Kai returned home just before noon.
The sun was high, casting warped shadows on the street. Too bright, too silent. The kind of silence that made your skin itch
The laundromat near the corner had been shut down for weeks now. No "Closed" sign. Just... abandoned. Dust clinging to the glass, and an odd stench that lingered in the air like it had been there for much longer than the place deserved.
In front of it stood an old electric pole.
And two people were perched on it.
Not standing. Not fixing anything.
Clinging.
At first glance, they seemed like utility workers — strange, but there was something off. They weren't in any kind of uniform, no tools, no wires. Just... bodies bent and strung up on the pole like puppets without strings.
They looked human — but barely.
Skin pale and ashen like it hadn't seen sunlight in weeks. Hands that were too long. Their bodies too twitchy, too rigid, like they were caught in a strange, repetitive motion. And their eyes…
Black. Not just the pupils. The whole damn thing. Blacker than ink. Oily, pitch-dark holes that sucked in the sunlight and made them appear more like shadows than people.
Kai slowed his bike. Something didn't sit right. He glanced around, wondering if anyone else saw what he was seeing.
No one did.
The street was still as always. People were out on their lawns, enjoying the rare quiet of the day. The distant hum of traffic buzzed in the background, and a few kids kicked around a ball in the yard. It was business as usual.
Except it wasn't.
Because those two people weren't regular. And they sure as hell weren't working.
Something about them screamed wrong. But it was too bizarre to process fully.
Kai parked his bike by the curb, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He wasn't the only one standing still. A few of the neighbors had noticed too. But no one dared approach. They just… watched.
And then he saw her.
Mrs. Arlette Navine.
The queen bee of the neighborhood.
Short, thin, and perpetually annoyed, with bleach-blonde hair that looked like it had been dyed a hundred times over. She was standing across the street, camera in hand, filming the two strange figures like they were the latest viral sensation. Her oversized sunglasses hid the disgust in her eyes as she mumbled to herself.
"This is gonna blow up. I'll be the first to post it online."
The woman always thought she was one step ahead of everyone. Her constant boasting about her son working in a big company abroad had earned her a reputation for looking down on the rest of the neighborhood, especially the likes of someone like Kai.
Her son wasn't just "successful." No. According to her, he was important. A high-powered exec making six figures overseas while she sipped her overpriced coffee and flaunted her designer bags.
Kai hated hearing about her son. It was the constant reminder that he was just a delivery guy. A nameless face in a sea of faceless workers. Someone who had no future in her eyes.
But there she was, in all her glory — filming the two figures on the pole. Her lips moved, muttering something about getting a good shot. As if nothing was wrong.
But something was terribly wrong.
The man on the higher pole made a strange motion. His body jerked like something inside him snapped, and before Kai could blink—
He leapt.
Straight down. Onto Mrs. Navine.
Her shrill scream cut through the silence like a knife.
She hadn't seen it coming. None of them had.
The impact of the man hitting her sent her sprawling. The camera dropped from her hand, clattering to the pavement as she was thrown onto her back. The man pinned her down, his teeth sinking into her arm with a sickening crack. Blood spurted from the wound, staining her white dress a horrific red.
At first, it felt surreal. Kai stood frozen for a moment, unsure if he was dreaming, if this was a joke. It didn't seem possible. It was like a twisted scene from a movie. No one ever expected this kind of violence to happen in the middle of the afternoon, in broad daylight, in a neighborhood where people didn't even lock their doors.
The neighbors weren't moving. They stood there, slack-jawed, as Mrs. Navine screamed, her hands uselessly flailing at the man as he bit her. He tore into her, not with the desperation of a hungry animal, but with a kind of relentless purpose.
Kai's stomach churned, his instincts screaming to run. To do something. Anything.
But then…
Something else snapped inside him.
It was her.
That woman who had looked at him with such disdain every time she passed by. The woman who had mocked him, belittled him with her "super-huge officer son" talk while his own mother worked herself into the ground just to keep them afloat.
He had always hated her. Hated the way she looked at him like he was a lesser being. But as the man ripped into her flesh, he didn't feel the satisfaction that he thought he would.
Instead, there was something worse.
Indifference.
A part of him didn't want to help her. Didn't want to step in and save someone who would never, in a million years, appreciate it. Someone who would turn around and use his actions as some form of pity to continue looking down on him.
But then there was another part of him. A part that still remembered she was a human. Still remembered she was part of his neighborhood. Still remembered the time she'd smiled at him in passing, even if that smile had always felt patronizing.
She was screaming now, her voice ragged and desperate. The man was still biting her, and there was nothing Kai could do to stop it.
His mind raced. He could feel the rising tide of anger. He could feel it mixing with something worse. Something dark. Something like… guilt.
But he didn't move. Not yet.
Another figure, the second one, started to crawl down the pole, its limbs stiff and jerking. The first man — the one attacking Mrs. Navine — was now oblivious to everything else. He was lost in his frenzy, gnawing at her shoulder like it was a meal.
The second figure growled, the sound hollow and inhuman.
And Kai… just stood there.
His body ached to act, to help, to scream for someone to call an ambulance, but all he could do was watch as the chaos unfolded.
There was no saving her now. There was no fixing this. The world had cracked open, and no one could put it back together.
And as he stood there, something within him changed. Maybe it was the anger he had carried for so long. Maybe it was the realization that the world had shifted beyond recognition.
Either way, Kai heard that voice again
the apocalypse has begun.