Backteria and Other Improbable Tales by Richard Matheson

laughs, blabbing and blabs, laughing with the neighbor’s wife. She forgets old mortality. (
Oohwilu-giverhell
!) And the phone lines suffer breach.
Q:
And the barren street?
A:
Nearby, a parade, a fire, an accident alluringly sanguineous and the neighborhood emptying to view it.
    Only this and nothing more
. (Rationalize chalky, poem-lifting you)
    Forthwith: Skin-puffed knuckles harden, your hand is become a fist. Rap, rap, it goes. Inside, silence. Knock, knock. Ditto. Bang, bang. Also. You bluff. “Hullo!” you call. “Anyone t’home?”
    No reply.
Boom
! You teach the door a lesson. But nothing. Terror-veined fury claims you. You twist the knob, the door creaks open.
    Consternation
.
    No Mildred, no neighbors. The kitchen devoid of all—save (shade of
Marie-Celeste
?) a skilletful of orange-eyed eyes, awash in sibilant butter; a flame-perched pot with a delicate volcano of coffee in its dome; a toaster ticking like a chrome-cased bomb; the table set.
    “
Hey
.” The cry drips feebly from your lips. “Where
is
everybody?” (Where, indeed?) You clump into the living room. Devoid. The bedrooms, all—bodiless. Your next remark, wan thing? I quote.
    “What’s goin’
on
here?” (
Un
—as you say—
quote
)
    Now resolution finger-dangles from the sawed-edge cliff of fear. (
Quelle
tasty simile) standing at the window, heart an eighty-mile-an-hour piston, you gape down at the street again. Empty; so empty. Panic looms.
    “No!” Underground resistance again. Chin up, gauntlet down.
Avant
! Socratic you will plumb this poser to its roots. This Too Shall Pass!
    You betcha
.
    Whirling, you greyhound to the door and exit. Pegasus could not pass you on the stairs—or make more noise. Three flights cannon-balling and the vestibule is yours.
    Confusion plus. Boxes bulging mail like any day. Delivered papers strewn as always. “Huh?” Your quasi-gibbous eyes peruse the headline.
FIND STARLET TORSO IN FIRKIN
. No answer there. You plunge into the street, exploring.
    One vast length of nothing, sir. One spacious, sidewalk-sided span of silence. (
Quelle
alliteration) In the middle of the street you stand, goggling.
Ovez
—nothing. Not one soul, one movement. You are alone—blank, marmoreal thing.
    “
No
!” cries the hero—that’s you. You slam the door in evidence’s face. This cannot be! There Has To Be A Reasonable Explanation. Things Like This Just Don’t Happen. (It says where?) Terror ricochets off reason’s wall and comes back courage. You’re off!
    Ah, picture you, sallow, slapdash sleuth you are, running a forty-minute mile to Main Street, pulpy legs awaggle, breath like radiator steam; The Picture Of Durance In Gray. Alone the crypt-still thorough fare you scud, hunting for a fellow soul.
    Doorbell ringing is futility you’ve found; knocking, a bootless cause; peering in at windows, inutility at its primest. Worse than inutility—
guignol
with its actorless scenes of a.m. enterprise—food boiling, frying, toasting, poaching; tables set and stoves alive. And even, propped on sugar bowls, the morning papers.
    But no one there to eat, serve, read.
    Onward. (Every Effect Has Its Cause) (
Naturellement
)
    Approaching Main Street you come upon a fresh obscurity. A halted car standing in its proper lane, hood still pulsing with engine tremors. Standing there as though its operator were waiting for the lights to change.
    Empty though. (Ice mice batten on your heart) You waver beside its open window, staring in. A bag of groceries sags beside the driver’s place; a morning paper next to that.
BUTT HOLDS STARLET
, reads the head. No aid there.
    “I don’t
get
it,” you announce. (You will, discolored thing) Pain-points etch lines around your face. Your fingers tremble, your glands secrete.
    Courage, mon passé
.
    You press on again, the, apace, return to take the car. Desperate dilemmas dictate desperate deeds. (
Quelle
something or other) Sliding in behind the wheel, you slap the gears into mesh (The