed me a look as he pedaled.

"It is," I called, even as I imagined walls rising up from the ground to stand between us. "Enjoy it."

The man continued pedaling, so I started to step backwards. Then, once he was almost almost out of sight, I heard him say, "Enjoy it. You never know how long it's going to last." He was gone after that, and I was left to hope that he had been talking about the weather.

"We Now Have Air"

 

You'd think that we all would have run for the store when we saw the sign, but we didn't. We couldn't risk it. Because what if we got there, and there was nothing left on the shelf?

"Where the Wind Takes Me"

 

The would-be traveler had just left her parents' house, ready to go wherever the wind took her, when she glanced up and saw, dangling in the breeze, a pair tennis shoes hanging from an electrical wire.

"Maybe I'll just see where the road takes me to start," she told herself, "at least until I get out of the subdivision." She bent down and double-knotted her shoelaces for good measure before heading off.

"Just a Trim"

 

More and more people had been walking beneath the spruce tree ever since she got her lower branches cut. It bothered her. Other perennials in the area tried to be encouraging, telling her that the trim simply made her, in a very literal way, much easier to approach. And to be fair, the tree did find herself listening to the people talk as they passed, hearing them speak with delight about how nice it was, now that spring had arrived and homeowners had begun maintaining their landscaping in earnest, to be able to enjoy all the greenery around them. The spruce tree merely wished that she could remind these people that she was the same tree that had been rooted there for people's enjoyment for years, just with a new cut, and that she was as green as she had ever been, which only made sense, as she was an evergreen. But the people continued to walk by and comment on all the lovely things they had never seen before, and the tree, being a tree, said nothing.