Light of a setting sun illuminated a
completely empty apartment, filling a space that at some point was filled with life, furniture that the people inside this house bought to make this home look like theirs, filling it with their personality, making it really their home.
Now the only things that showed the presence of someone living in the house were some wear and tear on the walls and floor. There was a faded mark on the wall in the shape of a cupboard marking the spot where at some point one had stood there for a quite long time. Some holes left by the nails that were used to hang picture-frames remained unsealed, as if the one who owned this apartment knew nobody was going to live there anymore and didn't bother to fix them up for the next tenant, even more evident by a few cracks that had appeared on the wall. There was some normal dents from a couch or a bed on the floor of this one-room apartment as well, but no signs of those very furniture anywhere.
Next to the front door was a small, kitchen-section like some of the traditional Japanese apartments had, but the faucet was completely missing, so was the fridge and oven. Only the countertops that were installed when the apartment was first built were there with some small dents and wear of everyday life on them. The sink was also mounted on the wall in the building-phase, but it was just a metal-basic with some scratches and effectively useless without the faucet installed on it. Only holes for it and the possible switches for it remained, with huge holes of where there was supposed to be oven and fridge.
Warm sunlight illuminated this room and the only living thing in it, a
brown-haired woman sleeping on the floor on her left side facing towards a broken window, letting a brisk evening air in.
Setting sun has now lowered itself to hit the eyes of the sleeping woman in her closed eyes, which woke her up from her slumber. Lazily opening her eyes and standing up to sit she stretched her hands slightly and let out a small yawn before looking the room that surrounded her. Blinking her brown eyes a few times she carefully scans the unknown room before pinching herself on the cheek, confirming that she was wide awake.
"Where am I?"
The woman asks with a quiet voice before standing up. The last thing she remembers before waking up was that she was visiting her family after a long time now that she got paid time off from work, and was walking past... Something she couldn't remember at the moment, and then found herself in this empty apartment wondering what happened to her. First thing that comes to her mind is that she is kidnapped, and rushes towards the front door to make sure this wasn't the case. Door opened without any problem to an
empty hallway, lined-up with other apartments. When confirming that she was not in any immediate danger she closed the door and went back inside to look outside of the broken window.
What she saw was your traditional urban cityscape, however an eerily quiet one at that. Normally you'd hear cars going by, people walking down the street, some chatting with one another, some listening to music and others rushing towards their workplace, but only thing she could hear was the howling wind in a desolate city. She tried to look around, but saw absolutely no signs of life anywhere. No cars parked anywhere, no people walking down the street. Absolutely nothing. It was like every single human on the face of the earth had spirited away somewhere far away, and she was left here to die and wither away, or like this was just some snapshot of time, captured in film, never changing, stuck like this in all eternity, however the sun setting behind the tall buildings in the horizon showed that this was not the case. Despite of all this when she looked at the horizon it felt... Odd, out of place, like a sky you'd see in your dreams. Since every time the woman looked at the sky in the dreams that left even a small recollection of them in her head the one thing that always remained unchanging was that the sky always felt like it was not real, like it was made of porcelain or painted with watercolours despite looking completely real. Like a moment captured on an art-piece, but sometimes still cycling through the day, like it was desperately imitating to be real, or convince the dreamer that this was just not some warped version of space created inside of her brain.
The same could be said about the room she found herself in. It gave her a sense of some intangible nostalgia and melancholy. It looked like a perfectly normal, if not an old apartment, but something about a space normally filled with signs of life being completely desolate, everything essential missing, but still some faint signs of life once lived in this small room made her feel unease. Like there was some kind of vague presence there left by the residents who had left the house. Some lingering feeling of life that triggered the sense of uneasiness and nostalgia within her. Like a ghost of the place or space itself was with her.
After taking a look at her surroundings and letting out a small sigh the woman started to walk towards the bathroom to get some water and wash her face before trying to decide what to do next, and when she opened the door across the kitchen space the theme of the apartment continued. There was no sink at all, mirror mounted to the wall was cracked in some places, but still in it's rightful place. For some reason a toilet remained, but when the woman went to flush it as a test nothing happened. Despite being mounted correctly at least what she could tell as someone a simple office-worker who never had installed a toilet it just didn't flush. Next she went to test if the electricity worked, but to no avail. Power was also cut-off from the apartment.
She decided to rely on her phone to give her some light in the bathroom, and with its flashlight she could see that there once again were some signs of life, some floor-tiles were cracked, there was a mysterious white stain, presumably tooth-paste in front of where the sink was suppose to be, and some dirt around the drain, but the shower was also missing, and only the pipes used to connect to the shower to water remained there to remind what was suppose to be there.
Now with phone in her hand she does a facepalm with her free hand.
"Of course. Why didn't I think it first." she says in the echoing bathroom and tries to call to her mother, but the phone won't ring, not even a message of there not being service plays. Silence is the only thing she hears, and when she checks her connection only there it says that there is no service.
Brunette then goes to check herself in the broken mirror, to make sure she does not look absolutely horrible when going out, not like it was going to matter if there was no-one around, but you never know right? She made sure that she had her black jacket on right, the white band-shirt was tucked under her black shorts and that her long-hair was not a complete mess. She then took a look at her purse and looked what was inside of it. There was her wallet, some personal hygiene stuff just in case and a charger as well as power-bank. Everything that she remembers having with her. Since there was no reason to stay in this apartment longer she puts on her shoes that she found next to the door, and leaves the odd, liminal-space-like apartment behind to go and explore the city, and hopefully find her way home, or to find some answers.
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