*All chapters of The Disappearances that I post here on Substack are unedited works in progress.
*Updated 8-19-26
Chapter 3
Once home, I locked myself in my bedroom, curled into bed, and passed out. Seeing my husband’s empty car, the dark stores, and the quiet streets shocked my system more than I realized.
I dreamed of James. We were in bed talking, laughing, and planning the weekend. He was nuzzling my neck one second, suggesting we not worry about the weekend for now and think about having a little fun right then, and the next, the weight of his body was gone.
“Don’t stop,” I said, opening my eyes to see what had made him pull away from me. He was no longer in bed. Nor was he in the room.
“James,” I said, sitting up.
Faint laughter was his only reply.
“James, this isn’t funny,” I said, covering myself with my robe as I got out of bed. All I wore was a short, thin night shirt that wasn’t appropriate for running around my house. Not with my father-in-law there.
More laughter.
“I don’t see anything funny about this,” I said as I left the room.
That time when the laughter came, it was clearer, and I could tell it wasn’t James’ laugh.
“This game does not amuse me,” I said, rushing from room to room, trying to follow the laughter, but it never got louder.
“Fine. Keep doing what you’re doing. I’m done looking for you. If you want me, you know where I am,” I said, returning to our bedroom and slamming the door. Tears of anger were pouring down my cheeks by that point. I didn’t know what kind of cruel game he was playing, and I didn’t like it. It also wasn’t like him, which scared me. I started crying harder when he didn’t follow me into the room to say he was sorry. I cried so hard that I woke myself from the dream.
The reality I opened my eyes to wasn’t any better than the dream. The room was dark, telling me it was still night, and I could tell that James wasn’t in the bed with me. I looked at the bedside clock. It was two-thirty A.M. I lay my head back on the damp pillow with a sigh.
I didn’t stay there long. I’d cried too much into the pillow, and it was uncomfortable, so I wiggled over to a drier spot. By doing so, I realized I had been on my husband’s side of the bed. That explained why I had such a vivid dream of him. I flipped his pillow over to the dryer side for a minute to inhale his scent.
In the futile hope that the last two days had been the dream, not the reality, I sat up slightly in bed and called my husband’s name into the darkness. As I did so, I looked toward the bathroom door, hoping he’d gone to pee. When James didn’t reply, I repeated his name and sat up further in the bed.
I waited a full minute for someone to answer me.
No one did.
New tears came, but I didn’t let myself fall into hysterics. I told myself the disappearances hadn’t been a dream, and I had to start dealing with that fact.
“And just how the hell do you expect me to deal with it?” I asked the empty room, then threw James’ pillow to the foot of the bed.
“First, since you’re wide awake, you need to eat something. You haven’t eaten since you left the house yesterday morning. Nothing big. Just something to quiet your stomach,” the more rational side told me. At that, I felt my stomach growl and my head swim slightly.
I was right. I was too awake to fall back asleep. Once my body fully acknowledged that, nausea from low blood sugar set in, and it wouldn’t go away. Not wanting to get the shakes or to vomit, I left my bedroom and went into the kitchen to make myself a sandwich and a tall glass of milk.
While I ate, I spent an hour or two online to let my food settle. Being online and still not finding any signs of life heightened my grief, so sometime before dawn, I took a sleeping pill and returned to bed.
Hours later, I jerked awake, again feeling as if I’d overslept, which I had. Why hadn’t my alarm woken me? I didn’t remember turning it off, but I must have.
I was at my father-in-law’s bedroom door before I remembered he wasn’t there. After that, I remembered that no one was anywhere. I slumped against the wall to control my panic attack and gather my thoughts.
“What do I do now?” I asked the empty hallway.
No answer came.
I don’t know how long I sat there, overwhelmed by thousands of thoughts, but eventually, I rose and got in the shower. While I washed and smelled James’ shampoo, I desperately wanted to cry but forced myself to keep my shit together. I told myself that I’d cried enough. I could be sad. I could be scared, but that wouldn’t help me make sense of the situation, and that was what I would do. I would spend the rest of my life trying to discover what had happened, where my husband, son, and the rest of the world were, and, more importantly, if I was alone.
After dressing and eating a protein-heavy breakfast, I sat at my desk with my laptop and cell phones. I charged both phones while I cooked. No one had called my number since I’d talked to my mother the night before everyone disappeared. I’d been the only person to call my husband since he’d spoken to our son the morning of the disappearance. Seeing that Tanner had called him made me both happy and sad. I’d said goodbye and told my husband, ‘I love you,’ before he left for work. I hadn’t been able to utter the words to my son.
