The Storm

We saw them come, but no one knew what they were. A cloud of something, almost yellow, like the sky goes before snow. 

But it wasn't that, we wished it was that, after. When we woke.

When we woke, no one really knew what had happened, but we were all changed. Where once we had faces, we now only had eyes, just our eyes. Our sense of smell, taste, sound, were gone. Touch and sight were all that was left.

It was our hands that saved us, and the people, previously referred to as disabled. They were the most able, the rest of us were next to useless, trapped in silence. Terrified. 

Every day the clouds turned yellow and they came. When they did, we saw them in the sky, and then nothing, a sleep of sorts, falling where we stood. No dreams. Then awake, not hungry, but the same, no face, just eyes. 

The people who had previously had hearing loss took us in, taught us to communicate with our hands, taught us how to be less afraid. 

Of course, the thing we started to call, The Storm, had stopped all our technology from working, so we had to relearn old skills. Most of us were less than capable, the few who were, were in constant demand. We needed heat for warmth, we needed to make fires. 

Eventually, someone, somehow managed to start using Morse code, we sent messages across our globe, asking if it was the same everywhere, what had happened, did anyone know? The tic-a-tape flowing out of the machine with our message, the light above the machine, flickering with the code. Nothing came back.

Silence.

Maybe, a year later, the light flickered, and a new code came, other people, surviving, learning, understanding. 

Some were in bunkers, people had survived whole and were taking steps to understand the enemy. People who still had mouths, still could eat and taste food. 

We spread the message with our hands. Slowly hope started to form, the messages came daily, telling us they were trying things, to help us, to get rid of The Storm, to get our faces back. 

Our eyes were alight with inward smiles, the human condition would win against this silent enemy.

But then The Storm changed, the light changed, from a cloud of yellow to dark blue, we looked up at it and waited for the sleep. The sleep didn't come.

It was defending itself. We communicated with our saviours, they didn't know what was going on, it had changed too quickly, their experts didn't understand. 

Then the hunger came. However they had been feeding us before had stopped. Some doctors tried to put feeding tubes directly into people’s stomachs, but there wasn’t enough doctors, tubes, or liquid food. Violence and rioting started.

Silent riots. The only sounds are those of people punching, kicking and slapping. Then the guns and the sound of slicing knives. It sounded unnatural, unearthly. People were left for dead in the street. No one could help, we were starving.

Our saviours were quiet, and the sky remained an grim blue.

The Storm observed our disarray, our reduction to our basest selves. We were like animals caught in a trap gnawing our own leg off. Which we would have probably done, had we had mouths.

In the end, there was nothing but death, we may not have been able to smell it, but we saw it, the flies, the rodents and all the animals came, making their way into the built-up human spaces, eating the rotting flesh.

Then the tic-a-tape stopped flowing, none of us could reply, we had nothing left.

Just as the last few of us were dying, the sky cleared, we saw clouds and it started to rain.

This was written for Creative Writing Inks - Writing Prompts competition.  

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