I stumbled out of bed and swatted the alarm clock off my bureau in a frenzy, cracking the screen against the wall. The red glow of the numbers vanished in an instant, leaving me with absolute darkness hovering over my house. From the window, I saw rows of homes perched along the lower reaches of the town for miles, black and silent.
A pale orb hung low above us, as though the moon had crept a little closer in my sleep.
My cell lay dead on its charger. My alarm clock had used a battery backup.
The alarm had been set for 3 PM.
Pieces of an impossible puzzle began to fit themselves together in my groggy brain. I grabbed my jacket and rushed into the silence of the afternoon night, flitting from door to door with no response. A few hung open, and I ventured inside to find tables set for breakfast and clothing strewn across bedroom floors, as though the town had packed a hasty bag and fled.
Everybody had evacuated, and nobody had thought to tell little old me.
And, as I stood alone in the middle of the empty Main Street, cursing neighbors I couldn't name and pondering my options, it occurred to me at last to wonder why they had vanished. I gazed up at the pale orb hanging in the sky, and I realized it had moved...
And the giant, looming eyeball focused square on me.
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