Alone
Fiction
“Hello?”
John poked his head around the doorframe, but the breakroom was empty. He turned and rushed to Joan’s office, but she wasn’t sitting behind her glass-top desk. He returned to his office and pushed the power button on his laptop again, but it still didn’t respond. The thought of his files lost or deleted sent a spasm rushing down his spine, making his legs weak.
He had been sequestered with the machine all day, working the budget over and praying the numbers didn’t go public before he had a chance to finish “fixing” them. There had been more than one press leak at the agency recently, and the board was cracking down. He couldn’t imagine being dragged through the media, scapegoated, and fired. He couldn’t let that happen. When he got through this, he was going to come down hard on his managers. How could delivery be this far off? There can’t be that many manufacturing issues in so many runs. He’d fix it on paper, but this was the last time.
He had to focus, he knew that. There would be a reckoning later, but right now, the board would be furious if he didn’t have a positive report for them and the stakeholders soon. How many hours had he been working? It felt like weeks without pausing or breathing. Maybe it had been. That’s what life had turned into. How did he get here? He was a good person. But he was an executive now at an international firm. This was his dream job. That was his mantra, no matter what came or how many long nights there were.
He’d worked so hard to get here for so many years, so many missed birthdays and ball games, but it was all for them. Whether they knew it or not. That’s what he told himself. That’s what he told his wife when she had one of her melt-downs. Or when the kids threw tantrums or stomped off to their rooms to play video games. They wouldn’t have the games if he didn’t work so hard. They didn’t understand. But his wife stayed with him no matter what; she always would.
He stared at the blank screen and longed for the comfort of his social media feeds and news reports. He looked up at the twin television screens on the opposite wall and found the same blackness. He grabbed the slim gray remote and clicked, but CSPAN and MSNBC refused to fill the silence. He reached into his slacks and pulled out his smartphone to find another black screen.
He lunged at the light switch and flipped it back and forth. Nothing. Maybe the power went out, and everyone was in the parking lot. Was there a fire? He smelled the air. Maybe a tornado or an earthquake, but where were the sirens? He half-jogged to the front of the building, his dark suit jacket hanging open. He peered outside through the large glass doors of CJ Financial. Porsches, BMWs, Audis, and Mercedes sat like testaments to power next to the building. Cheap imports sat in rows farther away, lined up to shuttle the labor force home after a long day of number crunching. He reached into his pocket and punched the button to his BMW, in the front row, but it didn’t respond. He turned back to the empty building. Shadows from the setting sun were just beginning to creep across the desks and cubicle walls.
“Hello?” he screamed.
Silence.
He grabbed the handle and dove through the thick glass front doors and skidded to a halt in the parking lot, spinning in place. He felt a swift breeze rise, then fall away with the smell of exhaust fumes. Did he imagine a passing car? Everything seemed almost normal, except for the absence of people and electricity, and the deafening silence. It bore down on him. No traffic noise, no honking, not even a bird or squirrel. He ran through the parking lot to the road. Not a single car. He swung his head left, then right, before stepping into the abandoned street. He balled his fists and sucked in as much air as he could manage, shoving his chest to the sky, red tie flailing in the breeze.
“Hello!” he screamed.
The world went black to match the silence around him, and he slipped away.
A woman’s voice. “How long has he been like this, doctor?”
A soft glow seemed to illuminate the darkness, but not enough to make out shapes.
A man’s voice answered, “A few weeks now.”
“Is he faking it?” the woman asked.
He tried to open his eyes, but they wouldn’t respond. On further thought, he couldn’t feel his body. Panic started to rise, and he tried to scream, but no sound would come.
“He is not faking,” said the man. “That would be an amazing trick. We don’t know if he’ll ever regain consciousness or what state he will be in if he does. His injuries are substantial.”
“Tax evasion, fraud, and embezzlement are substantial, too, Doctor.”
“You saw the footage, Detective. He was searching for people. He walked into traffic, screaming as if there were no cars. I think there was some kind of psychotic break well before the accident. The neurologist confirms this, his levels of—”
“Is he going to live? Can he hear us?”
“Detective, brain trauma and—”
“Listen, if you can hear me, we’re coming for you. You’d better wake up. You can’t steal that much money from people and—”
“I think that is quite enough, for the sake of my patient, I’m going to have to ask…” The words faded as his heart began to race and the blackness swallowed him once more.
Release.
“Oh, John.” His wife’s voice. A hand in his.
Janice was here; she would know what was happening.
“How could you?”
How could he, what? He reached out his hand and found that he could move. Could feel his body. Blinking his eyes open, the darkness receded, and light flooded his senses.
“Janice, I didn’t—” he started to croak through the rock and sand that had seemed to form in his throat, but abruptly clamped his mouth shut as he took in the empty hospital room. The monitors next to the bed offered blank screens. The television, just like in his office, had no picture. There were no beeps or whirs of equipment. His hand lay upturned beside him. Hadn’t he been holding hers’? He reached for his phone, for the comfort of his feed. What was being reported in the news and on socials? What had the board done without him? But it was gone. Everything was gone. He was alone again.
“Hello?”
