Hello darkness, my old friend...

He dreaded night.

Hard as he tried, he couldn't keep his eyes open. Between his dead-end job and the usual loop of crap on TV, his brain simply refused to relinquish the gift of sleep when the hands on the clock were creeping toward the twelve.

Sleep was supposed to be a safe place, a chance for the body to heal and recover.

He couldn't even remember how many years it had been since he'd had a proper sleep cycle.

He'd feel the familiar drop, like pitching over the hill on the world's fastest roller coaster. Only this sensation wasn't in his gut.

It was in his mind.

In restless dreams I walk alone...

In his dreams, the world burned.

Where had it started, this perpetual fire? He didn't know. Cities burned, forests were reduced to ash and once-fertile farmlands were so much smoke and dust. The ocean was a stretch of inky blackness made all the more terrible by the orange sheen of fire darting from one massive tanker to the next, consuming even those monstrous vessels.

The scenery varied but one thing was constant. In every one of these nightmare visions, he walked the abandoned highways with nothing but the shirt on his back, looking for that one little corner of the world that would still contain life. It might be a patch of grass or a small nest of starlings. If he was really lucky, he might even find a person.

Anything to break the unbearable silence.

His steps were feather-light no matter how fast he moved. His tongue was always stuck to the roof of his mouth so he could not speak or sing.

His neighbors back in the real world hated him.

He always woke screaming.

Narrow streets and cobblestones...

He always walked to work. The office was only a few blocks from his apartment and he liked that few minutes of real air every day. Sure, it was probably polluted and would shrivel his lungs but it wasn't the slightly dusty processed stuff coming out of a vent.

Most of the things in his life felt fake.

He would smile at the receptionist who sat the front desk. Her name was Giana. He was pretty sure she didn't know his name. They'd never said more than two words to each other in the three years he'd been with Corpus Corp.

He might exchange a "Good Morning" with the other typists in the elevator. He would settle into his cube with its lack of the usual homey touches and start up his computer. His speed was adequate, not good enough for a promotion, not bad enough to be cut. He didn't understand half of what he was inputting, he just filled the fields and tried not to mess up.

He'd been called into the office of The Boss only twice. He'd come out a quivering mass of flesh on jelly legs. He couldn't handle that sort of direct confrontation. Giving speeches in school made him throw up on more than one occasion.

Shy was an understatement. When faced with another person's yelling, he was almost catatonic.

The workload was uploaded and ready to go. He was about to get started when he noticed the red exclamation point on his email application.

His heart leapt into his throat. The only person who would send an email this early was The Boss.

He could feel his palms starting to sweat. He tried taking a few deep breaths. It didn't do jack.

His eyes darted over the message. Brief. Polite.

Also fake.

Please come to my office as soon as convenient.

He walked between the high walls of multiple cubicles, wondering if livestock headed for the slaughter felt this afraid.

He hated his job but he also needed it.

The Boss put on a smile fit for a toothpaste commercial.

"Ah, yes. Come in...Dylan."

He'd seen the quick, darting glance down to a notepad. Even The Boss didn't know his name.

The next ten minutes were full of muttered responses and sweat trickling down the back of his neck. There was nothing really wrong with his work. The Boss just felt that maybe he could be a tiny bit more motivated. Try to crank out another five or so reports a week. Show the customers that Corpus Corp. puts the service in customer service.

He was already cranking out more reports than anyone in his department but he didn't dare bring that up to The Boss. He nodded enthusiastically and swore that next quarter he would show results.

It was a false claim but it got him out of the hot seat.

Beneath the halo of a streetlamp...

Most of the buildings in the city were made of stone. Even fire can't eat through stone readily.

Was he in Europe or something?

It was night but time was hard to tell with so much of the world alight in a sullen orange glare. The only real clue was the soft glow of a streetlamp illuminating the section of road he stood on.

The street sign at the corner was American enough. Some sort of little tourist trap town, imitating the Old World. It would be as void of life as every other location he'd visited the nightmare world.

Still...that little bit of manufactured light almost gave him hope.

Someone had to be running a generator or whatever created the light. Somehow he knew the bombs had fallen over two years ago, so this couldn't just be on a switch or something, right?

He knew about as much about electricity as he did about breathing underwater but he was pretty sure artificial light couldn't maintain itself that long.

