The Sound

A misty presence sweeps over an apartment complex. What does it mean, and why has it come?

Originally written as a contest submission that I was ultimately unable to enter. The rules were: horror story up to 1,000 words that starts with “And then…” There was an image of fog around a white building that looks like an apartment complex and a tree in the foreground. I can't figure out how to add images here.
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And then… then she remembered. The fog. It was analogous to her mental state. But standing here before the building where days ago she had lived… Lived among friends who shared stories and parties. Shared life. The moisture-laden air seeped into her bones with ghostly tendrils that searched for marrow.

Shaking, barely breathing, eyes as clouded as the grey mists that had enveloped her home, her life. Everyone. She waited. The sound would come again. The sound that would rattle her bones and shatter her mind as she remembered. The screaming, the frantic panic. And the silence that followed.

Why was she spared?

The air felt as dead as the world had now become. No warnings. No explanations. No one left to tell her what happened or why. No one to give comfort. Numbness was all that was left to her. Slowly, silently, she moved toward the structure that once was life and normalcy. Now an edifice of finality; of loss. She entered on limbs that were no longer hers. With breaths that took in no oxygen. With eyes that no longer focused.

Floating.

Room by room, floor by floor. Ghastly faces looking upward, eyes wide in terror, mouths twisted into grimaces of pain and horror. Skin drained of color. Ghost corpses sharing their final, unanswered pleas. Tears spilled down her face devoid of emotion. The sound would come again and she would join them. She would be its only willing victim.

Finality.

Inside her apartment, eyes averted from the thing that was once her beloved pet. Her precious companion. Moving to the window, she gazed out upon the silver-grey world. The silent death that wafted in gentle currents upon the landscape, painting it all with a deathly pallor. Nothing moving but the slow and ethereal mass of monochrome that sang its silent dirge for a world once full of color.

And life…

Perhaps it wasn’t everywhere. Perhaps. But the sound would come. No matter where she went, it would come. Of this she was certain. So, if it wanted her, she would submit. She would dissipate into the grey and let the sound take her. What did it matter now? There was no life left. Not in the world. Not in her. The sound was the swan song of a planet that no longer breathed. No longer held the joys and pains of human existence.

Resignation.

The screams, the faces, the colorless, meaningless deaths of her neighbors. That was the only movie playing now. The only vision left to her clouded mind. Nothing was left of her resolve. No fight, no imperative to survive. It had all been stripped away when her world had vanished into the gloom. The crushing loneliness and loss weighed her down. No hope.

Waiting…

Drifting through the rooms of her home, vacantly staring at items, objects that once held meaning. Things. But things that held memories, smiles. Pictures of humans. Family. Friends. Happy times and places that gave meaning to life. Loved ones. The people that made life bearable. All gone. Their lives ripped from them in grey sound.

What was the point now?

Everyone had been so isolated, though together. Wandering through life with a device in our hands, electronics meant to bring the world together but only managing to separate us. Hypnotized into our own little worlds. Becoming avatars and personas that we dreamed of being, hiding behind pseudonyms and blog posts, tweeting out our imagined perfect lives.

Pointless.

She realized now that the world wasn’t a people, a race. It was billions of individual lives screaming out for connection when others were right next to them. Perhaps this was the true horror. And now, their visages lay in every room of the building. Their death throes a silent effigy to a new god. The god of sound and mist. A demanding deity that took everything.

Silence.

But this god remained silent. It waited in the pale outdoors - in the walls of her room, in the floors of the building. She knew it waited for her. It waited for the mental torture to peak until it finally bestowed one final respite - the end of a life now devoid of meaning or purpose. Devoid of anything and everything that had been or would ever be. And all the wondering, the searching for the ‘why’ of it, would end in one final blast of sound.

Memories.

She wondered if her memories would go with her. If, by some cosmic miracle, she could take all that made her life meaningful into the void - that they would somehow remain with her when she was ripped from all she knew. Were the ghastly faces around her a foretelling of a fate that not only tore life away, but also all that you were? Why did we have memories if we were not allowed to take them with us?

Standing in front of her bathroom mirror, she studied her face. It was pale now. Pale and drawn from new memories. Memories of faces twisted and agonized, crying out to the silent god for mercy. Faces that begged for their memories. She realized then that those were what made us human. Mementos of a life we clung to.

And then…

Her eyes appeared to glow in the dim lighting. The Sound. It was time. It was a horn blast blaring like an echo reverberating through the distant and dark hallways of hell. Her body began to glow from within, her heart was racing. She was lifted from the floor.

Reflected back to her now was the vision of a dark and twisted entity. It glowed dimly, swirling in dark mist. One hand holding an instrument of unidentifiable make or purpose. One hand raising to place the instrument to her lips; her lungs expelling breath. The sound issuing forth. Then floating; moving across the landscape to destinations unknown.

The Sound.

She was the harbinger. The bringer of agony and finality. The taker of memories and life. She was The Sound and her cries, the deathknell of all life.