Event 0

The road was empty just like a thousand others in this left-for-dead town, lined with empty houses, empty cars, an eerie calm settles. It's not right for a neighborhood in a city like this to be so quiet, but what's right and wrong has kind of been up in the air since Event 0. But there's no reason to think about that anymore, the only reason left is surviving one more day. So when I mark the long empty houses on this quaint neighborhood drive, I don't see the happiness of children on swingsets in backyards, or the day-to-day bustle of people returning from work, or even the inevitable fights between parents; all I see are possible non-perishables and shelter for the imminent night. Thinking for the present, nothing for the past.
I had ransacked a few houses with a little luck, and night was coming quickly, so I started looking out for a safe place to camp. The best were two story houses with most of the doors and windows. At least then you could barricade yourself upstairs to keep any animals from coming in. I had spotted a good possibility when I noticed something further down the street, a tree appeared to be glowing. Things like this make you cautious. You get to know the truth really well. Animals run rampant, people are few and far between, and trees don't glow, when something breaks these, there's cause for alarm. Animals kept in cages means somebody put them there, and there's a chance they could decide you're an animal. Running into people is like running into the devil, they'll do anything to survive. Since the event, the race for survival had become much closer, and we were all fighting not to come in last.
I decided to check the tree to see what was there, maybe it was a survivor's camp. I had heard cannibals talk about them, saying they were better than buffets. Maybe they hadn't found this one. Only one way to tell.
I sneaked down the street, making every attempt to not be seen. When I got close enough, I could see that the tree was glowing because of a light emanating from within a house, second floor, but this was not candlelight like we've all grown accustomed to, this was real electricity. I hadn't seen electric light for months, with its warm incandescence. You could watch the light flow from its source to its target, and you learned to appreciate that once it was gone. Something about electric light, maybe the fact that it is so organized and easily controlled and so unlike the environment I'd been living in, mesmerized me. I couldn't take my eyes away from its stream of particles splashing so radiantly onto this tree. It was like controlling the sun, in a way. I was led, trance like, to the front door where I stupidly stood and knocked.
Immediately sensing my idiocy, I leaped into the bushes, dried up and withered though they were, in an attempt to hide and prolong my life a little bit longer. Luckily, I am a very small person. This may come as unexpected news, but it's very logical that in this world, the big, bulky people are the first to go, not having the necessary nutrition or if they're lucky, getting eaten. A two-hundred pound man could feed a small village.
While I hid, I heard the door open and saw a small shadow framed in the wondrous electric world that the door opened into. Like a portal to another, more beautiful dimension. Once again, I became delirious and left my safe place, meandering out into the open, in plain sight.
The girl in the doorway had a small frame and looked well fed, about my age: 13 or 14. She wore a smile, which was as rare as finding food, and beckoned me to come in saying her name was Katie. Still mystified by the oddities that surrounded her so naturally, I followed her into her house.
Electricity flooded the place. It was everywhere. For this reason alone, if she had said she was God I would have believed her. Electricity didn't exist anymore. It just didn't. This is truth. And if this is truth, then breaking the pattern of the truth was inevitably a bad thing. I asked her how she had electricity. She explained that her father was a brilliant inventor and had made a sort of generator to keep electricity going when the power went out. It was originally designed for short black outs, but it had stood the test of time pretty well.
“8 months and counting,” she said happily, with her fingers crossed. She spoke like a bird, like there was nothing holding her to the ground. Like gravity didn't exist to her. I asked where her father was, and all she could say was she didn't know. Damn it. An intelligence like his would be useful, although it didn't concern me too much. Teenage boys are really only interested in sex. Even in the face of the apocalypse, all I could think about was getting to repopulate the earth with Katie. Then she introduced me to her twin, and all I could think about was sex and more sex. Who needs repopulation when you have two beautiful women at your disposal. Her twin looked exactly like her, standing next to her and asking me if I wanted anything to eat.
“We have meat,” one of them said, and I nearly died of joy.

I basked in the beauty of electricity while I waited for my meal. They had left me alone to wander the labyrinthine two story house. It figures, I thought, an inventor would have a house like this. It somehow reflected my mind, twists and turns leading to empty rooms. There were floors below ground going who knows how deep, like an iceberg. Soon I heard Katie call my name. Dinner was ready.
We ate in a traditional dining room, and I think she could tell the excitement on my face. I couldn't believe how much her house was like walking into the beautiful past, the days before the event when nothing mattered. When we stayed alive just by remembering to breathe every now and then. The glory days.
The twin had apparently gone to bed early, not wanting to impose on a possible romance between Katie and I. I said nothing about my thinking on the matter, but ate my food cheerfully. The meat was fresh and tender, much better than the canned non-perishables I had become accustomed to. These days, it was hard to find fresh anything, let alone something as delicious as steak. It just didn't exist anymore.
We made some amiable conversation, then she showed me where I would be sleeping. She even kissed me good night, and left with a glamorous smile and a wink. With the light behind her, she had the halo of an angel. I let the worries outside the house drip away like wax, leaving just my own little flame of love and lust, and in my mind we were dancing down deserted streets together, only stopping to breath the beauty of life into each other before we laugh and run onward. Armageddon was starting to seem like a Saturday in the park.
I was still so enchanted by the thrill of electricity and the beauty of these small particles cutting through the curtain of night revealing the wonder of the play, so I decided to sleep with the light on for the first time in months. That was how I knew something was going on.

