It had been a normal day, though windy, and rainy enough to fill a factory’s worth of sponges. He’d gone about his usual business without much fuss. He drove to school and back, and it was uneventful. Eventually, he’d sat at his table and ate an early dinner.

The lights flickered, and he’d frowned, but was ultimately unconcerned. In his house, lights flickered all the time. Mostly because of him, but yeah. There’d been talk of a huge storm, potentially tornado business, but he’d only had heavy rain.

The lights turned off, along with everything else connected to an outlet in the house. He should have expected this, he thought, but his generator soon hummed, and everything turned on again. He was lucky to have one, so that meant he could just go on like normal.

He walked about the house, turning off lights and fans to conserve energy and looking to see if the internet was still up. It was, along with service.

He finished his dinner, washed the dishes, and got ready for bed. Once he was done, he curled up on his mattress and read a couple things on the internet.

Suddenly, the internet went out. He frowned, but still couldn’t care less, as he watched a downloaded movie. He still had power, and that was good enough for him.

He went to sleep, noting that his phone’s service kept changing from unusually low to nonexistent. He hoped that everything would be better in the morning.

---

In the morning, nothing had changed. He sighed, but did everything like normal. However, when he went to his car, it didn’t drive. It looked fine, and seemed to be working, but when it needed to move, it just didn’t.

He couldn’t even tell anyone why he wouldn’t be arriving because of the internet being down and his service unreliable and slow. Would he have thought of that if his inability to wasn’t obvious? Yes! ...Eventually.

The school was rather far away, and he didn’t know anyone around. Besides, they were rather far away too, as the houses in his area were few and far between. Definitely not as far as the two hour drive that was his school, but far.

His parents had left on a trip for only a week, but it didn’t matter how long they would be when he was still alone and stranded.

He went outside to tend to his garden, as there was nothing else to do. It didn’t take very long, as the “garden” was small and only a few plants. The sun’s rays seemed muted, and he watered the flowers quickly before going back inside. He should probably just be happy it wasn’t as hot as last year, where a sudden heat wave struck near the end of school and made the last days absolutely miserable.

He attempted to text everyone in his contacts, but to no avail. The text never went through, and he’d gotten a weird message when he tried. It appeared in bold letters where the name and contact photo would be in every number he tried.

“Wrong Number”