Into Dust

Author's Note: This is my first pasta; I wouldn't say it is a pasta really, but I wanted to make something a bit more unique.
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We were just a normal family, moving home, looking for a better place to live, we were tired of our previous town, we needed somewhere peaceful to be, somewhere… It all happened so quickly, I’m the only one left… We were a family of five, two sons and one daughter, my wife was under the weather as I can recall she was ill a lot due to living near an industrial area, she had a weak immune system and I worried about her. We needed to move out; the country was a better place to start a new life. We had been looking for a small village to reside in, just a quiet peaceful place, I could image where I hoped to live, it was then we found a village, not too big and looked perfect in every way.
There was not too many townsfolk there, it was quiet and the main part of the village was a small market area, when we arrived there it was quiet and oddly everyone started to stare at us as if we were some kind of foreigner even though we were in the same country. We just went on in hope that they would get used to us, we went to look around the town when it started to happen. As we were walking up the higher part of town, I felt something weird and I looked back at my family, my wife was there, my daughter but.. Where was the other son? I asked my wife and I remember her saying:
“What other son? We only have one daughter and one son, are you ok?”
What happened to the other? I knew for a fact that we had another son, I tried to prove his existence by showing a photo of our family that I had in my wallet and what I saw made me feel empty inside. The other boy was not on the photo, just me, my wife, my daughter and now my only son, I felt depressed and my wife kept questioning why I was so upset. She thought I was going a bit crazy, she asked me to sleep on it but I just couldn’t not knowing that my boy just was taken and ripped out of existence. We booked into a small hotel just outside of the village to stay until we bought the house we wanted.
It was around about 2am the next day, I had not slept five minutes, I couldn’t sleep knowing what happened, and I couldn’t question the fact of what affected me.
The hotel room we were staying in had a small balcony, I went outside to get some fresh air, I could overlook all the town from the balcony but to my sight I could see that the town was quiet, too quiet for this time. Knowing what happens during the night there would have been at least some people still out and about but no ‘one was up. I didn’t really care about that, my boy was missing and not even missing, he doesn’t exist anymore according to everyone else but I can remember everything about him, his nice attitude and the way he acted, his childhood antics, everything about him, I could still remember.
The next day I went out to have a walk at 10 am while my wife looked after the kids. I had gone into the village square and something felt rather odd, there was less people here now, I can recall when arriving here that there were quite a number of people here and now it seems quieter, as if some people were gone. I noticed that a few of the people started to stare right at me with a sad look on their face, I didn’t know why but I ignored it, I went to get some food for the family to eat for dinner but to my awareness, the shops were open but no shop owner was there.
What is going on here? I had a lot of questions but no answers. It was then when I went back into the village square, I saw my daughter walking around in the village by herself. I was about to say why she wasn’t with mom in the hotel room when she looked at me, her face was so depressed and sad and nobody had noticed that she was there. I went up to here but before I could say anything, she.. She dissolved in front of me... What was left was just a small pile of dust of where she was standing, I was crying there in front of everyone, they thought I was going nuts, they didn’t see what just happened or even cared. In grieve I went to the hotel room, my wife saw I was upset and asked me what happened, I told her what just happened and to her reply she said:
“But, we only have one child, We never had a daughter, even though I really did want one, we only have one boy and you know that.”
What is going on? Why us? I know that we had a daughter and two sons because I can still remember them, I still to this day. I looked back at that photo of the family, to my shock again it had changed, and the photo now only had me, my wife and my only son. I remember her saying:
“Come on, you need to sleep, you haven’t slept for a while, you might just be having weird visions, tomorrow we will all go out to the river.”
But I couldn’t sleep once again nor could I even move, I was so shocked as of what was going on that I felt dead inside. We were walking down to the river, the village was almost empty this time around and I swear I could hear some of the people making remarks at us, it was so cold and the only thing I could hear was the wind blowing away. I felt cold and I still felt traumatized by what had happened to me.
We spent most of the day down at the river, my son was having fun playing in the water, but I felt sad, was he next? I wanted to prove what was happening, but I didn’t know how, I only had one photo of all of us or what was all of us and now just the remains of who we are, I remember I had a small video camera packed with us when we were moving home, I went to get it but I didn’t want to leave my wife and my only son by the river in case something happened but out of my wits I went as fast I could to get the camera and come back. They were still by the river, I put the camera up and my wife said: “Going to make a film to remember today?”
I wanted to have something to remember, I pointed that camera at my son was splashing around in the pool and set the camera to record. It was about a few minutes afterwards that my wife went to get some flowers off a nearby patch of grass. She called me over to check them out, I went over but to her, and then the sky went darker and it started to rain. I went back to get the camera and I looked at my son who had stopped in the river, he looked at me, and started to cry as he also dissolved into dust just like my daughter.
The dust was washed away by the stream, that’s when I stopped recording, did I get my proof that I needed? I was a bit sad at this moment in time, all my children are gone, I had no offspring at all, we were back at the hotel room where I questioned about our son, my wife said:
“We don’t have any children though, I think that you are just imagining things again.” I showed her the footage of at the river and to my surprise; he wasn’t there on the video.
He was gone, taken out of where he was, I can remember seeing him playing in that river having fun and now he was gone also, along with my other children, I felt suicidal and that’s when the worst happened.
That night I managed to get to sleep but was woken up by a noise, it was still raining but, my wife was gone, out of the bed, but no dust to be found, she still existed, she was still on the photo that now only had me and my wife on there. I went out onto the balcony in the rain, I looked down into the town which was completely empty to the eye can see… there she was, slowing walking through the town. I watched her as she walking on a limp towards where the river is. She stopped and turned around to me, she was crying and her sweet face looked so depressed and she too turned into a pile of dust, just like my children.
She was gone; the photo only had me on it now, everything I had and knew was gone but I still could remember them. I went down to the where the pile of dust was but it was scattered in a path leading towards a building, I followed It and it lead me to a picture called ‘The shadows’. It was the village square, there were people on it living their daily lives acting normal, but in the middle were five people. The odd thing about them was that they didn’t look normal at all, they were shadowy and blank, they had a sad expression on their face as if something had happened to them. Next to the photo was a cracked mirror, I looked into the mirror and to my horror I saw who I truly was, I was the shadow figure in the photo, was my whole family a lie? Have we all been these shadow figures? I remember so much about being human, was it all a myth? Am I human? Who am I really? And am I next to be taken?
Category:Dreams/Sleep