Alone

Chapter 1

The sky was on fire.

Madison couldn't tear her eyes away from it even as screams started to fill the air. It was beautiful, horrifying, calm, earth-shattering. Ink skies filled with gray as smoke and ash clouds rained golden specks onto a dead world. It picked her up in soothing arms and crushed her in between its jagged teeth before spitting her out.

It was the end of the world. And Madison couldn't look away.

She's knocked back from the hypnotizing display when something rams into her back, pushing her to the ground and breaking her gaze. It takes all of her strength to raise her head again. All of her strength to look up. When she does, she wishes she hasn't. Madison stares into a pair of dead green eyes gazing out through the flames. A silent scream erupts from her chest.

Then she opens her eyes.

Jolting up, she struggles to take a few deep breaths. Her hand clutches her chest in hopes of keeping her racing heart inside. Realizing that she was safe in her bed and not in front of a burning body, Madison flops back down and rubs her face.

She's been having that same dream (or more accurately, a nightmare) for the past week and she has no idea why. Madison chalked it up to too much stress from school and helping to take care of her grandma. Sighing, she rolls over and stares at the light hitting the wall for a couple moments before pushing herself up to start getting ready for school.

The house was surprisingly silent as she starts to wash up. There wasn't any noise from the news her dad watches in the morning or banging of pots in the kitchen as her mom makes breakfast or even the loud snoring of her grandma. Wait. Bursting out of the bathroom, Madison sprints down the hall and pushes open the door to her grandma's bedroom. The fear gripping her heart loosens when she sees she isn't in bed.

Walking back in the hallway, she notices that her parents' door was still close. They were usually up by this time. Confused, she knocks on their door and when she doesn't hear anything, she eases it open to peer inside. Empty. As she closes the door, she notices the silence again and bites her lip. A short trip downstairs reveals there was no one besides her in the house.

She looks around wildly while trying to reason with herself. Her dad probably had to leave for work early and her mom was probably taking Grandma to a doctor's appointment and they forgot to tell her or maybe she just wasn't paying attention when they did.

Except both of their cars were in the driveway.

Heart pounding in her ears, Madison runs outside. Mrs. Levine wasn't in the flowerbed like she usually was and there were no cars passing on the street. Everywhere that she went, there wasn't anyone to greet or anyone to yell at her or just plain ignore her. Stumbling back to her house, Madison locks all the doors before running back to her room. Maybe someone was online or something.

Logging onto Tumblr, she checks for any recent posts only to see nothing had been posted since eleven last night. That was not good. Crossing her fingers, she writes her own post: Is anyone still here?