It was bright when Jens woke up.

“Oh no,” he groaned, knowing he was going to be late. Being mid Spring, it wouldn’t be that bright outside until quite late in the morning.

He rolled over in bed to check the time but his cellphone was dead.

“That explains why the alarm didn’t wake me up,” he grunted.

Strange, it was still plugged in. Shrugging, he got up and flipped the light switch. The light stayed off.

“Power’s out,” he sighed. “That explains the cellphone not charging.”

This was shaping up to be a terrific Monday, he though to himself. That didn’t change the fact that he was still late for work so he hurried and got dressed. He skipped breakfast, figuring he was close enough to lunch time that he’d just eat then. He tossed a pinch of fish food into his aquarium on his way out the door of his small, one bedroom apartment, his keys, wallet, and bus pass in his pockets.

It was quiet outside. So quiet that he stopped midstep and looked around. There was no hum of traffic, no voices, no barking dogs. All he could hear was the occasional sound of birds calling to one another. The city was never this quiet, not even in the middle of the night.

Jens resumed his walk down towards the corner bus stop but he kept turning his head left and right, looking for any sign of activity. There was no traffic on his street. No traffic anywhere he looked. Without his cellphone he couldn’t tell what time it was but he waited for the bus long enough that he was confident it should have arrived. No bus came. He waited even longer and still there was no bus.

He walked up and down his street and, as far as he could tell, everyone’s cars were still parked in their usual spots

“No one’s gone to work today?” he wondered aloud to himself.

On a whim he walked over to the nearest door and knocked.

No one answered.

He tried again with the same results. He tried the next door down.

No answer.

The next door.

No answer.

“Where is everyone?”

Not too far from where he lived was a tall hill that had a park at the top. From there, he knew, he could get a pretty good view of the city. Perhaps from there he could see some sign of activity. The hike up the hill took him several minutes but when he reached the park at the top and looked out he felt a chill run down his spine.

There were no cars on the freeway. No cars moving along any of the streets he could see. No planes in the sky or boats in the harbor. The few traffic lights he could see were all out as well.

“Hello?”

His voice came out timid and quiet as the surreal nature of what was going on around him began to sink in.

“HELLO!” he shouted.

Silence was his only reply.

“This is a dream,” he told himself as he began to descend the hill, making his way back to his apartment.

Along the way he realized that the neighborhood dogs that would normally be barking at him as he passed by were also noticeably absent. Even the dog that was usually chained in its yard was gone, though the chain was still there.

He began knocking on doors as he made his way back home, hoping one of them would answer even though none of them ever did. When he got back home he stood in his living room for a while, unsure of what he should do.

His stomach growled and he figured he could at least eat something. He poured himself a bowl of cereal since he’d need to finish off his milk before it went bad. The fridge was already warming up inside and his food would begin spoiling in a day or two if the power didn’t come back on. Warm milk wasn’t as bad in cereal as he’d feared but neither was it very good.

It was while he was eating that he glanced over to his fish tank. He often liked to watch his fish swim around while he ate but as he looked he didn’t see any fish. At first he thought they might be hiding, but the longer he looked the more certain he was that they were simply all gone. He got up from the table and walked over to the tank to get a better look. With the power out their filter wouldn’t be running but it should take days for that to be a serious problem. There were no dead fish floating at the top or sunken to the bottom. Even the snail and shrimp were nowhere to be found.

“What is going on?”

This had to be a dream. What other explanation could there be? He’d heard of realistic dreams before, though he usually didn’t even remember his dreams. There was always a first time for everything, right? Only, he didn’t feel like he was dreaming. Everything felt real to him and he thought a dream would lack that amount of detail.

Even still, he took the net for his fish tank and scooped around the decor and plants in an attempt to flush out any fish. When he was fully convinced that there were no fish in the tank, he checked the filter to see if they’d gotten sucked in there. Besides the usual filter media, it was empty.

“Guess I could walk to work?” he mused out loud.

Was there any point to it, if no one else was going to be there? Would he even be able to get into the building? He didn’t have anything else to do, so he stepped once more out of his apartment and began walking along the sidewalk, towards downtown where he worked. He could see the office building from where he was. It wasn’t the tallest building downtown, but it was among the larger ones.

At first, Jens stayed on the sidewalks, crossed only at the corners, and looked both ways before crossing each street. After the first mile or so of this and still seeing no traffic, he began wandering out into the street. There were no cars in the road. He jogged a ways down the middle of the street if only to satisfy some old desire from his childhood. Any other day and this road would be packed with traffic.

The walk to reach his work took him the better part of an hour, Jens figured. When he arrived he walked up to the front doors and pulled on the handle. It was locked. What had he expected to happen? He walked over to the next building over and tried its door. Locked as well. The pub on the corner where he’d spent many an evening with his coworkers was similarly locked up, even though they would usually be hitting lunch time right about now and be churning out burgers and sandwiches.

There wasn’t much else Jens could do here but he didn’t want to go back home, not yet. What would he do there anyway? Stare at his empty fish tank? So, he spent the afternoon wandering through downtown, trying doors here and there and always finding them locked. There were no cars parked along any of the streets here. It seemed as though everyone had gone home, parked their cars, and then vanished. Dogs and fish were also gone, it seemed, though pigeons and crows and other birds were still around. Bugs were still around too.

It was getting near evening by the time Jens trudged back into his apartment. Without any power, he was beholden to the sun for light and he sat in his living room watching it set.

“This was a long, strange dream,” he said to himself, still not convinced it was a dream.

He went to bed early that night and stayed awake a long time, staring up at the ceiling and wondering what he would do if he woke up tomorrow to find everyone still missing.