This is the beginning of a longer work I am working on. Any comments and/or critiques would be most welcome.
Day 1- September 28th, 2009
I woke up at my usual time, 6:35, to get ready for school. I got dressed in gym shorts and a muscle shirt; I had gym first thing. I went downstairs to scarf some food before biking to Seder High. I expected to see my younger brother Dan already at the table eating, but he wasn’t there. I thought nothing of it, “He’s probably sleeping in” I thought to myself, as I discovered that the only Poptarts that were left were strawberry flavored. I hate strawberry flavored things. So I ate two bananas and went to wake up my lazy brother, only to find his bed unmade and empty. The only reason I mention the fact that his bed is unmade is that Dan is a total neat freak, the kind of person that flips out if the forks aren’t on the left side of the plates. I got a bit suspicious at that point. I went to look for him, and I found that his bike was missing. Then I remembered that he had early band practice.
I took off for school on my bike after that, not feeling like touching the Seder tree this morning. On the ten minute ride there, I saw some pretty weird things. There were a lot of crashed cars, not just like ten, but like almost fifty of them. They were also all empty. Crashed cars were the only kind of cars I saw on my way. I don’t I live on a highway or anything, but I usually have to dodge some stupid drivers. Not today. I stopped to look into one of these cars, and I saw something I never could have expected: the seatbelts were still buckled in. If the crashed drivers were rescued, the first thing the rescuer would have done was undo the seatbelt. And even if the crashed drivers got out themselves, they would undo their seatbelts to get out. What happened? Did they just disappear? That’s not possible, right?
Right?
When I got to school, I couldn’t believe my eyes. No one was there! Not one car or bus or bike or anything. No one was there.
Everyone was gone.
It wasn’t like it was a weekend. It was Thursday. I knew so because I had a history test today, and I didn’t study.
Oh dear god, what happened to my mom; to Dan? Did they all just… stop existing? How did this happen? Why did this happen? Why was it me?
I stood there for a while, feeling sorry for myself. I’m not sure how long I stood there, but suddenly, I was struck by a wonderful idea. A wonderful, impossible idea that I hoped with all my heart was true.
Maybe, just maybe, my mom wasn’t gone. That’s how it worked in the movies, right? Despite all the tragic things that might happen, someone in your family manages to survive alongside with you. At least I convinced myself that that’s how it happened in the movies, and stuff this dramatic only happened in movies. My demented logic said it was obvious, and my mom would be home, wondering what happened. And then I would walk in and say something casual, like “Hi mom”, and she would be so thrilled to see me and we would find out what the hell is going on, together. I got so excited over the idea of seeing my mom again that I raced back home, taking five minutes on what used to be a ten minute journey.
I dumped my bike on the front lawn and ran to my front door. At first, when the door wouldn’t open, my heart skipped a beat. But then the small part of my brain that was still thinking clearly remembered that I had a key to unlock the door. I fumbled through my pockets to find the key, and then select the black one with the hole in it from the mess of all the other stuff I had on my key chain. When I finally had the door unlocked, I threw the door open so hard that I nearly took it off its hinges. I burst into the kitchen, knowing as sure as anything that Carla Gordon would be sitting at the table wondering to herself what has happened.
She wasn’t there.
I didn’t believe it at first. For a split second, my mind projected an image of her sitting at the table with her head in her hands. That happy image disappeared just as quickly as my eyes could register it, and with it, all my hope that I had been building up, leaving an empty, black hole. I slowly shuffled my feet over to the seat where I thought I knew my mom was. I waved my hand through the space where I thought I saw my mom’s honey-brown hair with the air of a dead person. For all I cared, I could be dead. What was the point of living if there was no one else to share life with?
I walked over to the living room, falling onto the leather couch. I stayed there for I don’t know how long, just listening to two voices in my head argue over what I should do next. The first one, dark and heavy, said, “Give up, Marcus, there’s nothing left to live for. Everyone you ever cared for or knew is gone. You’re all alone, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”
“That’s not true!” came the second voice, softer in tone but equally persuasive. “You don’t know that everyone is gone. You’re still here, aren’t you? There are billions of people on Earth, so the chances of you being the last one are one to a billion.”
“Is that so?” challenged the first voice almost lazily. “If those odds were half as good as you say, then Seder City should be full of people. Is it full of people? From what you saw, the answer’s no. You’re alone, and no amount of denying it is going to change that.”
I was starting to doubt my sanity after hearing those two voices compete for my vote in my own head. The scary thing was that I didn’t know which one I agreed with more. Sensing this, the voices tried again to sway me over to their side.
“You can’t give up hope. Use your logic, six billion people and they all disappear but you? That’s not possible, and you know it.”
I was making a good point.
“Logic also says that an empty school and empty, crashed cars everywhere means no people.”
That’s another good point for me. Damn.
I was still undecided when I rolled over on the couch and accidentally hit the power button on the T.V. remote. The flat screen flickered on to some soap opera showing an invasive close-up of someone crying. For the first time in what seemed to be a lifetime, I was seeing people. That did it for me, seeing another living, breathing human being, even if it was on a show that I absolutely hated. I decided to go with voice number two.
I went over to the garage, taking my mom’s keys off the hook by the door. I had yet to acquire a working car, so I decided to borrow today. Not to say I didn’t have a car, it’s just lousy. It got around 5 miles to the gallon and needed a new muffler, and the belt was about to snap. My mom’s Toyota Venza was my vehicle of choice on that day. It had a full tank, too. My day was improving.
I was ready to find some people.
Try to start, instead, when the narrator realizes that their brother is missing. It's the beginning of the plot, and therefore, the conflict.