Razorblade Dreams: Horror Stories

by Mark Lukens

  He closed his eyes and tried to make himself fall asleep. He wanted to go to sleep and wake up from this nightmare so he could be back in the real world.

  DAY THREE:

  By the third day there was no denying that everyone around him was gone. They had disappeared. All living things had disappeared. Pets. Animals. He hadn’t even seen so much as a bug.

  The first night Jeff lit some candles and slept on the living room couch. It took most of the next morning to get over the shock that this was really happening, and then he spent the next few hours salvaging what he could from the refrigerator and the freezer before the food went bad. He cooked meats on his barbeque grill in the middle of his front yard. It was against HOA rules to use a grill in the front yard, but he would take a chance on a strongly-worded letter from them right now. He had cackled at the thought of the letter as he cooked up hamburger patties, sausages, two flounder fillets, and a small bag of shrimp. Mr. Jeff McConnell, the strongly-worded letter would say, it has come to our attention that you have been cooking out on your front lawn which is not only a safety hazard but unsightly blah, blah, blah . . .

  That afternoon, before the sun set, he drove his Chevy Equinox around the whole neighborhood. He found more cars in the middle of the street. One of the cars had drifted off the road when the owners disappeared (or evaporated or vaporized or whatever the hell had happened to them) and bumped into a pickup truck with its tail end sticking out of the driveway like the driver had been in the process of backing up when “It” had happened. A mini-van had smacked gently into the trunk of an oak tree. None of the vehicles were running, but the ignitions in all of the vehicles were turned on. They had run out of gas.

  After driving around the neighborhood, Jeff ventured out to the main road that ran in front of the subdivision—State Road 54. He drove a few miles in each direction, navigating his way around the stalled cars and trucks. He stopped a few times to check on several vehicles. They had all run out of gas. He imagined all of these cars and trucks just sitting here, running and running with no one inside of them. There were pileups in some places, and one of the crashes was so bad that he had to squeeze his Chevy through a space between a small ditch and the edge of the eight-car pileup that had involved a garbage truck that had pushed the collection of cars in front of it to a stop like a log jam.

  He drove to a gas station and checked the pumps—but, of course, they didn’t work. He didn’t think gas would be a problem for his car because there were so many vehicles parked in front of houses and businesses with gas still in the tanks. He would just need to siphon it out. How long did gas stay good?

  He entered the gas station store and found nine more piles of clothes in the aisles and two more piles behind the counter. He grabbed a few cases of sodas and beer from the warm coolers and hauled them back out to his vehicle.

  After the stop at the gas station, he checked a few more businesses, but they were all the same—piles of clothing dotting the aisles, entryways, vehicles, parking lots. He found jewelry among the clothes: watches, rings, necklaces. He found other objects among the piles of clothes: fillings from teeth, a fake hip, and one contraption that Jeff guessed might be a pacemaker. He found pocket knives, keys, wallets, combs, and loose change and bills. He found a small handgun still stuffed snuggly down into what looked like an ankle holster. He even found an ankle bracelet for someone on house arrest. He found cell phones. The phones were turned on, but many of the batteries were already low or dead. And there was no signal on any of them, so he couldn’t have called anyone. He tried a landline in a few of the businesses, but there was no dial tone.

  He drove back home.

  DAY SEVEN:

  The initial shock was over, and a sense of grim acceptance and survival had kicked in. He had taken out the food from the pantry and stacked the items on the counter. He kept everything he could salvage and rationed it out. Fruits, fresh veggies, and refrigerated foods like cold cuts and eggs would have to be eaten first. The bread and cheese would last a little longer. And he would save the canned and boxed foods for last. Anything he suspected that might have spoiled he dumped into a big black garbage bag—he couldn’t risk getting sick.

  Running out of food and liquids to drink didn’t seem like it was going to be a problem in the near future. He probably had enough canned and boxed food and bottled drinks to last him a year just in his own neighborhood. He could take his time collecting the supplies; he didn’t have to worry about anyone coming to raid his stash because apparently he was the last person on Earth.

