#1 Johnny: Where Did Everyone Go?

Johnny, The Day After, is a flash short story series. Join Johnny in his degenerate journey into the mystic world of the new global Chancellor. Experience his loneliness, pain, sorrow, and rebellion as he adjusts to being one of many who are left behind after the Rapture.

Johnny woke up from his nap at 3 pm to the sound of a thunderous crash. On the hour he woke, his bedroom door was shunting. Nobody was there when he emerged from his bed – not his mother, father, or siblings. The house was empty – only his dog, Apolo, was roaming in confusion. From room to room, he went, flooded with panic, probing here, opening there, making sure—a ghostly fear was irrelevant. Bewildered, he wondered where they all could have gone. Then he noticed piles of clothes in small groupings scattered throughout the house.

Suddenly, a man started banging on the front door with a crazed look in his eyes. It was his neighbor. As Johnny opened the door, the neighbor rambled in panic. Where is everyone? Where did they all go? Johnny looked over the man’s shoulders to discover a plane had crashed in the street, cars were burning, and more piles of clothes were on the streets and sidewalks. Fear filled Johnny’s heart.

Johnny went outside into his front yard and witnessest bewilderment & chaos with many of his neighbors and several onlookers. In stunned silence, he had no idea what had happened. All he knew was that everything had changed in the brief span of his daily nap. Settled into a deep sleep, he missed some mysterious catastrophic event. He awakened to discover a different world.

Immediately, sadness and grief filled his mind over the assumption that his family was missing. He wondered, did they die? Did they run off and leave him to defend himself? Or did something far more sinister happen?

It didn’t take long for Johnny to realize that some of the people in his neighborhood had vanished from the face of the earth. He agonized as he tried to process that the world changed in the twinkling of an eye while sleeping. He had awakened to a shocked and chaotic world.

He quickly dashed back into the house to find his smartphone. On the kitchen counter, Johnny’s phone was blowing up with newsflashes and social media postings alarming the world that millions of people were missing. Video feeds reported disastrous accounts of trains, planes, and automobiles crashing. He tried to make sense of it all. But the catastrophe was too overwhelming. Johnny stood in the kitchen in shock, asking himself, What happened on earth?

His neighbor rushed into the house, repetitively spouting, One second they were there; the next second they were gone. Johnny was dazed, frozen in his place, with his eyes fixed on the open Bible on the coffee table. Memories of his mother reading from the Bible filled his troubled soul. Particularly memories of his parents warning him of the need to accept the Life of Christ before it was too late. Johnny’s mind was regretful as he thought about the endless times of pushing them away – calling them crazed Christians.    

Johnny was at the ripe age of sixteen years. While shocked by the fact that millions were mysteriously missing, he felt rebellion and resentment toward “this God” who punishes the left behind, and he begins to grow cold—asking, Why would a ‘loving God’ do such a horrid thing? 

He didn’t take long to recognize that the world would never be the same. Everything changed in a flash. There has never been anything like this that happened in the world’s history. To say that Johnny was stunned and bewildered is a colossal understatement. He knew chaos would show its face in ways the world had never witnessed.

Confusion filled the streets of Johnny’s neighborhood. As he looked out his front door, a stampede of fear was seen on everyone, everywhere, appearing to ask one another the same question Johnny asked. As he stood there staring into their fear-riddled faces, a cold defiant hatred began rushing through his veins.    

Coming up next: THE DAY AFTER