Work Text:
I live in a world of ghosts.
I used to be surrounded by people, crowds so big you could barely force you way through. Traffic so heavy you would be late for school unless you made sure to leave as early as possible.
People as far as the eye could see.
I didn’t notice at first.
Days passing by, stuck in a routine that sometimes just felt like a constant repeat. Pass by the same buildings, the same stores. Wave to the people you recognize enough to be familiar with. Nod to those you have seen before but neither of you know the other’s name.
A life of existence.
I first really paid it any mind the day I waved to nobody.
I froze for just a moment. I was staring right ahead, looking at an empty spot on the street. I was waving as if I had just caught sight of an old friend. No one around me paid it any mind. As if they didn’t notice or just didn’t care.
I moved on, shrugging it off. How odd.
Then I did the same thing the next day.
Waving to an empty spot in the crowd. I didn’t think about it until I stared at the spot as I, once again, waved my hand with a smile to nobody.
And I recalled. I recalled a face no longer there. A smile. An old friend who had to move to a different school. We would still catch sight of each other on our way, wave and smile.
But he wasn’t there. Yet I still waved and smiled like he was.
That’s when I truly began to notice. The crowd growing thinner. Not day by day. Not at first. It took a while. Probably been going on much longer before I finally started to notice. As I first noticed when someone I knew disappeared.
Not truly gone. The memory was there. Who they were, how they looked like. I kept behaving like they were still there.
Waving to nobody. Nodding to an empty spot. Jumping back as no one was nearly crashing into me on their bike. Looking over a spot of absolutely no one playing by the edge of the river.
The routine, constantly repeating as if they were still there.
A world of ghosts.
No matter how much I was aware, it felt like I simply forgot until faced with the reality of me acting like they were still there. And then just carry on. Constant feeling of Déjà vu.
Why was I so passive? What made me unable to act on this? Change my routine? Why couldn’t I stop in my path and just scream?
Why did no one else notice? Were they stuck in same loop of being unable to act on this realization?
Where did they go? Did they just… stop existing? Did something take them? Why did the memory live on without them there?
So many questions but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t ask them. Opening my mouth the words wouldn’t come out. Not to other people, not even when alone by myself.
As the horror of these disappearance had settled, I noticed a new.
Why couldn’t I stop and change my routine? It felt like the same collective of days repeating. A month went by, then the new month started by the calendar said it was the start of the same. A week went by, the date reverted. It changed to last just a few days, before the loop restarted once again.
A few things can change - a few choices. But in the end it’s all the same. The loop restarting.
The world had become empty. Nothing but ghosts, the memories of the people that once surrounded me.
Just me and a few other. I haven’t seen my parents faces in… I don’t even know how long. Time loops, it doesn’t pass. I don’t know when they disappeared.
The streets are empty, my class room barren. No other students, no teachers. No children in the park, no trains or buses. Just the same, repeated motions and words I’m forced to perform like they are still there.
The world feels like a still image, a background picture I walk across. My motions stiff as I keep repeating the same actions over and over.
We are only five people now.
Maybe there are more out there. Other pockets of a dying world. But it feels so far away. Like the rest of the world, the rest of the universe, stopped existing. Just a painted background to fill my view as I walk the familiar path to school and home again. As I enjoy meals n one cooked, which tastes like nothing.
For there is nothing.
How have I not starved?
I don’t understand. I feel numb yet still feeling the horror of it all as well.
For a long time the loop just repeated those few days. No more people disappearing. Just me and those four girls. No one else but us.
They don’t act like they are aware. But neither do I.
It was a new routine, things stopped changing. Just us a repeated routine. Knowing one, meeting the others, the weekend would end as would the loop. Rinse and repeat.
Then things changed again.
And I’m terrified a new.
She didn’t come back as a ghost. No muscle memory of waving to her, reacting to the things she would usually say or do during the loops. Her name erased from my mind, the others taking her spot in the things she did.
Is this worse than just disappearing? Everyone else ever still left behind the memory of them. But she is just gone.
Maybe she found a way to escape?
Her behavior had changed during the last loop, her actions radically different from ever before.
Or maybe that was her doom. The world rejecting her completely for not playing along anymore.
I don’t know if I should try the same or avoid the risk.
The others are changing too. They don’t remember her, what happened to her. Their behavior changing from the last loop. Will they be gone too?
The only ones left still playing our roles are me and Monika.
Will we be the last too? Or will we be erased as well?
What will happen in the end? When no one is left to perform the loop.
Which one of us will be the last one left?
I don’t know. I don’t understand. She looks at me like she knows something. She stares straight through me with that melancholic smile of hers, like she’s seeing something beyond me. Always through me, never at me.
Things are changing fast, the routines are being torn apart and whatever comes will come soon.
Which one of us will be the last in a world of ghosts and deleted memories?
Just me?
Just Monika?