Chapter 416

The calendar, yellowed and brittle, was a stark reminder. A crimson circle encircled October 26th, 2023. The silence had descended. It always did, every two decades, a blanket of utter quiet that smothered the world. This was the Great Stillness.

Elias, a man worn by time and dread, had lived through two of these events. He knew the unnerving quality of it, the feeling of being isolated on a dying planet. Outside, the once bustling city was nothing more than a mausoleum, its noises, like a cruel joke, replaced with an awful absence.

He stood by the window, a silent sentinel observing the vacant streets. It was always identical: the same eerie calm, the same palpable void. Everything felt wrong, as if some cruel cosmic prank had been played upon humanity.

A digital counter, a band fastened to his wrist, a morbid inheritance from his father, ticked upwards: 137. Each number a lost soul, those who had ventured into the silence. They were erased as if they had never existed. He was the only one left who knew the truth. The faces of these souls had faded to nothing.

The quiet itself was the true terror. Not sharp noises or monstrous figures but this gaping absence of all sound. The tiniest of sounds was an echo in a vast, empty space. He attempted to get some sort of signal with his ancient radio. Static.

Nothing but a hiss, as if the world itself was gasping for breath. Even the daylight seemed muted, anemic. It wasn't a normal day. The world was holding its breath. He could feel it.

The old house groaned. Decayed wood complained of the silence. The counter clicked: 138. A wave of unease washed over Elias, cold and heavy like a lead blanket. It was beyond simple fear, a primal dread that went to the core of his soul. The numbers were rising, each tick a grave mark on the silent world. He poured a glass of water. His hand trembled as he tried to drink it. He felt weak.

He found himself drawn to his grandfather's journal. The pages, like parchment, held his scrawled handwriting, a chronicle of past Silences. "Never, ever go outside," it declared, words bold and underscored as if they were a plea, "They are taken, gone from every mind like they were not even born." It was the only proof that these events ever happened, a grim warning left from one generation to the next. A warning no one else was able to read. He was the last one.

His thoughts returned to Sarah, his wife, taken by the Silence of twenty years prior. He had her face locked into his memory but not much else.

A woman who laughed. Now, a void existed in his heart, a space where love once resided. It was a terrible void he carried with him everywhere. A wound that wouldn't heal.

Elias wandered towards the corner. This spot was where the family pictures once hung, now all missing. They had vanished, every trace of them gone. His parents. Grandparents. Erased from existence. It felt as if they had never existed.

He was the only witness to their lives. And he knew that very soon, even he will be gone as well. That was the cruel truth he had come to accept.

His eyes settled on the front door. An idea bloomed in his mind, a terrible desire. He knew what would happen if he unlocked it.

His heart pounded in his chest like a trapped bird. Part of him longed for the end, for the end of memory. Nobody remembered those who went outside. It was a cruel burden to bear. A knowledge he held alone.

The counter on his watch switched to 139. A strange force, like a magnetic pull, beckoned from beyond the door. It whispered to him with the quiet, promising an end to his sorrow. An end to the pain.

He reached for the handle. Cold metal pressed into his palm. Fear and a desire to cease to exist struggled within him. He twisted the knob, his resolve as fragile as a thread.

The door opened with a creak. The exterior light was too intense, bleaching everything in a pale, faded wash. The silence pressed in, like a physical thing, smothering his ears. He stood frozen, feet rooted to the floor.

His eyes surveyed the street. It was quiet, empty, waiting, like the world stopped just to see what he would do.

A single step outside. A cold breeze brushed against him, setting a shiver down his backbone. It was like standing at a cliff's edge, a chasm calling from below. He could not turn away. It was too late.

Another step. The digital counter changed to 140. The world bent around him, like reality was being changed. He felt a pull, a sense of being drawn away. It wasn't physical. But more like a tug at his very soul. He was being unraveled.

He turned, his hand reaching for the door. But there was an unseen barrier there, cutting off his escape. Panic set in. He couldn't go back, he was trapped.

He attempted to shout, but no sound came, all he saw was his hand going see-through, not translucent, but see through, as if he were fading out. He felt his body fade, becoming lighter, less real.

He could not feel his legs, as though he were levitating. The buildings around him began to distort, the trees stretched as if reaching to the heavens. This wasn't real.

The digital counter ticked once more: 141. His memories drifted away like grains of sand slipping through his hand. He could not remember his name. He could not remember his house. He could not remember the day he went outside.

He could not remember the journal, or Sarah, or anyone he loved. The only thing he had was the number. It pulsed in his brain like a heartbeat.

The world became white, he looked at nothingness. The world was a rubbery mess of distorted forms, it went against the very laws of existence. His sight was blurred and his body started to feel as if he was floating away. He was ascending. He felt so light.

The digital counter changed, the final number he saw: 142. And then it went quiet.

But, it wasn't the end he was expecting. It was not a void. He was on a boat, gliding on an endless ocean, but the sea was made of memories. His memories, and of everyone that had been claimed. The water was their faces, their lost ones, their places of living. The water was mourning.

He saw his whole life, his being became part of the sea. He was sailing the ocean of forgotten souls. He was not forgotten. He was now part of the horrible sea that consumed everything, his very being was the sea itself.

His body became one with the sea. It was his existence, now a part of the world. He saw everything.

The boat started to move faster, he was being pulled. The images in the sea started to distort and change, now he was seeing the faces of people he had not even been alive to know. His parents, his grandparents. It all became one.

He felt himself growing weaker and weaker, his body unable to handle so much information, so much pain, so much suffering. His own face was now on the sea, along with the others. All of the people taken by the stillness. All 142 and counting.

The boat stopped, at the edge of the sea. It was the end of the world. There was nothing beyond it. Just endless void. He felt himself being pulled into it. He was now formless. He was the sea, he was the void. He was nothing.

A new silence fell over everything. The silence was so loud.