I opened my social media sites on my laptop, then did the same on my husband’s phone. He didn’t do much besides stay connected with his two brothers and their families on Facebook and follow athletes he liked on Twitter. I discovered that James had talked to his older brother, Stephen, on Facebook the morning before. The conversation was mundane, mostly about Stephen and his wife’s latest argument over colleges. Their oldest was only a high school junior, but she wanted to attend college across the country. Natalie, my sister-in-law, disapproved.
Like Tanner, Stephen’s girls didn’t have a Facebook page, and I didn’t know enough about Twitter, Snapchat, or any other sites that the younger crowd seemed to like so much. That meant I couldn’t easily look them up to see if they were still alive. I had their phone numbers, of course, and they didn’t answer any of my calls, but knowing they hadn’t posted on social media would be a big affirmation that they were gone.
For an hour or so, I allowed myself to slide down social media’s rabbit hole. I tried to find anyone who’d posted after eight-thirty on the morning of the disappearances. I also searched for posts indicating that someone was aware of or had witnessed the events, but I found nothing. I did find a few videos where someone had been live-streaming before the disappearance, but they only showed the person going still, some with mouths agape with awe, and then the phone panning away, usually to the ground, then stopping.
I saved as many of the videos as I could to my laptop for further examination.
Hoping someone else was searching for new posts, I posted messages on my walls. Then, I opened accounts on every site I could and posted on them, hoping someone would stumble upon them. I sent messages to everyone on my friend list, texted everyone on my phone and my husband’s, and sent a massive email via my and the publishing houses’ accounts. I ensured all my notifications were on so my phone or laptop would notify me if anyone replied.
I didn’t think about how futile everything I’d done was until I sat on the sofa, flipping through dead channels sometime later. More than half of them were off the air, but many weren’t, to my amazement. They still showed prerecorded movies and television shows. I didn’t know how far in advance a station schedules its slots, but it must be longer than a few days. The channels that had stopped broadcasting reminded me that the world would soon be without power. No one could access the internet, Facebook, or email at that point, so what I’d done had been a waste of time. For all I knew, parts of the world were without power at that very moment.
“Well, shit,” I said and tossed the TV remote onto the coffee table. “Why hadn’t that occurred to me before now? Shit. What do I do now? I can’t just sit here with my thumb up my ass waiting for someone to find me. I had to prepare. But how? I’d never lived without electricity.”
For one, I told myself to stop being overly dramatic. Making those posts wasn’t a waste of time because the electricity was still running where I lived, which meant it was still on elsewhere. Yeah, it might go out tomorrow, but it might also stay on another week or month. I didn’t know how such a thing worked.
For another thing, humankind had lived thousands of years without electricity. If they could do it, so could I. It would be hard and not at all fun, but I could do it.
“For now, monitor the sites to see if anything new appears. There’s a good chance someone else is doing the same thing. We were a society that lived online. Someone would eventually see my posts, or I’d see theirs if I kept looking.”
“Next, take advantage of having the internet and look shit up. Start formulating a survival plan in case this situation becomes permanent.”
I’d seen and read enough post-apocalyptic movies and books to give myself a starting point for prepping. The first question I needed to ask myself was whether to stay home and settle in for the long run or go on the road to find more people. That was a hard decision to make. Staying here meant my chances of ever finding anyone were low, but leaving meant I wouldn’t be here when my family returned.
“I need to start dreaming of an old black lady sitting on her porch and telling me to come see her in Nebraska,” I said aloud as I paced my living room. “That would help me decide what I should do.”
I laughed a little hysterically at the reference before saying, “Nope. Don’t go there. You don’t want to be in that apocalyptic world. This one was going to be bad enough.”
I stood at the front windows, gazing out at my empty neighborhood for a long time, hoping something would happen. When no clear idea came to mind, I told myself, “Before you start acting like this is the end of the world, you should be sure it is.”
“So, I’m hitting the road?” I asked.
I didn’t want to leave home. It was familiar and safe, but home lacked the answers I sought.
“You won’t find answers just sitting around here,” I told my reflection in the window.
Could I set out on my own? I wondered.
“Not yet,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s only been a few days.”
I left the window and the view of nothing and went to the kitchen.
“Anything could happen in the next few days or weeks. There’s no need to rush leaving,” I told myself.
Saying the words aloud wasn’t comforting, not that I thought they would be. My mind spun with questions, assumptions, worries, and automatic reactions. It took me a while to force myself to calm down and return to my desk, where I opened my notebook and began making notes on the supplies I would need if the people didn’t come back, places I should investigate for answers, and options for where everyone had gone.
No place in the city could house all the town’s residents. Even if they were dead, I couldn’t think of a spot where the authorities would take them to bury them. They hadn’t burned them. The smoke from the bodies would’ve filled the air, and I would’ve seen it as I looked for George on that first day.
