What if your home town suddenly was “erased”? Louisa takes us into the void.

A Fictional Imagining By Middle-School Blogger Louisa Richardson

When I drove home from Nebraska that day, I didn’t think it would have been any different than the usual commute home for Christmas. I was thinking about Aunty Sharon, about the last time I saw her. As I drove, it struck me – the population of Red-ton County was getting smaller and smaller. I realized there were no cars at all, no people either. I started to worry, until I saw the familiar blinking blue light on in the Red-ton County Library.  It was reassuring, . . . until it grew brighter, and brighter. And then it was gone.  

I had closed my eyes because of the brightness of the blue light, and when I opened my eyes, I saw nothing, and everything all at once.  

I stepped out of the car and walked into the bright blinding lights; it was all white, and void-like. I immediately picked up my cell to call my parents, but when I looked through my contacts, there was no one there. Aunty Sharon, my sister, my two brothers, my parents, no one living in Red-ton County was on my list of contacts. It was as though they had all disappeared into this sort of void–with my entire home town.  I turned around to look for an exit, but there was nothing there. The closer I got to the space through which I entered this void, the further that space drifted away. 

This was the moment that I started to freak out. Everything was gone. At first I was confused, then I got angry. The void grew into a sort of white room, with blinding white paint that you couldn’t touch because every time you started near the walls they got further and further away. The white void went on forever; it seemed to be endless. I tried searching for an escape. Time passed; time elapsed; my hair grew out until it touched my hips. Eventually I gave up. I sat, and hugged my knees close, rocking back and forth. That’s when the chanting started. “Gone far away” was all I heard, the same three words over and over again. The voices were what made me regain the strength to get out of there. I hadn’t eaten, drunk, or slept.  I still don’t know how I managed to survive. I got up and started running towards anything, anything other than the blinding white light that seemed to be everywhere, surrounding me. I finally found a door after running in the same direction until the void just couldn’t grow anymore. I don’t know if it appeared or if it had always been there, or if it was even real. I didn’t go through it immediately. I paused. I hesitated. I didn’t know if I would find a giant black void, or more white.  I waited, until the voices began to morph into the words “Go.” I finally opened the door. I walked out.

Then, promptly I collapsed. Whatever happened next, I don’t remember.  I drifted in and out of consciousness; people poked at my eyes, and injected me with medications I couldn’t pronounce. I finally woke up days later; I was out of it, but I remember the happiness I felt when I finally saw another living being. The doctor said that I was in a bad condition, dehydrated, suffering from weight loss. He said it looked like I had been stranded somewhere for years.  I remember him muttering to the nurse, “I don’t get it, she seemed fine last week.” My brain began to scramble; I tried to think of my life before the void, my family. I could barely remember the memories I tried so hard to never forget. The doctor looked at me with concern. He later revealed that I had come in for a doctor’s appointment the week before, but I had no recollection of it. As far as I was concerned, I had been stuck in that void for more than a year and a half. That’s about the amount of time it takes to grow your pixie cut to your knees. But that’s not what the nurses said. I tried to explain it to all of them; they just never got it. They said that Red-ton didn’t exist. My neighbors said that I went away for a day, and they heard that I was in the hospital something like an hour later.  It didn’t make sense. Did time pass differently here?  Do I have any family?  As soon as I was released, I searched for clues.  I followed the road to Aunt Sharon’s house, and there was nothing there. I must have retraced my steps a thousand times. I tried to unscramble the days spent in the void. Nothing was working. I was so desperate, I called a therapist.  She didn’t believe me either. A few months later, the nightmares started. I was back in the void; I had never escaped. I woke up screaming every night after that. No one seemed to believe me. I barely believed myself anymore.  

After that the police came to my house and took me in for questioning. Apparently after every one of my neighbors reported me for “odd activity” it seemed the only reasonable option for the cops. Since there was so much evidence that I was crazy, they put me in some mental institution for the “intellectually disturbed.” Life went on for everyone but the victims of the void. They were gone. Towards “the end,” I had no memories of a life outside of the white nothingness.  Eventually, I became engulfed in the memories of the void, unable to think of anything but the bright lights. Tortured in a trap of my own mindset.   

The End