  He spent a few days raiding houses around his neighborhood. He gathered a few handheld can openers, a small ax (to break into doors and windows), flashlights, and all the batteries, matches, and candles that he could find. It got pitch-black at night, and it was eerie sitting in his little sphere of flickering candlelight in the darkness. He used his wife’s gardening wagon to collect the supplies and bring them back to his house. He didn’t want to use his Chevy or his wife’s car—he wanted to conserve the gas for now.

  For what? his mind whispered. You think you’re going somewhere anytime soon? You got traveling plans or something?

  Jeff tried not to listen to the voice in his head, but it was becoming louder and more and more difficult to ignore.

  He was thinking about traveling eventually. Maybe what had happened here to these people, whatever it was, hadn’t happened everywhere. It was a slim hope, but at least it was a hope.

  Cheryl would’ve fainted if she could see the house now. The kitchen was stocked with canned and boxed foods. The pantry was packed full, and most of the counter space was taken up with the food. He had moved all of the furniture to the side in the guest bedroom/office for more boxes and cans of supplies. The workout room held all of the unopened and drinkable liquids he could find: bottled water, bottles and cans of beer and sodas, unopened juices, bottles of liquor.

  He had a stock of dry goods in the other bedroom: stacks of sugar and flour (even though he didn’t know what the hell he would make with these), potato chips and snacks, unopened breads and rolls, unopened jars of peanut butter and jelly, boxes of crackers, jars of vitamin supplements, canned tuna and sardines, canned corned beef hash and Spam, soups, snack cakes, green beans, fruit cocktail, anything he could find.

  He grabbed anything else he thought might be useful: medicines, bandages, scissors, first-aid kits, creams, extra toothpaste, soap, and dishwashing liquid.

  He wasn’t much of a reader, but he had collected a pile of books over the last few days. He spent a lot of time reading now, even by candlelight at night. He started with books that might give him some kind of clue as to what had happened. The Bible and some other books about something called the Rapture were his first choices. He hadn’t known much about the Rapture and Judgment Day—he’d only had a vague idea about it, but he’d learned a lot so far from these books.

  But this couldn’t be the Rapture, could it? Had God taken all of his flock up to Heaven and left only him on Earth? Was he the only sinner left? The only non-righteous sinner who hadn’t accepted Christ as his Savior? That couldn’t be right. He knew Cheryl had said many times that she didn’t believe in a god, that she needed more proof. So why would God take her up to Heaven and not him? And there were other people of different religions, even right here in his own neighborhood. There had to be some people who believed in Hinduism or Buddhism, and according to the books he’d read recently, they would not be swept up into the Rapture.

  No, Jeff had to rule out the Rapture at this time of possible explanations to what had happened.

  Dreams and hallucinations were ruled out next, but not the possibility that he had suffered some kind of stroke or accident, and that he was in a coma at this very moment with Cheryl at his bedside begging him to come back to her. If it was true that he was in a coma, then he wasn’t sure how he could get back to her and his former life. But he would try every night when he laid down to go to sleep. He prayed and did any kind of menta
l exercise he could think of, but every time he woke up he was still here and no one else was around.

  The next item on his list was aliens. Maybe some kind of alien invasion had happened, and he had snoozed as they vaporized every living thing so they could walk along the Earth freely to ravage our resources. This theory could be possible, as frightening as it was. The idea of some strange alien creatures sneaking up behind him in the darkness while he huddled in front of his candles reading his books scared the shit out of him. And what could he do if he saw them? Run? He had to admit that so far he hadn’t seen any evidence of aliens, no spaceships in the sky. He had looked—he had a habit of watching the sky now when he was outside, paying attention, waiting for some kind of aircraft in the sky, some kind of sign that there were some other humans still left on this planet.

  But he hadn’t seen any aircraft in the sky—human or alien.

