The Smiling Man

The streets were completely void of human life; the cars looked as if they hadn’t been run in years, and all of the houses around him looked as if their occupants had fled. He stopped in the middle of the street, where the two roads met to make a T. His ears were freezing thanks to the bitter fall wind blowing in his face.

His dark eyes scanned the area slowly. In front of him was a cream colored house, with a dark brown trim and roof. Its light brown screen door (obviously made from 2x2’s and screws from the local Home Depot) swung noisily back and forth on its rusted hinges. The windows were open wide, and blackness stared out at him like hateful eyes.

To his right, empty homes lined the street. He knew they were empty, not because of the people living or not living there, but because the atmosphere surrounding these homes was so timid, so utterly eerie, that he couldn’t even begin to imagine any sane person living there. He turned his back to them. He shivered, but not because of the cold. He shivered because he could imagine some zombie like head poking out of one of the windows and grinning at him with razor sharp teeth.

To his left, a row of metal mail boxes rocked silently in the fall wind. Next to them were two children’s bikes, one black, and one pink. They were both lying half in and half out of a pile of leaves. He listened carefully, but he could not hear their owner’s laughter. He didn’t like how quiet it was. He could only hear two things, one was the leaves blowing back and forth across streets and through yards, and the other was the wind now chilling his right side. It seemed to overpower him at times, pushing him back a few steps, but most of the time it just whirled around him, chilling him to the bone. The sound that it gave off was like the ocean, crashing into the shore, and then receding back into its mysterious depths. And like the ocean, this new world had no reason to be, it just was.

*(He wakes up sweating and gasps, sitting up, as his dog lays its head on his chest.)

“Hey, boy, you scared me.” Oli said, his voice baring a hint of annoyance.

Jacoby, Oli’s German Shepard seemed to grin at him and then stuck his wet nose on his owner’s elbow. “I see how it is you little mutt. Get down.” Oli’s tone was playful as he said this. “Go downstairs.” The German Shepard whined. Oli looked under the covers and then back at his pet. “Alright, but you’ll be seeing the fullmonty.” The dog sneezed at him and jumped off of the bed. “That’s what I thought. “

About twenty minutes later, Oli was downstairs and rummaging around through the cabinets for something to eat, when he decided to turn the TV on.

“What the fuck is this?” He asks the air, exasperated.

There was nothing on the screen, save a red line running from one side to the other. It looked like a heart monitor screen, only this one had flat-lined. He furrowed his eyebrows and changed the channel. The same thing met him on the next forty channels. He turned off the TV and set the remote on the counter, panic now threatening to overwhelm him. This is way too fucking Stephen King for me. He thought rubbing his forehead. Oli looked down at his dog Jacoby, who was now licking his unmentionables. “I need to call Kat.” The dog glanced up at him –mid lick- and began to wag his tale. Oli couldn’t help but smile a little at this. “Shut up.” He said laughing a little.

He’d tried to call Katherine, his sister in Wisconsin, but only got a robotic voice telling him “The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected. Please hang up, and try again.” Then he’d called his mother, April, and gotten the same thing.

“What the hell is going on?” He asked the air again, only thing time Jacoby answered by whining from behind him.

Oli turned and looked at the German Shepard, who was standing on the couch and looking out the front window. Then he began to growl. What now?

Oli went to the window and moved the curtain to the side. “Oh… Wow.”

Across the street, a small group of people were running from house to house carrying things in their arms; TVs and kitchen appliances; one guy even had a mattress hoisted above his head. “Looting?” Oli looked down at Jacoby, who was still growling.

“Don’t worry, boy. If they come here, I’ll just throw your Ashley Simpson CDs at them.”

Jacoby growled again. “Yeah, I see your point. Even free, their not worth much.”

Even Oliver Stahl, the guy with a million jokes and the handsome grin, would not be spared from the coming catastrophe. But, he sure as hell would be the one to welcome the end of the world with a smile on his face.