Disappear

I found it in the dirt long after I was meant to be dead. Walking to the stream along the same path as always, my foot hit the locket. It hadn’t been there the day before. I would have noticed such an ugly thing. Heart-shaped and bright red, it had no place in the browns of the well-worn path or the deep greens of the underbrush. I picked it up, considering it for a moment in wonder before slipping it into my pocket. The rest of the walk, I was on high alert, my eyes open for any other irregularities. Somebody—or maybe something—had dropped this locket.

I got my water, walking home with one jug balanced on my head and another on my hip. One of the only joys left in my life was recreating the photos that I remembered from the National Geographic magazines that used to litter my high school library. I stopped when I reached the spot where I had found the locket, setting my jugs down and cautiously creeping into the forest one hundred yards in either direction of the path. But whatever had left the locket had also left a dead trail, and there was nothing to find. So I picked my jugs back up and finished my walk home. Disappointed. Alone.

***

A week passed, uneventful as far as apocalypses go. I built my fires. I forged for acorns and mushrooms and anything else that the book I had stolen from the library five months before suggested was edible. I chopped wood. I walked the miles up and down my desolate road, sticking my head into my neighbors’ houses, hoping to see their faces again. And then I stole more from them when they were inevitably gone. Sweaters, blankets, canned food, some panicked chickens. Stocking up. Always stocking.

Everyone had vanished in May. September was now rolling to a close. I had survived the easy months of plenty, but the mornings were growing crisper. I was not at all confident that I would survive long enough to figure out where everybody went, but I was not about to let winter catch me unprepared, nevertheless. My father had raised me too well for that. So I stocked. And I stocked.

***

October. Now November. How slowly time drags on alone. I missed my dog’s soft ears and my mother’s goading laugh. I even missed my brother.

I fed the chickens to distract from the pain.

***

In mid-December, I remembered the locket. I had been keeping track of the days with a ten-year monthly planner in which my father had planned the final two years of his life. I now used it to pretend like holidays had any meaning, like the next eight years in this planner were significant. The planner reminded me coldly that today would be Christmas in a normal year. I had nothing red to wear. My mother had said once that it was not my color. But I remembered the gaudy red locket, thrown where we used to throw our keys. I wore it to keep myself from breaking down, and it almost worked.

***

February. I began to really and truly lose my mind. I talked to the walls. I made myself president of the forest and shouted out orders at the deer as they grazed unbothered in my frozen yard. I named every chicken and every egg. I ate my way through my final cans of stolen beans before resorting to my shitty acorn porridge.

I’d have to find a hippy cookbook in the dingy town library if I planned on surviving another year on acorns and mushrooms and mint leaves.

***

When the weather improved enough for me to leave my house for more than water, I decided to explore. I found my brother’s hiking backpack in the back of his closet, the only part of the house I had left unexplored thus far. I did not want to think of him. But I needed to now. I needed to know if I was really and truly alone. So I packed his bag. I packed the sleeping bag from our basement. I packed a precious flashlight with precious batteries. I packed a large knife from our kitchen. I packed my water bottle that had served me so faithfully during my school days. I packed the last of my dried mushrooms, a bag of beef jerky I had been saving for when I was brave enough to make this journey, and anything else edible I had left in the house. Mentally, I made notes of what I would need to forge or grow this upcoming summer.

And then I left.

I walked down my driveway and turned left, away from the houses I knew already were empty. I turned towards the city—or what used to be the city—and set left foot in front of right foot in front of left foot until the sun had dipped below the trees. I set up camp for the night under the cover of a despondent tree whose branches brushed the ground. When I was little, I had always imagined that, if I were a wild animal, I would sleep under trees like this, the kind that make caves under their thick branches.

I was a wild animal now.

***

In the morning, I walked again, sticking to the main road as much as possible, but staying under the cover of the tree canopy. Even after all these months with no sighting of even a bike, I still didn’t feel safe walking on the road.

Another night under a tree before I resumed my walk. By the end of my third day of walking, I was in the suburbs. Walking alone, as I had been.

Empty.

I looked for signs of recent life: a smoke stream emerging hesitantly from a chimney, water dripping from a hose pipe, the distant sound of laughter or backyard chatter. Nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing.

I spent that night in a stranger’s rotting bed. I spent the next day crying in a city park. I spent the next night in a stranger’s rotting bed. I spent the next three days walking home, sick to my stomach.

***

May. My one-year anniversary of total solitude. I decided to walk again. Not so far this time. I was taking a familiar stroll to the top of the ridge behind my house.

A gentle incline.

A soft rain falling.

A drop below.

I sat on the edge, looking out over the valley that I had called home for so long. Nothing would ever be okay again.

I leaned over and let go.