Somewhere around midnight, the light dimmed like it does when there's an immense draw on the power. Once the light had dimmed, the blinding beauty did also, leaving just the truth: electricity does not exist. So what was going on? Possibilities stretched through the afternoon glow of the electric sun and out my door, so I followed them and began my exploration of the house once more.
There was a low hum coming from downstairs. I made my way from room to empty room until I came to the kitchen, where the hum seemed loudest. The wall seemed to come alive from the grinding, horrible noise and the flicker of the dim bulb and the rattle of dishes. I cautiously walked to the refrigerator and put my hand on it. I could feel the vibrations through the door, so I pulled it open to find that it was not a refrigerator at all, but a doorway opening into a dark stairwell. I can't tell you if it was my curiosity or stupidity from all the electricity that night that led me down that stairwell. I can't even tell you what I saw until I tracked the sound to its source. It was like walking through a dream of purgatory, and just like a dream, when you wake up, you only remember pieces: the inexorable walk, the deep darkness, and the grinding sound looming ahead. And the end of the journey downward, when you actually reach hell.
Katie stood at a control panel. She was the first thing I saw, lit up in all her beauty by a wonderful blue light. I almost asked what she was doing, but then I traced the source of the light. There was a machine in the center of the room glowing and breathing, flexing in its own light. A large, metal cylinder, contracting and expanding, breathing in the darkness. Katie was staring intently at it and so was I. The grinding grew louder and louder, but Katie's gaze never changed, she just calmly watched her machine do its magic.
It finally began slowing down, the grinding became a whir, and eventually the thing stopped making noise all together and the lights brightened to their original glory. The door opened, and Katie emerged, naked and beautiful, looking straight at me. Well, I guess Katie's twin emerged, but she looked like Katie in every way. She stared at me, not moving, seemingly not even breathing, and Katie moved from the control panel to take a closer look. She examined her twin, looking at her from all angles. But I was distracted by the things all over the floor.
The returning brilliance of the lights illuminated the whole room revealing what had been hidden: body parts. Dismembered arms and legs. Heads. Katie's head. It was close by, it was right next to me. I bent down to pick it up. Katie's head. It stared at me in horror, its tongue ripped out, its soft, brown hair caked in blood. Aghast, I screamed, and Katie noticed me.
“What are you doing here?”
“What the hell is this place?”

Then I must have collapsed, because I don't remember leaving. But I woke up in another house nearby, one that I had raided earlier. And on my chest I found a book from Katie and a note that said, “Don't come back. Please.” I opened the book and found a diary. Katie's diary.

June 5th (the day before the event)-
Today we bought a dog from the kennel and named it Charlie and brought him home. Dad said he needed him for an experiment but that when he was done, I could have him. Jil was jealous, but Dad just smiled and winked at me and said it was all our dog. But I knew the truth. He was going to be my dog. And I was going to love Charlie because he was mine and he was just like me. Like when we went into the yard and played and I put him in the swing and pushed him. He really smiled, I saw him. Everybody says I'm lying but I saw him smile at me.

June 6th -
I got in trouble today. Dad locked me in the fall out room and said I couldn't come out until I learned my lesson. Don't hit the dog, and don't hit your sister. Lesson learned.
The dog had bitten me. I was feeding him and he bit me and it really hurt so I kicked him and he yelped and Jil made fun of me so I kicked her too. She's a little brat.
I heard a noise, but I can't get out to see what's going on. I just heard a noise and then nothing and you never really hear nothing. I'm worried, but Dad said he would let me out...

I skipped ahead.

June 28th -
I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely... I feel lonely...

I skipped ahead.

July 14th -
I found Charlie at the bottom of the stairs to Dad's lab. He was dead. But in the darkness away from the elements he hadn't rotted that much so I ate him. And he made me sick, but I ate him anyway. And I found the machine that Dad had wanted to use on him, had wanted to try out on him. And inside the machine was another Charlie. Exactly the same. Dead. So I ate him too.

July 15th -
I can't take another day of being alone. I've decided to use Dad's machine. I'll either die or there'll be another me. Either way will be better than how I am now.

July 15th -
I couldn't wait till tomorrow because it worked! I have a friend! I have a little me! It's so great! I'm teaching her to speak!

I skipped ahead.

July 20th -
Feeding two people is worse than feeding just me. We're both so hungry...

July 21st -
I found me dead in the bathroom today. I opened the door and she was lying there, not breathing, just like Charlie. Just like everybody. And she was dead. And I was hungry and I ate her and now I'm back where I started... Hungry and alone. So I went back downstairs and I made another me, and this one will be different...

I read her diary front to back, and I learned her story. Her parents were killed in Event 0, and she was spared because she was in trouble. She should have died there with everyone else, but instead she continued surviving, more by accident than anything, her clones dying of natural causes, then her eating them. Eventually, she started killing them when she got hungry, starting to think of them more as a source of food than anything.
Her diary stopped 3 months ago, who knows if I had talked to Katie or one of the thousand clones she's made since the event. Whether she's dead now or not, she's killed herself enough times to say that she's no longer alive.
I kept the diary to remind myself that I'm still alive. That no matter how depraved I get, if I reach the point of absolute delusion, where I can no longer justify not killing myself, I will do it with no questions asked, because when I die, I want to know I'm dead.