Fever Dreams of a Dying City

Maurice jolted upright in bed, gasping for air as he sought to wrench his mind free from the fever dream in which it was lost. He blinked repeatedly, trying to focus on the room around him to pull himself back into reality. His eyes scanned the cabin and adjusted to the dark as he slowly came to grips with his surroundings. It was his third week in the mountainside cottage, and every night the dreams had grown steadily worse.

After she had passed, the firm had insisted he take some time off to process and heal. He had tried to work through it without bereavement, but that had been no simple task after his world had been completely upended. Without a moment’s hesitation, he knew exactly what to do and booked a seat on the first flight out of town. Maurice had awoken that morning in his Midtown apartment and went to sleep nestled in the Tetons. That was when the dreams began.

Each night was essentially the same. He would walk the streets of his beloved Manhattan, going to work or getting a coffee and everything he would normally do. The only thing different was that the city was in ruins, devoid of a single soul. The office, the shops, everywhere he went, he found nothing but empty buildings on the verge of collapse. Despite the strange setting, he continued about his routine as if nothing had happened. Maurice had told himself that it was a metaphor of how empty his world felt without her, but for some reason he couldn’t quite grasp, he knew that was untrue. There was something more to the strange dreams, something ominous.

Turning his legs to the side of the bed, Maurice continued his repetitive blinking, shaking the sleep from his eyes as he focused on the starlit sky outside. He rose to his feet and walked over to the glass door to the balcony, not even bothering to grab his clothes from the floor. Maurice didn’t need to look at his clock to know it was still very early, and he would likely be returning to bed soon. For the moment, though, he stepped outside into frosty mountain air, welcoming the crisp chill that pricked his bare skin and brought him to life. The jarring sensation was almost pleasant as his mind became acutely aware of the waking world around him.

When Maurice booked the cabin, he had done so for an entire month, but since it was already at the end of the tourist season, he’d already begun to consider staying longer if needed. The lodge told him that he was more than welcome since they had scant few upcoming reservations, and Maurice couldn’t help feeling that was likely to occur. Something about the mountain retreat felt more and more like home with each passing day, which was strange for him. Maurice had never been much of an outdoors type. He enjoyed a long weekend spent hiking or on the river now and then, but he always found himself eager to return to the city within a few days. He was born of concrete and raised amidst skyscrapers, and that had always been home.

The moment Maurice had arrived in the Tetons, however, a sense of peace had settled in him that even the foreboding dreams and her permanent absence couldn’t shake. He had spread her ashes across a nearby mountainside and river. It would take time, but eventually, she would flow down the river and into the Pacific. Part of her would forever be in the mountains, and the other would live on in the mighty oceans. Maurice told himself she would have loved the poetry in that. Nature had always been her true love, and now she was one with it. He knew to a certain degree that she was the reason he felt so at peace there. In a sense being there kept her alive and connected to him. Maurice could hear her voice in his head telling him it was ok to let her go and live his life. It didn’t even take him much imagination. She had said that very thing to his face before passed.

As he stood on the balcony of the cabin and watched the stars twinkle in the smogless expanse of the late Autumn night’s sky, Maurice could almost heed her request, but the dreams that awaited him back in bed simply would not let him. Despite how much healing and rejuvenation the trip had brought him, he couldn’t escape the sense that something was earnestly wrong. He had told himself that it was merely him missing her and the feeling of emptiness that came with it time and time again, but Maurice knew to his core that was not the case. He had tried checking in on things at work to see if something there had gone awry, but each day fewer and fewer emails came through, with none carrying any sign of trouble. He’d thought to check the news for fear that his growing sense of dread carried with it some greater importance, but, from everything he could see, the world kept turning the same as usual. Somewhere along his second week there, Maurice had finally given up the hunt and relegated himself to patience — he would simply have to wait and see.

