“What the hell is going on?” I asked myself.
The streets were empty. The buildings were empty. And the air—absolutely silent. No wind, no sound, nothing but bare concrete, asphalt, solitude.
Walking on the asphalt was painful. With bare feet, even calloused soles couldn’t carry me far.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Gazing toward the buildings was torture. The colors looked normal. The windows were intact—no signs of war or disaster. So what had transpired here? Was it a virus? A chemical attack? But there were no corpses, no signs of violence, no trash, no ill-parked cars. Just nothing. Humanity isn’t this perfect…
They would resist. They would leave behind some sign of life.
I kept walking for miles through this infinite ocean of a city, but there was no one. I yelled, begging someone to come out and tell me what was going on. But the echo of my own voice was the only answer this place offered.
No newspapers. No written clues to investigate. A city with clean streets, immaculate silence—the irony of needing the filth of others to survive.
Eventually, I had to stop. The pain in my feet was unbearable. I remember standing in the middle of an intersection, and when I turned around, I saw something I must’ve missed—or maybe I was dreaming. Maybe this was a nightmare. Maybe I had gone straight to hell.
To the City of Dis.
Hundreds of crucified, skinless corpses covered every wall in the vicinity. How they had reached such heights was a mystery I wasn’t sure I wanted to solve.
I tried to walk away, to run—but my feet wouldn’t budge. Looking down, I saw they had sunk into liquid asphalt. It was boiling. Huge dark bubbles burst and burned my skin on contact.
Above, the sun seared a crimson sky. It looked—no, felt—as if Earth had veered into Venus’s orbit.
The oxygen was gone. I grew desperate, tried to breathe, but couldn’t. My skin began to incinerate. It didn’t hurt. And all the while, I was being sucked downward into this molten trap.
As I reached the bottom, slowly mummified, I saw millions of others entombed beside me, trapped in fetal positions.
I had become a victim of the unknown. I had finally become one with the planet. And I would remain there, forgotten, until the Earth crashed into the sun—or until someone dug me out.
Some archaeologist, greedy for fame and fortune, might one day unearth me. And I—if I’m lucky—could become fuel.
Not for a fire, but for a world reborn.