In which it was eerily quiet.

We stepped out onto the back porch of our building for a smoke.

“Wow,” he said. “You hear that? So quiet.”

We listened. Absolutely no traffic, none. All the lights on the other side of the park were green. No traffic on the streets, no traffic on the interstate below. No voices, no nothing.

Silence.

“Damn. Maybe it’s finally happened,” I said. “It’s like every end-of-the-world book I ever read* and everybody disappeared while we were inside watching The Sopranos and eating zucchini bread. And now we’re the only people left!”

It was another sixty full seconds before we finally heard any traffic.

“There,” he said.

Oh, well. The world hasn’t ended. Maybe next time.

—
* When I was a teenager, I read Lucifer’s Hammer and The Stand and that whole empty earth idea has always kinda been part of my psyche. Like, you’d just wake up one day and all (or most) the infrastructure would still be here but the people would be gone and you’d be there while the electricity and water plants ran down and there’d be houses and businesses empty of people but filled with food and supplies… kinda like the zombie apocalypse only with dinosaur killers or divine intervention. I’ve always wondered if I’d meet an optician or if my glasses would break AND I WOULD BE FUNCTIONALLY BLIND UNTIL I DIED.