Alone
A short story by Reggie F.

The drive home from her ballroom dance class was never very eventful. However, on the very last day of her class, something weird happened. She felt something, a twinge, a change in the world she couldn't physically see. She felt uneasy, different. alone. She felt as if she was the only one left on Planet Earth. That couldn't be, she thought as she looked at the cars driving around her. They looked different too. The wrong color maybe, she didn't know. The people inside them looked real enough, but somehow not. A sign told her that the next exit led to Alpine, where her best friend Anique lived. As she headed off the freeway, she realized that she had no idea where Anique's house was. She took out her phone and dialed Anique's cell number. There was no answer. She didn't know Anique's home number so she stopped at a gas station to look through a phone book. It was empty. She flipped the pages frantically searching but they were blank. Cruel joke, she thought, as she tried to call her friend Kali, who also knew Anique. There was no answer. Now she really felt alone. She turned around and got back on the freeway thinking that if only she got home, everything would go back to normal. As she got on the freeway, her gaze turned again to the people in the cars around her. They looked normal, real, and believable. except they weren't moving. or blinking. She shuddered. Music will help me feel better, she thought, and she put a Coldplay CD into her player. It wouldn't play. She could hear the whirring of the CD player but she couldn't hear any music. She drove into her driveway feeling like relief had come at last and that her family would laugh at her story. She jumped into her house bursting with emotions. But it was empty. She was alone. Alone.