  If aliens had caused “this,” whatever this was, then the question that bothered him the most was why every living thing had been vaporized except him? How had he escaped the meltdown? Why had they overlooked him? It just didn’t make any sense, and it hurt his head to think about it too long. Thinking about being the last living thing on Earth caused a panic attack to build up inside of him. He wanted to run screaming from his house in blind terror when the panic attacks came, run screaming down the street. But he never did. He forced himself to calm down when the panic came. Where would he run to anyway? What could he do? So he would just wait for a little while until the anxiety attack left him with a hollow feeling of dread inside, and then he would drink some alcohol to calm down.

  At least he had plenty of alcohol.

  DAY NINE:

  Jeff woke up in near-perfect darkness on the couch in his living room. Only one candle was struggling to stay lit.

  A noise had woken him up.

  He sat up quickly in the dark. A noise? Was someone outside? Or something? An animal? Some other living thing besides himself?

  As he sat up, for the briefest of moments, he thought he’d been dreaming this whole thing, dreaming that everyone had disappeared on the planet and that he was the last living thing alive. He thought he’d fallen asleep on the couch after maybe he and Cheryl had had a fight, and then he’d had this crazy dream that seemed to last forever.

  And now he thought he heard Cheryl whispering to him from the bedroom.

  “Jeff, come to bed.”

  It was something she said when he fell asleep on the couch with the TV on. She would stand over him in her woolen pajamas and colorful socks, and he would jump awake when he realized that she was standing over him.

  “Come on,” she would say. “Come to bed.”

  She always claimed she couldn’t sleep if he wasn’t in bed beside her.

  Jeff looked around at the dark living room. Most of the flickering candles had blown out at some time during the night—there was only that one candle left, doing its best to push the darkness back. In the meager light he saw the cases of beverages and stacks of food and supplies piled up around the room, and then his heart sank. This hadn’t been some kind of nightmare. It was all real. He was really here in his own dark house, abandoned by everyone else in the world.

  But Cheryl’s voice had been so real.

  “Jeff . . .”

  He jumped to his feet. He had definitely heard her voice this time. It was coming from their bedroom. His heart leapt into his throat and seemed to stop for a few seconds, and then it jackhammered in his chest like it was trying to find the right rhythm again. His legs went weak, and his mind teetered between hope that Cheryl’s voice was real and terror that it was real because he’d seen Cheryl’s wool pajamas laid out on the bed underneath the covers with her light blue panties still inside of them and the socks at the ends of the pants legs.

  “Come back to bed, Jeff.”

  The whisper was louder this time. It was real. Jeff glanced at the last flickering candle, and he thought about re-lighting the other ones. Instead, he grabbed the flashlight from the floor and turned it on. He hated to waste the batteries, but he considered this an emergency.

  “Jeff . . . please . . . I can’t sleep in here without you . . .” Even though the double doors to their bedroom were closed, he could hear her whispered words clearly from beyond the doors.

  Jeff got up from the couch and walked through the darkness to the double doors that led to their bedroom. The shaft of light from his flashlight knifed through the darkness along the way.

  When he got to the doors, he put his hand on the doorknob, ready to fling the door open. But he hesitated. The whispering from the bedroom had stopped—almost like she was waiting for him to enter. He clenched the doorknob, turned it, and pushed the door open. He stood in the doorway, in front of the yawning mouth of darkness, the flashlight gripped in his trembling hand, the light beam wavering. But in the small circle of light in front of him he could only see part of Cheryl’s closet. The master bathroom was off to the right, and their bedroom was off to the left.

  “Cheryl,” he said into the darkness. He felt stupid calling his wife’s name like all of this was real, like she could really be here in the bedroom just because he’d spoken her name aloud. He needed to get a grip on himself. She wasn’t here. He had just woken up from some kind of dream, and the whispers he’d heard were remnants of the fading dream as he struggled to wake up.

