On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’d love to have you as a subscriber to the weekly free story. You can subscribe via email here. Unsubscribe any time, from the link in every issue.

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Here's story 290, of 300 so far.

Please note: permission is expressly denied to input any part of the story below into a machine learning (ML) or artificial intelligence (AI) or Large Language Model (LLM) system in any form.

Left Behind

Somewhere overhead, a fluorescent light was buzzing.

The irregular pattern of light and dark was visible even through his closed eyelids. An image chased through his mind, too quickly to grab hold of, and then it was gone. Something he ought to remember.

He opened his eyes, and there was pain.

The lights were too bright, even though one of them flickered on and off. The pain was in his head, on the right side towards the back. He gingerly touched the hair there, and, yes, there was a bump.

The binder. Of course. That was what he’d been trying to remember. He’d been reaching for the can of instant coffee, and one of the big, heavy binders where they kept the paper copies of stock orders had slid from the shelf and hit him on the back of the head. Then, the floor seemed to leap up towards him. Then darkness.

“Christ,” he said, sitting up awkwardly in the cramped space of the dingy storeroom that doubled as an employee breakroom. The first thing he saw was the dry-erase health and safety sign, proudly proclaiming 147 days without a workplace accident.

Craig Reed carefully got up from the floor, frowning at the sign. Kirsten from the early shift had badly bruised her knee while cleaning behind the refrigerated display units a couple of weeks earlier, and the delivery driver who everyone called Shorty — he wasn’t short, but he wasn’t particularly tall either, so Reed had no idea where the nickname came from — had broken a finger when a truck’s tailgate closed on it a few months ago, so the safety sign was clearly lying. Reed didn’t expect his own bump on the head to warrant resetting it either. Mr. Collins, the owner and manager of this small supermarket, would just laugh in his face if he brought it up.

He looked at his watch, which was a pretty good knock-off of a Submariner that cost less than a hundred quid. It was only ten past one in the afternoon, and his break had started at 1 PM sharp.

Must have only been out for a few seconds, he thought. He knew he should go to the frozen foods section and get something to ice his head with, being careful to collect whatever it was — some garden peas, probably — and bring it back here again first, so that customers wouldn’t notice anything untoward.

Reed sighed and then pushed open the door. It led to a short corridor, then another door which opened onto the store itself, coming out just beside the butcher’s counter. Frozen foods were only three aisles away, so it wouldn’t take long. He opened the second door and stepped out, the tinkling and inoffensive music from the overhead speakers immediately getting louder.

There was no-one in sight. No customers, nor any of his colleagues. Even the butcher’s counter was unmanned.

Reed shrugged. It happened sometimes, though not very often. It was definitely unusual for the shop to be empty around lunchtime — it wasn’t a big town, and a fair few people bought their lunch here, from the cabinet of prepared sandwiches and soft drinks near the front. But every once in a while, there’d be a natural lull, and the place would empty out for ten minutes or so.

He looked towards the front of the shop, and something about the quality of the light there made him pause. The shadows outside were long, and the sky had a golden colour as if it were early evening. Reed looked at his watch again, and noticed that it had stopped.

Feeling an immediate burst of panic — he was on his last warning about missing shifts — he pulled his phone from his pocket to look at the time.

6:37 PM, it said.

“Fuck,” he whispered, under his breath, looking around nervously in case a customer had overheard him, even though there was no-one there. He began walking, quickly now, down towards the checkout area where he’d surely find some of his colleagues cashing up. At least the time explained why the place was empty: they closed at six, and the next couple of hours were used by the staff to get everything ready for the following day’s business.

There was no-one at the checkouts either.

There was no-one in the manager’s office adjacent to the front doors. There was no-one in the building at all. Reed went outside.

The parking area had eleven cars in it, plus four in the staff spaces. One of the customers’ cars, a white SUV with mud-spattered sides, had its rear passenger-side door open, and a child’s booster seat visible within. The cars were all empty.

There were cars on the road, too, neatly arranged in lanes, but stationary. Empty. Engines off. On a nearby street, the traffic seemed to have stopped at a crossing point, even though the lights were now once again at green. In the middle of the road, there was a plush pink unicorn, unattended, with one ear missing.

Somehow, it was the unicorn that triggered Reed’s first jolt of genuine fear.

“Hello?” he shouted, the sound bouncing harshly off the tarmac and the supermarket’s brick walls. No-one replied. He took his phone out again, almost expecting it to show no cellular service, but he had a full five bars of 4G. He stared at the device for a moment, at a loss, then randomly chose one of his coworkers to call — it was Dave, who toiled in fresh produce and always reeked of weed obscured by cheap deodorant when he arrived for work.

The ringtone from behind him made Reed flinch.

