Day 535

Whole towns are missing, left frozen in time with half-done things around every corner.
Even the wildlife was gone right down to the insects.
Strange how it only struck small towns and villages, never the cities.
It was all over the news and I had been just as clueless as everywhere else.

Quite a few villagers were choosing to move out until the whole thing was resolved.
They would still go missing themselves whenever the rest of their home-town did.
It took several years but eventually us village-folk just accepted that some day we would vanish.
Being born in a smaller area went from being a curse to just being.

In the more isolated areas cults formed around the disappearances, calling it god's work.
Our town (Kittle-Upon-Brook) was fortunately not the latter.
Places like that were full of stranger things than vanishings, I'll say that much.
It's quite surprising how rituals can form in less than a decade and cement themselves so deeply.

Kittle wasn't like that though, we all tried to live as normally as we could.
The cloud of uncertainty and the promise that we would all vanish too still hung around like smog.
It affected some worse than others, driving them to drastic measures.
We all knew it would come but we never knew how, didn't even realise when it came until too late.

I was at the farmer's market when it came.
The music that played over the loudspeakers abruptly stopped, replaced by a familiar voice.
Everyone now agrees that we don't know who it was but we all feel like we do.
It was a different person for everyone - for me it was my uncle.

He said that there was a special event going on at Hilly Fields - just outside of the town.
We were all in such pleasant spirits (though perhaps not our own ) we followed mindlessly.
Nobody seemed to notice that the voice floated above us the whole way, encouraging yet stern.
It gave us an exact route which we took without complaint until we reached some kind of trap door.

Right where the gatepost for Hilly Fields usually is, there it sat instead.
I remember it being a deep grey, the hinges were coated in some kind of moss and smelt like lilacs.
The door opened as we approached and we walked down the moss-drenched stairs.
A few older people slipped, their bones cracking as they slid down.

We didn't move to help them, didn't even feel pity for them - haven't seen them since either.
We haven't seen much of anything since we came down here to this bunker-like room.
Nobody seems to mind it yet, honestly it's bearable.
There are benches where we rest and burgers come through a conveyer belt every day to feed us all.

All-in-all we agree that it was silly to worry I mean we're perfectly fine down here.
Sometimes someone tries to walk back up the stairs, we hear crunching and never see them again.
The food comes and we feel nothing but content.
All is well down here, don't miss us - we don't miss you.