  Jeff entered their bedroom, taking five steps, and then he immediately froze. He heard a rustling noise deep in the bedroom. The sound came from their bed. It sounded like clothing rustling against the sheets and covers. Something was moving around in the darkness . . . coming closer.

  He took another step forward. He brought his flashlight up and aimed it at their bed across the room. He saw someone sitting on the edge of the bed, washed in the light from his flashlight beam . . . an emaciated person wearing Cheryl’s pajamas.

  That thing couldn’t be Cheryl. That was some kind of dead thing on their bed, something that had crawled its way out of a grave, a skeletal form with strings of rotting flesh hanging down from its face and limbs. But the eyes—they were her eyes. The thing’s mouth opened wide, the lower jaw hanging down loosely. Things were moving around deep inside her mouth . . . some kind of tiny worms wriggling around in there.

  “Jeff,” the thing whispered at him as it struggled to stand up beside the bed. And it was definitely Cheryl’s voice he heard now. As she got to her feet, he saw that her flesh was moving on her skeletal frame, growing and forming into something that wasn’t human anymore.

  “Come back to bed with me,” the thing moaned and stumbled forward. “I can’t sleep without youuu . . .”

  The thing tripped as it took another step forward and collapsed down onto the carpet with a mushy thump. It began to crawl towards him, leaving a dark trail of filth behind it.

  Jeff snapped awake on the couch. He jumped to his feet and grabbed the flashlight from the floor. For a moment he had a terrible sense of déjà-vu. He looked around at the barely-lit room; the candlelight created a weird flickering light that made the shadows dance at the edges of the family room. He held the flashlight in his hand like a weapon, and he listened closely; he listened for anyone whispering from their bedroom, inviting him to come back to bed.

  But he didn’t hear anything except his own heavy breathing.

  He sat back down on the couch and realized that his entire body was trembling with fear and adrenaline. He tried to command his body to stop shaking, telling himself that it had just been a nightmare—the worst one he’d ever had—but a nightmare just the same. But he couldn’t get himself to stop shaking.

  Jeff stayed awake until mid-morning, and then he caught another hour of dreamless sleep. He had planned on making another trip to the gas station in the afternoon to stock up on more supplies. He didn’t really need more supplies; it was just something to do.

  But he never went. He ended up staying at home.

  DAY FOURTEEN:

  Jeff had made the
decision to leave his home.

  There were two reasons he had decided to leave, and the second one was a doozy. The first reason he wanted to leave was because he couldn’t stay in this house anymore. Day turned to night and night turned back to another day of rearranging his stash of food and supplies, reading, napping, drinking warm beers, and monitoring the radio. He would slowly spin the dial back and forth across the FM and AM bands, listening, his ear close to the speaker, hoping to hear a human voice somewhere in that crackling static.

  But he never heard any voices.

  He had started a journal. He’d never been much of a writer, but it felt good to jot things down, leaving behind some kind of record or log that he’d been here. For who to find? Who was going to be here after he was gone? Who was going to ever know he was here? But he didn’t let those thoughts dissuade him from writing. Those kinds of thoughts, if dwelled upon too long, led to panic, which led eventually to hopeless despair, which led to much more drinking, which led to passing out, which led to waking up in the darkness with the cold hand of fear squeezing his heart.

  But now, as he sat in his living room among his sheets and pillows on the couch with the burnt-out candles all around him and the radio up on its Pedestal Of Hope in front of his stacks and stacks of food and drinks, he wanted to leave this nest he had built over the last few weeks. He wanted to search other places farther away from his neighborhood. He could always come back here if he didn’t find anyone else. His stash would still be here, untouched by humans or animals or bugs.

  He had to search. He had to at least try. He couldn’t accept that he was the last living thing in the world. If it was aliens that had wiped life out overnight, then why weren’t they rummaging the Earth for resources? Why weren’t their scout ships cruising the gray skies above? And if this was the Rapture, then there would have to be others somewhere. At the very least there would have to be an Antichrist according to all of the books he’d read.