Novel Workshop
She Looked at Him, and He Felt Warm Sunshine on His Face
A newly published study suggests the Milky Way galaxy could contain alien civilizations, though there’s a strong possibility most of them are already dead.
This is part of a novel, chapter 2. To see all published chapters, go here.
2
It was like a dark dream. Everyone was gone. He was the last to live in the Milky Way. His house was at the top of the road, so he had barely noticed the changes. It had happened gradually, with fewer and fewer people who in the afternoon came home to the neighbourhood from work, from shopping or school.
Up from his porch he had had a perfect view, and he had long thought that everything — or at least most of it — was as it had been before the move had begun.
He was not afraid. No, he said to himself. Not afraid. Just a little uneasy. Mostly because he no longer had his closest neighbours with whom he could talk. Like the Larsen family two houses further down. One day he had discovered that they were gone. Had probably been gone for several days, maybe weeks already. Grass had begun to grow across the aisle from the street to the house. Not normal at Larsens’, who had always been so careful about mowing the grass and keeping orderly order around the house.
But that was not what had made him uneasy. It was rather the way they had disappeared. He became aware of the full extent of it when he walked up on the porch at the front of the Larsen house. He peeked in through the window, and he felt himself freeze on his back. The furniture, everything was gone! They had simply evaporated, had packed their things, rented a moving car and then had left early in the morning. Without mentioning the relocation plans in one word. Without stopping by and saying goodbye!
That was what hurt the most, especially when he eventually noticed that more people in the neighbourhood had left, in the same way. It was disturbing. He did not like it. He thought about what that might mean. He felt a tingling sensation inside him, a kind of vague contraction and slight tingling inside his chest, a discomfort that almost never let go.
A few days passed. He saw no changes in the nearest houses. Everything was quiet, lifeless in and around the houses in the neighbourhood. He reassured himself with the fact that after a while, new owners or tenants would come to live in the empty houses.
Several days passed, it was almost a month since the unthinkable happened. He saw no people out in the street anymore, no boys on bicycles or girls with skipping ropes. And he felt that he was starting to get really restless. What was this? Where were the new tenants and the new landlords, if it was really the case that people had moved away, that the houses had new owners and tenants? The houses could not be left empty like this!
He felt that it was starting to get a little cold. One of the last things he had experienced before the TV broadcasts had stopped completely was that there was increasing unrest in the world. In lands far away, on the other side of the ocean, riots and local wars had broken out. There was nothing special about it per se. This has been the case for decades. It was something one was used to, and it should not affect people here at home.
The last time he watched the TV news, they had reported unrest and revolt in several countries. He did not know how reliable this information was, because there was a large stream of unconfirmed messages. The news reports came after the short speech that the Prime Minister gave just before the TV screen died. He had tried to go online and check the state of the world there, but it was not possible to get anything meaningful out of it.
He was annoyed, he felt. But deep down he felt something else. Shiny fear, a white fear that no longer let go. The Internet had progressively deteriorated over the past year, but then there was almost a complete collapse of what he could understand, that Sunday more than four weeks ago when he sat and tried to log in to go and read the most important social channels he used to follow.
As time went on, he had become accustomed to the new condition. He had good dry food in the cupboard, and almost full freezer. As long as the electricity supply did not disappear as well, he would probably manage. If necessary, he could head north to the nearest town where the supermarket was probably as it had always used to be, accessible, with a limited, but perfectly okay product range for his needs.
He stayed inside the house for a whole week and continued writing the script while it rained almost non-stop. It was abnormal with so many days in a row with rain, but he did not think much about it. The climate had changed in the last ten years, and he had become accustomed to the fact that nothing was abnormal anymore when it came to weather and wind in the part of the country where he was.
He tried to adapt. That was his focus in recent years, after the normal structures of society had begun to change. He had done like most others, only tried to get through it, to survive where he was. That the unfortunate events in society had taken place exactly in the period when he had ended up in a new life crisis, yes that was bad enough. But there was nothing unbearable about it.
After all, he had found together with several people in the neighbourhood — including Larsens — with whom he had shared his thoughts. They had the same information and they were as preoccupied as he was with talking about the secret network of extra-terrestrial beings who had allied themselves with key politicians and businessmen. They had revealed their plans. The extra-terrestrials planned in alliance with a group of politicians and community leaders to take over the earth, that, yes it was unbelievable, it was so crazy!
Now that it had started to happen, he was disappointed that Larsens had left, without informing him, without taking him with him. He had trusted Larsens. Kevin was a reliable truck driver, a strong-built, sane man who had never said anything but things he could vouch for. They had, in a sense, established a kind of blood bond among themselves. And his wife Eva was so bright and gentle, so open and sociable, a nice woman in her prime. When she looked at him, he felt warm sunshine on his face. He had become a little captivated by her gaze. Had thought through the case and promised himself that he would never let his friend down. Not even if she came to him and offered herself. They had a sacred blood bond, Kevin and he.
Short prose fragments will appear here at irregular intervals, as the writing of fiction progresses. For the latest follow me here: https://oivind47.medium.com/
Novel in progress. — The author appreciates comments and feedback.
© Øivind H. Solheim , @oivind47, hiker, teacher, author of novels, poetry, articles, essays, short fiction and experimental writing. [email protected]