Sho woke up to knocking at the door, pounding, and the sound of someone who seemed frightened. The world was still covered in darkness and when his eyes opened, he could barely tell the difference. Sho grabbed his phone and used that to guide his way up and out of the bathroom where he left Mustard who slept as if nothing was wrong. The bright light from his phone seemed blinding to him as he used it to maneuver his house, noticing the television was black with a single sentence on the screen. ‘Good luck.’ The words made him uneasy as he approached his front door, the banging still ongoing as he heard weeping.

“Please! I need help!” A woman cried as he made his way over, looking through the peephole but not being able to tell anything apart due to the darkness. Sho wished to open the door, but felt uncomfortable thinking about the person and why they would be weeping so harshly. “Please! I know you’re in there, I CAN SEE YOUR LIGHT!!” The woman now screamed, her weeping turning into laughter as Sho heard the sounds of her clawing at the door. He fell to the floor, flustered and scared as he scattered, reaching for his phone and covering the flashlight with his hands as the woman continued to cackle, her footsteps walking off. Sho ran to his room, locking the door in a panic as his heart pumped out of his chest and he struggled to catch his breath, hyperventilating. 

An hour had passed since Sho had encountered the woman, he had eaten leftovers and drank only a cup worth of water from his tub, already feeling like his supply was running low. He fed Mustard and thought of how he could possibly survive, the darkness was impossible to escape and after testing the phone and other services he had realized he was very much alone. Sho looked out his window on occasion, trying to make out anything in the darkness, but he saw nothing but the feet of his neighbor whose house still had lights on. He wanted to watch the house, watch to see if anything would approach it from the darkness as if some sort of monster or alien would emerge from the dark and turn the lights off. He looked around his room, looking for anything that could give him an advantage, anything that might help him when he remembered something. Sho was an amateur photographer, going to school to be a cameraman in motion pictures, and he remembered he owned a camera with a night vision mode. He bumped around his closet, things falling on his head as he retrieved the case that contained the camera. He powered on the device and turned on the night vision setting. 

The camera worked perfectly and allowed him to see through the darkness with ease, not worrying about tripping and falling.  Sho made sure to turn off every possible light in his home, not needing them now that his camera guided his way. His first thought was to find batteries, an item he had more than enough of that could fuel the camera for anything he had planned. Secondly, he gathered all materials, foods, drinks, and other essentials into the bathroom while creating a small sleeping area for him and Mustard under the walk-in shower. This room was crucial since it was the only room in the house with a lock. He filled the area with as much as he could and grabbed a couple of knives and a metal baseball bat as protection. Since moving his living quarters into the bathroom, he had used the furniture in his apartment to barricade the front door, lifting his mattress and using that to prop on the windows in case anybody tried to get in that way. Careful planning led to his home being secure for the most part, the only window that was left able to be opened was the very small one in the bathroom, one he was not concerned about since only a child could fit through and he was on the second floor. 

The day was almost over, according to his watch that he had monitored all day, he was going to lock himself into the bathroom but felt like there was something he still needed to do. Sho aimed his camera outside, looking at the street and searching for any signs of life in the darkness. He was scared, he didn’t know what would be worse, seeing people or not. When the image cleared, he saw nothing that would point to anybody being around, no activity. Like his home, everything was pitch black. He felt worried, wondering how his neighbors were doing and curious as to who was at his door earlier that day. He felt as if there should be more people making noise at least; people talking, asking for help. Sho shrugged it off, thinking that since he didn’t do those things it makes sense others wouldn’t either. Sho turned his attention to the neighbor’s house again, feeling his heart begin to race. His heart dropped. The light was off and the hanging person wasn’t there. Sho looked around the area with his camera, once again seeing no signs of activity. He began to panic and his breathing grew louder, more fearful as he scanned the house, finally noticing something on the second floor of the home. In one of the bedrooms, a window was open and he saw something moving. It looked like a person was hunching over something. The motion made him think of how a zombie would crouch to eat a person on the ground.  Sho zoomed in, there was definitely a person slouching, but what they were doing was still a mystery. He watched for minutes, taking the sight in and burning it into his memory. His arm began to grow tired and he readjusted himself, his hand fumbling the camera as the flash feature sparked and the camera snapped a picture. Sho backed away from the window and reset the camera, bringing it back into night vision mode and off the camera function, feeling that he may have just given himself away. He wanted to check, wanted to know more than anything if the person had noticed. He brought the camera up to his face, trembling as he brought it to eye level, making a silent deal with himself to check the window only for a second. He began to breathe shakily, bringing himself to look outside the window, though it terrified him. His fingers caressed the windowsill as he held his breath subconsciously, and forced himself to peek. His heart stopped, as did his body, frozen in fear as he saw it looking back at him, making eye contact with him. A person with wide, huge eyes that were darker than the sky, almost negative, like two oval-shaped black holes with a taller forehead to compensate.  Sho falls backward, running to the bathroom and locking the door. 