He ran back into the supermarket, past the sandwiches and the first three checkouts, and into the fresh produce area. Dave’s phone sat on top of a shrink-wrapped package of chestnut mushrooms.

He keeps his phone with him even though Mr. Collins tells us not to, he thought.

The phone had a text notification beside the just-added missed call. The text was from Granny, and it said You buying tonight or what. It made more sense if you knew that Granny was what Dave had put into his phone as his dealer’s name, finding it endlessly amusing.

Reed wasn’t amused.

He left the phone where it was, and went back outside. His own car was right where he’d left it; a beaten up Fiesta whose most modern convenience was power steering, with 162,000 miles on the clock and a pronounced screech at random intervals. He immediately knew he couldn’t drive it, because the roads were all blocked with empty cars. He looked around, but couldn’t see any sign of even a single collision. They all just sat there.

He walked across the supermarket’s parking area, towards the edge of the road. From a few open car windows, he could hear music playing, or the hiss of radio channels that were still broadcasting dead air.

Reed checked his own phone, but he had no emails, calls, or messages. He tried Twitter, and at first he felt a surge of relief — there were tweets! Some of them recent! — but when he looked more carefully, he felt his hope fade. All of the tweets were at least five hours old; only the varying timezones made them look newer.

So something happened. Not long after I got knocked out. Something happened, and everybody left.

All of them? All at once? Right from their homes, and cars, and the supermarket?

Going on foot, in an orderly manner, without a single idiot trying to drive away and hitting a lamp post?

Leaving behind some little girl’s pink unicorn that’s missing an ear, right there in the middle of the street?

Hard to believe.

But there was no-one else there. No movement, no matter where he looked. There was a bicycle propped against a railing, unsecured, with a neon yellow helmet hanging from the handlebars by the straps. A mobile phone sat on the pavement beside it. Reed kicked the phone away, threw the helmet in the same direction, and took the bike. He hadn’t ridden one in at least ten years, but apparently the saying was true, and off he went.

The question was where to actually go.

Home? That was a flat above a Chinese restaurant on the road that ended at the train station. There was nothing useful there, unless you counted his Xbox.

The police station? It wasn’t far, but nor did it seem likely it’d be any better than the supermarket. Just a building, without people. But it gave him an idea, and he stopped. He took out his phone again, dialled 999, and lifted the device to his ear. The call connected immediately, there was a click, and then the faint sibilant sound of an open microphone.

That’s a headset. It’s a dispatcher’s headset mic, he thought. This is the part where they ask what my emergency is, but there’s no-one to ask, because that headset is sitting on a desk beside a mobile phone, and there’s nobody there. And that’s my fucking emergency.

He hung up, hands shaking now, then began pedalling once more. There was an outdoor clothing store at the next junction, with the usual perpetual sale on, and Reed had left his thin jacket back at the supermarket. He walked in and stole a goose-down parka right off the peg, security tag still attached. The label said it was reduced to £129.99. He picked up a lightweight waterproof backpack too. The door alarms screamed when he walked out. Nobody came.

He went into Mr. Singh’s corner shop next, even though it was halfway along a block and nowhere near a corner, and he grabbed handfuls of snacks. Energy drinks, crisps, chocolate bars. After a moment’s thought, with his mother’s voice in his head, he also took three apples and a banana that he knew he’d eat only as a last resort, stuffing everything into the backpack. He picked up a copy of Playboy, but all his mind had to offer about the cover girl was that her mobile phone was probably sitting unattended somewhere. Reed grimaced and threw the magazine on top of an open cardboard crate of peaches, and walked out.

The city was eleven miles away, partly on country roads, and the sun was already setting. There was no chance of help if something went wrong. But something had already gone wrong — something had gone unbelievably wrong — but maybe there were still some people somewhere.

He’d steal a motorbike if he found one, even though he had no idea how to ride it, but how hard could it be? And failing that, he’d just pedal the whole way. The bicycle had lights, and looked to be in pretty good condition. And in the very worst case, well, he’d walk. As for what he’d do when he got there, that was a problem for tomorrow.

On a whim, he took out his phone, opened the Twitter app again, and typed out a message.

If anyone else is still here, please reply.

He pressed Send, and the tweet appeared in his timeline. Just like usual. He stared at it for a full minute, but no-one replied — not that his 67 whole followers tended to hang on his every word at the best of times.

“Fuck it,” he said, not bothering to lower his voice. He looked around the street outside Mr. Singh’s shop. Nobody looked back.

“FUCK IT!” he shouted, the words bouncing off cars and walls and black tarmac. No-one replied.

“Right then,” he said.

He secured the backpack on his shoulders, and fastened the chest strap, then took one last look around. If this was the last time he’d see his home town, there was nothing in particular to feel sentimental about. Reed shrugged.

Then he set off.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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