Daimones - Book 1 of the Daimones Trilogy. Booktrope Publishing Edition

Epiphany

The Past and the Present

Michael, if that was truly his name, might have had valid reasons to mistrust our message. So far, we had it rather easy around here. Ours had been more of an emotional struggle, overcoming the initial fears and getting organized. We faced no menace nor dangers...so far. Maybe not everyone had gone through the same? "Who the fuck are you?" was not a good start for a friendly conversation, but we didn't have many options in selecting future relationships.

We replied in the best and most transparent way we could, and we started with a "Dear Michael." Already writing that quickened my pulse. We chose not to ask any questions, leaving the decision entirely to him whether or not to disclose any details of his situation or where he was. We described how we went through that morning in February, how we discovered things. We told him about the dead people; how they apparently all died for the same reasons and roughly at the same time.

Mary and Annah watched over my shoulder while I typed, rewriting things over and over with my palms sweating as if they were runners in a relay race in the effort of putting down the right words. Sharing emotions and passing Michael the baton with enough reasons to read our words and reply back. I had the impression to be under examination and that every word was wrong and in the wrong place.

Because of all the dead commuters, their demise had most likely occurred between 5:30-6:30 a.m. and everyone seemed to have died in the same way. We were in CET, or GMT+1, so he could use that if he lived in a different time zone than ours. He would then be able to verify whether there were any coincidences in timing. We shared we had proof of at least another person alive in town, though we could not say if there were more survivors.

Funny, while writing those things, my brain felt as if it floated in a cold bath, detached, repelling emotions as poisonous spores that bogged down rationality with their sticky ooze. I wondered whether my wife and daughter felt the same but I could not raise my eyes off the screen.

I told Michael that I didn't believe the causes to be poison or a plague of some sort. We had no symptoms of anything; we felt healthy, at least physically. Unless, for some mysterious quirks of our genes, we were immune to an external agent, but I doubted that was what happened. Everything had been so sudden, with people dying in their vehicles, in their beds, or waiting for the first bus in the morning. Something or someone had access to the switch of human lives on Earth and decided to pull it.

For the first time since that February morning, I formulated a thought that lingered unexpressed and that I repelled, because it frightened me—as when as a child, I lay in bed at night, head under the covers, not daring to move a muscle. Holding my breath, I was certain of a malignant presence in the room that waited for me to move before it struck. I pretended to be dead to avoid death...

I wrote Michael that, as crazy as it sounded, I believed we could have suffered a preordained attack, and on such a large scale that everyone was dead or incapacitated. By whom or by what we had absolutely no clues, nor evidence. Maybe we were just crazy.

Mary squeezed my shoulder when I wrote those lines. I raised my hand to meet hers and we clung to each other; in the end, my emotions had been able to breach the steel barrier the brain raised so eagerly before. I turned to glance up at her face, and her eyes were swollen and wet, but there was no fear when she met mine.

We described our experiences with TV and the radio channels, our searches on the Internet and our inability to get any information beyond that fatal day. Nothing or no one contributed to the news anymore or broadcasted anything on any channel. Twitter didn't work for our accounts, was his still on? Or did he even have one? Utility services were still up and running where we lived on the outskirts of a major Swiss city. He did not need to provide us details of his location in case he felt in danger, unless he happened to be so close to us that we could eventually meet. We concluded hoping he could survive, hold on, and stay safe. I signed it, "Dan and family. God Bless."