To calm his mind, Maurice stood on the balcony, searching for prominent constellations as the chilly air continued to dance over his skin. He found Ursa Minor and Major quickly enough. Shortly after, he saw Jupiter beaming radiantly towards the south and was able to find Aquarius in short order afterward. It made him feel like a kid back on one of his school visits to the planetarium. As he would then, Maurice closed his eyes and felt himself drifting up towards the sky. Even with eyes shut, he could see the celestial bodies stretching out into the infinite vacuum of space. He rose through the clouds and began racing through the empty darkness beyond them, speeding past the moon, then Mars, then on towards the giant red and orange glow of Jupiter. He glanced back briefly at the pale blue dot from whence he came as he sped faster and faster through the system until he was but a bead of light darting through the void between worlds. The void reached back, pulling him in further, calling him to go farther and faster than ever before as he sought to find that which was hidden on the distant horizon. Through the ether, a voice called out to him commanding that he “seek not the end,” and at once, his eyes shot open wide.

Maurice was standing on the streets of New York once more. They were completely empty as they had been dream after dream, but the city was no longer in ruin. It looked exactly the way it had when he had left it mere weeks before, yet the absence of anyone made it feel dire in a way even his previous dreams had not. A city in ruin at least made sense being completely vacant, but the magnificent towers of New York in their full resplendence without a soul in sight felt terrifyingly hollow. Maurice could sense that wasn’t the only thing different as he was in control of his actions for a change. No longer was he a passenger on some apocalyptic tour through his beloved home. Maurice was completely lucid as he navigated the empty streets. Wasting no time, he made for his condo. Everything was exactly as he had left it. Nothing about the entire building looked different, except that it was empty.

The second place Maurice thought to go was his office down in the Financial District. Usually, that would have meant a cab or subway ride, but in a city without people, the cars sat empty in the parking lots, and the subway cars sat motionless on the tracks. So, Maurice spent nearly two hours walking the almost five-mile trek, hoping to see something that made sense along the way. Everything in the city functioned like normal. All the advertisements on digital displays still rotated through their feed. Every clock and temperature gauge still gave out a reading. Even the traffic lights continue cycling through their colors as if it were just another day in the city. Block after block he looked for any signs of life to no avail. Each street Maurice crossed made the town feel even more terrifyingly empty than the dark void of space. The skyscrapers that once stood as beacons of promise suddenly felt like hollow tombs towering over the corpse of the desolate city.

Maurice passed through the Garment District, then Chelsea, until he found himself along the Hudson River facing an even more harrowing sight. Ships were scattered across the water, empty vessels bound for a port they would never make. He wasn’t sure why he had gone that way. It wasn’t the quickest route, but for some reason he didn’t quite know, he had wanted to see the Hudson again. It was a painful sight that he immediately regretted, yet was also thankful he was seeing it again. He thought about all the times he had been to the Hudson with her, and then he thought of the river where he had scattered her ashes days before. He was saying goodbye to both of them he somehow knew, and fear of the unknown mingled with the growing feeling of doom that had been building inside him since he set foot back in the city.

He wasn’t much further from the office, though, so he pressed forward, crossing back over toward the Financial District. As he drew increasingly nearer to the firm’s office, the sense of dread mounted, and when he turned on Broadway, it reached a fever pitch. In the distance, he could see the infamous Charging Bull, a site he had never witnessed without a crowd surrounding it. In the emptiness, the bull looked oddly trapped, a mighty beast was poised to charge with nowhere to go and no one to bear witness and unable to move from its invisible prison. The bull’s eyes seemed to glow a fierce red as smoke poured from its snorting nostrils, and Maurice became fearfully aware of how reality was slipping away from him. First, he had lost her, then he had lost his city, and now he was traveling through the endless expanse of space and walking through the shell of a dead empire. Through the empty city and the fog in his mind came the words once more, “Seek not the end.” At once, the entire city began to glow until every inch of his vision was drowned in blinding white light.

His eyes shot open as he bolted upright from the bed once more, beads of cold sweat flowing down his body as he struggled for breath, trying to stave off the ensuing panic. Maurice rose from the bed again, fear gripping his body; as he made his way to the center of the cabin, where he heard muffled voices. As he entered the room, the dreadful news that rolled across the television screen froze him in place. Maurice stood for a time, lost in terror at the scene unfolding before him. Without warning, the feed cut to black. Awakened from his trance, Maurice changed the channel to find another feed. Nothing. He changed the channel again...and again...and again, but they had all gone dark. He grabbed his phone to check for any other information, but there was no connection at all. Nowhere he looked could provide a shred of information about what was unfolding beyond his cabin walls. Maurice stood alone in his cozy little mountain cottage, unable to do a thing as the world went quiet.