This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Giantgorgonzola on 2024-09-14 18:54:36+00:00.

I woke up to an unsettling stillness. No noise from the street outside, no faint hum of traffic. It was too quiet. I rubbed my eyes, half-expecting the usual chaos of the morning, the neighbor’s dog barking, the faint hum of a lawnmower, my phone buzzing with messages from work. I live in a relatively small town filled with folks I know But none of that happened.

I brewed coffee, as always, letting the warm aroma fill the air, trying to shake the feeling that something was off. I reached for my phone, no messages. Not a single notification. That was odd. Even the usual spam emails were missing. I checked the time, then the news, scrolling through article after article. Nothing was new, no breaking headlines, no chatter. It was like the world had gone dark overnight. but still everything seems in place.

I tried calling my brother. He checked in on me every few days, always pestering me to get out more, meet people, stop being such a hermit. But my call went straight to voicemail. That uneasy feeling was gnawing at me again, so I tried my mom next, hoping to hear her comforting voice. No answer.

That’s when I made the decision to head to her house. I didn’t live with her anymore, but she’d always been my go-to when things felt off. She lived in a small neighborhood not far from where I was, just a quick drive across town. The streets were deserted as I drove, more so than usual. No kids playing, no cars passing by, not even a stray jogger. I passed houses with open doors and running cars in driveways, but no people. It was as if they had vanished, leaving everything behind in a rush. I made a joke to myself saying did the apocalypse happened without me? am I the only survivor? I chuckled uneasily.

When I arrived at my mom’s house, it felt… wrong. Her door was cracked open slightly. The TV inside was still on, but there was no sign of her. I stepped inside, my voice echoing through the empty rooms as I called out for her. Her knitting was laid out on the armchair like she’d just been there. A coffee cup, still half full, sat on the counter. But no matter how many rooms I checked, she was gone.

I sat on the couch, feeling the weight of the silence press down on me. It wasn’t just my mom. The whole neighborhood felt empty. And the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was connected to my work. The dreams, the strange things I’d been seeing—people disappearing.

The last few weeks had been intense at the lab. They were running an experiment, something high-level involving teleportation?, maybe even dimensional rifts. I myself couldn’t believe I was part of something this big, they say it could revolutionize everything we knew so far. But I wasn’t told much, I didn’t need to know. I was just there to keep the lights running, just your regular guy trying to keep a roof over his head. But there had been a malfunction with one of the underground labs—something had gone wrong, and they shut everything down. After that, I’d been having the strangest dreams—dreams where people would disappear into thin air.

I left my mom’s house with a heavy heart. I scribbled a quick note for her, hoping maybe she’d come back and find it, then drove to my brother’s place. If anyone would know what was going on, it would be him. He was practical, always level-headed in a crisis. But when I got to his apartment, the door was unlocked, and it looked like he’d left in a hurry too. Half-eaten food and his phone sat on the kitchen counter with my number dialed in on it, lights were still on, and his car was parked outside. He was gone, just like everyone else.

I was starting to realize the truth. This wasn’t just a coincidence. The strange dreams, the experiments at work… something had happened, and I was in the middle of it. But I still didn’t fully understand.

Then I saw them.

It was just a flicker of movement at first, something out of the corner of my eye. I pulled the car over and grabbed the binoculars I kept stashed in the glove compartment. My hands were shaking as I scanned the horizon. And then I saw them—people, standing in the distance, near the edge of a large open field. It wasn’t a large crowd, maybe five or six, but they were there.

My heart raced. Finally—other people. I waved, desperate for a response, but none of them waved back. They stood there, clustered together, looking around nervously. Something wasn’t right. I focused the binoculars, studying them more closely. They weren’t just watching me; they were on edge, shifting uncomfortably, whispering to each other. One man kept glancing over his shoulder, like he was ready to run at any moment.

I stepped out of the car, raising my hand again to get their attention, but their unease only deepened. One by one, they started backing away, moving further from the field’s edge as I approached. It felt wrong, the way they were retreating—like they were afraid of me. I took a single step forward, and that’s when it happened.

One of the women disappeared.

She didn’t run or hide. She just… vanished. Right there, in front of me. The space where she’d stood was suddenly empty. The others saw it too, and their panic spread. In a moment of confusion I step closer again while my hand’s still in the air then it happened again one of them vanished again. The others that was left turned and bolted, trying to get away as fast as they could, but it was too late. One by one, they all disappeared—fading from existence with every step I took closer.

I suddenly froze. My mind reeled as I dropped the binoculars, the world spinning around me. This wasn’t a coincidence. This wasn’t some strange phenomenon happening to everyone. It was happening because of me.

I felt sick. The experiments at work—the malfunction, the strange dreams… they weren’t just in my head. I was the one causing this. Whatever cosmic force they had tapped into on that lab during those experiments had changed me, turned me into some kind of walking black hole. People disappeared when I got too close.

I staggered back to the car, my heart pounding. The notes I had seen earlier started making sense now. “Don’t come closer.” “You’re not alone, but you need to stay away.” They weren’t warnings to me. They were warnings about me.

I thought about my mom, my brother—everyone I had been near. Had I caused them to vanish, too? The guilt was overwhelming. I had come to them, hoping to find safety, but all I had done was destroy them, without even knowing it.

I sank into the driver’s seat, staring at the empty field where those people had been just moments ago. The weight of it all crashed down on me. The government experiment, the strange energy we’d been messing with, it had done something to me. Something irreversible. And now I was alone.

It wasn’t the world collapsing, it wasn’t the apocalypse. It was me.

I was the cause of this. The strange cosmic force we had tapped into had made me a walking void, erasing anyone within a certain radius.

All this time, I had thought I was just trying to survive. But I was the one wiping everyone out.