He was more thorough than usual in searching the houses on the lane.

The usual awful sights he didn't dare fix in his mind. Skeletons in rotting clothes. Piles of ash with a few bones here or there. Items once considered everyday in the modern human world, now becoming rare as they were exposed to the elements.

Then he came to a house that was a little more upscale. Only one person in residence but the photographs on the mantle revealed the stranger's identity.

The Boss didn't look terrifying now. He was just one more casualty of war.

Lost. Nameless. Forgotten.

Dylan rushed out, running as fast as his legs would carry him, doubling over with sobs when he reached a familiar entrance ramp to the highway he had wandered so many times.

Wrong exit. Time to move on.

My eyes were strained by the flash of a neon light

Five minutes late. Just five minutes.

Another meeting with The Boss.

He'd tried not to stare but he couldn't unsee the grinning skeleton from his dreams. Something about his face must've been off. The Boss had insisted he take a few days off.

"Get your head back in the game, Dylan. You don't want to let the company down...do you?"

He hadn't taken the usual route home. He didn't know why. Now he was walking the less savory part of town after dark. He should have felt nervous, threatened, ready to run like an Olympian.

He didn't.

He saw the neon sign overhead and it was like a beacon placed precisely for him.

A bar that called itself Gloom & Doom.

The people there didn't give him more than a cursory glance. He settled into a booth with a table of aged wood. He ordered a dark lager and a pub burger. Both were exceptionally good. A girl with an aqua mohawk watched him curiously, stirring her scotch with all the grim concentration of someone trying to disarm a bomb.

When she noticed him noticing her, she came over.

They talked of everything and nothing. He told her about his dreams. She called him deep. She invited him back to her place.

Maybe a new scene would put his mind at ease and let him escape the burning world for just one night.

It didn't.

Ten thousand people, maybe more...

He emerged from a blackened forest to find that finally, FINALLY, he was not alone.

He immediately wished he could be.

There was no way to get a good count of how many people stood in the open, staring up at a blistering sun that never set anymore. They were husks of human beings, gazing hopelessly up at nothing.

They weren't deaf. It was more like they'd lost the ability to listen. He lost patience with speaking and began to scream in their faces. He even slapped one that reminded him vaguely of his least favorite cousin. It did no good. He might as well have been one more lick of flame in the great curtain of fire that was slowly approaching.

It began to devour the people at the very front of the group. They didn't even flinch.

He'd finally found the remnants of humanity and all they wanted to do was die.

He turned from the group, running as fast as he could.

Take my arms that I might reach you...

Her silk sheets were clinging to him like an additional skin. His muscles ached. He must've been thrashing around as he slept. It wouldn't be the first time.

Had he screamed?

She was across the room, watching something on her small television. She didn't flinch when he came even with her.

"You weren't kidding about the dreams."

Breaking News on the screen. Reports of bombs dropping from Paris to Peru. It was unclear who had made the first launch.

She was breathing hard. "Half the world...it's just...gone."

She reached for him. Numbly, he took her hand.

The city deteriorated into chaos in less than half a day. She insisted they stay in her tiny house. She made love to him and told him about all the things she'd never had a chance to do.

Then she kissed his cheek and told him there was somewhere she needed to be.

"Don't you feel it, Dylan? It's like a string around my soul. I can't stay here."

He felt no tug. He only felt sick.

He was all too aware of what was coming.

The sign flashed out its warning...

He tried.

He tried so hard to convince every person he met to fight that tug. It was not their salvation.

Crystal had learned the hard way. He'd found her body three days after she'd left.

What was left of it.

People couldn't make sense of this flaming world. They hadn't been half-living in it for years.

There were a few, a little more practical (or maybe a lot crazier) than others. They took to calling him Prophet and started to follow him around.

They never stayed longer than a week, though. The call always won out in the end.

He lay down in the center of the abandoned highway. At least he would finally be able to rest.

Whispered...

He shut his eyes but sleep wouldn't come. It wasn't the dull glow of distant fires. It wasn't the smell of char. It was a sound.

...in the sound...

No. Not a sound. A complete lack of sound. A curse. A plague born of stupidity and an incapacity to voice what mattered, until a rage born in prehistoric times finally had its triumphant debut in the real world. Not a sound but a triumph...

...of Silence.