That meant…
“What? What did that mean?” I asked aloud, looking up from my notebook.
“It means they aren’t on Earth,” I said, dropping my pen and leaning back, not believing I was saying the words aloud.
“Then where are they?”
“Heaven, a different planet, or a different dimension. Nowhere.”
“They can’t be nowhere.”
“But they can. There’s a chance they’ve ceased to exist.”
“I can’t believe that. I won’t. I must find them.”
“I can try.”
I sighed and leaned over the table and my notepad.
The first thing I needed to do was stockpile water, medicine, toiletries, and the like. When the electricity went out, the toilets stopped flushing. The plumbing might still work if I added enough water to the waste. I’d also need a way to bathe. The river was too far away to make a daily trip, but I had to keep it in mind when I ran out of water.
I wasn’t on any permanent medications, but I should stock up on what I might need and find a book on herbal remedies. As the available meds expire, I’d have to consider planting an herb garden.
Next, I’d need canned foods and seeds, but I’d prioritize eating perishables first since they spoil quickly.
My fridge and freezer weren’t full of food, so I had to load up as much as possible from the grocery store. After that, I’d need to eat the boxed stuff before the rats, mice, and bugs got into it.
My home was too big once it was just me, giving me plenty of room to store stuff.
On a new page, I began mapping out the house and determining which rooms would be used for which supplies.
At one point in my planning, I stopped and burst out laughing. Soon, my laughter turned into a long sigh, and I put my head in my hands and shook it.
“What am I doing?” I asked.
I ran my hands through my hair and looked at the binder full of notes.
“This is ridiculous,” the more practical side of myself chimed in. “For all I know, everyone will come back tomorrow. Then, I’ll feel silly for taking such drastic measures so soon. I need to calm down and stop reacting. I need to think.”
I took deep breaths and tried to slow my thoughts.
The world had only disappeared two days ago. I didn’t know what happened, which meant people could return just as quickly as they left. No, I couldn’t put off stockpiling forever because I’d risk desperately needing supplies and being in a situation where I couldn’t get them. I might be too sick to get meds during a snowstorm or run out of toilet paper while I have a stomach bug.
Granted, it was spring in the south, so the chances of it snowing hard enough and sticking around long enough for me to get stuck in it were next to zero, but if the world could blink out of existence the way it had, anything was possible.
“Okay, so I’ll pick up a few supplies each day while driving around looking for people,” I said, turning to a new page in my notebook to start a less detailed to-do list.
“Tomorrow, I’ll visit the police department, the hospital, city hall, and the courthouse to learn what I can. I doubted any of those places had been given prior notice of the disappearances, but they were the first places survivors would go for answers. Hell, I should be at one of those places right now.” The realization made me angry with myself, and I slammed my pen down on the table.
“Well, I’m not, so just finish what you’ve started. While I’m out, I’ll pick up a few items.” I continued aloud as I wrote down a list of supplies I knew I was low on, like toilet paper, milk, yogurt, and coffee creamer.
With a plan in mind and my head racing with possibilities of what had happened to the world and what would happen, I made myself a grilled chicken salad for dinner. After eating, I resumed searching the internet for other survivors.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to connect with someone before we lose communication, I thought.
After searching and finding nothing, I began watching how-to videos on YouTube and researching everything I could, from sewing on a button to milking a cow. I also researched how to operate a CB radio, something I’d have to learn if there’s a power outage. I reviewed instructions on how to dig a latrine and put up an outhouse. I dreaded that necessity, but the day was coming. I studied how to stitch up a wound and set a broken bone. I watched videos on cleaning, loading, and firing various types of guns, as well as on preparing my kills.
Next, I reviewed the fruits and vegetables I could grow in my area and the optimal time of year to plant them. I printed schematics for building a greenhouse, a chicken coop, and pens for different animals. I wasn’t looking forward to becoming a farmer, but food would become an issue in a year or so. Most canned vegetables and similar products can last past their expiration date, but they begin to lose their nutritional value and taste as they do so.
I printed as much information as possible until I ran out of paper. I saved the rest as documents on my laptop until I grew tired of looking at the screen. Again, I told myself not to put too much effort into the project just in case I woke up the following day to find everything the way it should be. Still, I couldn’t risk waking up without internet access and losing all the information I had. I knew libraries were a fountain of information, but with so much going viral, I worried I wouldn’t have access to everything I needed at my local library, which was small and poorly funded.
With blurry eyes and a slight headache, I eventually put away my laptop and went to bed. James’ scent was fading from the sheets. That didn’t stop me from rolling onto his side and burying my face in his pillowcase. As I drifted off, I told myself to spray his cologne on his side in the morning. It wouldn’t smell exactly like him, but it would be close enough.