"I’m Alone

The world ended not with a bang, but with silence.

It’s strange how quickly noise fades. One day, I was walking through a busy street, the air filled with the honking of impatient drivers, the chatter of passersby, and the distant hum of life happening all around. The next day, the silence came like a tidal wave, washing away everything I once took for granted.

My name is Lara. I'm alone.

I used to live in a high-rise apartment on the west side of the city. The building still stands, cracked and weary, like an old man waiting for death. The elevators don't work, but I’ve grown used to the stairs. My home is on the twelfth floor, far above the chaos that once existed below.

It's been 437 days since I last saw another human being. I stopped marking the calendar after that. There's no point anymore.

I don’t know what happened. No one does—at least, no one left to explain it. There were rumors, of course. A sickness. A war. Some said it was divine punishment. But whatever it was, it took everyone swiftly. Some vanished overnight; others just... stopped. Phones stopped working. Power failed. The internet died with a final flicker of the screen. Then, nothing.

I remember the early days. I would scream from my balcony, hoping someone—anyone—would answer back. I would walk for miles, knocking on doors, checking rooftops, writing messages in chalk on the sidewalks: “I’M HERE. PLEASE FIND ME.”

But no one ever did.

I’ve adapted. It’s funny what you can survive when you stop expecting rescue. I raid the grocery stores—most are looted now, but some still have canned food tucked away in corners. I’ve learned how to make fire from junk I once threw away. I even started a small rooftop garden. Lettuce grows surprisingly well in plastic buckets.

The hardest part isn’t hunger or fear. It’s the quiet. The unbearable, suffocating quiet. It seeps into your bones, your thoughts, your dreams. You start to forget what a voice sounds like. You talk to yourself just to remember how. I sometimes read books aloud—not because I want to, but because the silence terrifies me more than anything else.

There are days when I think I hear footsteps. A whisper in the hallway. A door creaking open on another floor. I rush to check. Every time. But it’s always the wind, or my imagination, or both conspiring against me.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m even real anymore.

But I keep going. I have to. If I stop moving, I stop being. I don’t want to be a ghost.

Last week, I found a bird’s nest on my balcony. Two tiny eggs, warm and blue. I watched the mother bird flutter back and forth, feeding her young with meticulous care. It gave me a strange hope. Life, fragile and trembling, still finds a way.

Today, I decided to write this. I don’t know if anyone will ever read it. Maybe someday, someone will stumble upon this journal and know I existed. That I lived. That I tried.

If you're reading this, and you're out there somewhere—know that you're not truly alone. Not in the way you think. I’m here, or at least I was.

And maybe, just maybe, there are others too.

Somewhere beyond the silence.