D-1
373 Words
Apartment 6B. 9:17 AM.
Dmitry woke not to an alarm—his alarm had died two months ago.
He woke because of… the silence.
A strange silence. Heavy. Too perfect for an eight-story, crumbling apartment complex.
Usually, there was always noise:
Kids crying. Neighbors arguing. Leaky pipes.
But this morning? Nothing. Even the birds seemed reluctant to sing.
He sat up slowly, rubbing his face still sticky with nightmares and cold sweat.
“Guess the world’s finally too lazy to keep living,” he mumbled, pulling the last cigarette from his “emergency stash” drawer.
He lit it, cracked the window open. The smell of last night’s rain lingered, mixed with something sharper… and foreign.
The scent of iron. And rot.
Not from his kitchen—he was sure.
This smell came from outside.
He peered down at the street below.
Silent. Cars parked haphazardly, some doors left open. No people.
No bustle.
Just one figure in the distance… standing still in the middle of the road, frozen, as if forgetting how to be human.
Dmitry stared for a long time.
“Damn cold morning. And s**t, people are getting lazy at acting normal," he said, blowing smoke. “Or… maybe this is normal now?”
No answer. definitely.
He shut the window, walked to the kitchen, and opened the fridge—stocked only with ketchup, three cracked eggs, and a bottle of leftover IV fluid.
Apocalypse breakfast.
A knock sounded at the door.
Three times. Slow. Unhurried.
Dmitry glanced over.
“Power’s out, signal’s gone, and now… someone drops by uninvited at dawn?”
He chuckled. “Okay, world. I’m starting to like your new rhythm.”
But he didn’t open the door.
Instead, he walked slowly to the corner of the living room, sat back down on the floor, stared quietly at the door… and waited.
Thirty seconds passed.
No sound.
Then, another knock. Just once this time. Hard. Sharp.
And then… a groan. Deep. Wet. Unhuman.
Dmitry tilted his head slightly. For the first time in a long while… he felt something dangerous stalking him from within the silence.
“Yeah… maybe the world ends tomorrow,” he whispered.
“But today… it seems to be roaring.”
- Writer