A week has passed since the event and Sho has yet to hear a sound or notice any signs of human life. The creature that Sho had seen outside hasn’t come back, and yet every time Sho looks out a window, he can feel it watching. The emergency broadcast has yet to change, the words ‘good luck’ still glow on the screen, burned forever as a reminder that they have been abandoned. Sho sits in his makeshift bed, eating the last of his granola bars and feeling his stomach aching for more and more portions of food, noticing each day the amount he eats becomes smaller and smaller. The water in the tub and sink haven’t run out but has taken a significant drop, and Sho has begun to ration the amount of water Mustard can have daily. Sitting in the same place for days, Sho has used the time to think, feeling it necessary to think of a plan to get help and keep hope that help is out there. He couldn’t be the last person alive, he thought, there was no way he and his little tabby cat could be the last creatures alive on the planet. He used a laser pointer that was traditionally a cat toy to shine the laser in different home windows, hoping that maybe somebody would investigate the small red light. In the blackness that blanketed the world, even the laser looked like a spotlight. 

Sho brought his camera up and then pointed the laser to the houses closest to him, the laser shooting into each window and hitting the surface on the other side. Nothing responded to the attempts of communication, rather, it made Sho more desperate to find someone. Days began to lap onto the other without him noticing, no daylight cycles made the time of day difficult to tell, and eventually, Sho began to sleep less and less, growing paranoid that something was going to emerge out of the dark. Birds didn’t chirp and nothing made a sound, not even the wind blew by. Every move Sho made felt like an explosion of sound, he felt that the entire neighborhood could hear his every move, every wrapper, every sip of water, every crunch of food. The lack of food was becoming an issue, something he didn’t want to think about until the very last moment but the reality was setting in quickly. He was growing hungry. The thought of eating Mustard wasn’t something he wanted to entertain, his cat had become his true and only companion. Mustard slept for a majority of the time they spent together, only getting up to use the bathroom and eat, but that was more than enough to make Sho feel less alone, even whispering to the cat and hearing it whisper back sometimes. 

He felt himself becoming more unhinged, unsettled by the whispers that he started to hear, the whispers telling him that he wasn’t alone. Sho’s stomach growled and his hands became twitchy, itching and scratching at his skin, his body snapped in the directions of sounds that never happened, he was growing restless. 

Another week had passed, the message on the screen had turned off, and the screen itself had shut off entirely. Sho used his laser to try and communicate with nearby houses, tapping with it to use morse code, something he had learned in summer camp. Light had started to become something he missed, even the light from the night vision camera was becoming too bright and his eyes preferred seeing through the darkness. His stomach had stopped growling, accepting the fact that he may never have a full meal again. Days ago, Sho had begun eating cat food, something he had plenty of, the crunch of the pebbles in his mouth was bliss and each handful tasted like rock candy to him. The thought of eating the food made him sick, his mental health slowly deteriorating, which he was fully aware of. Sho wanted someone to speak to, he wanted to see if he was the last alive, he wanted to go outside. Nothing made a sound and as he removed the barricades from his front door, all he wanted was to hear something, someone.