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Author's Note

}This is the beginning to a very large and complex fanfic I've been working on, which I am now posting slowly in hopes of getting feedback to guide my progress! I hope you enjoy what I have so far, and please help me improve so that I can continue it further.

{}My name is Astrit Zupan, and I want to tell you about how the world ended. I'm sure you've already heard something. Maybe you've even heard of me—either because I was one of the youngest left alive after the Event, or because of what I did after that.

I know I'm a dead man. Yeah... I know what my voice sounds like, but I don't get to grow up any further. This is as old as I'll ever get. So... please, let me have this one.

I'm as good as dead now—well, almost. I've got one more night to live, and I mean to use it. After I die, I'm sure that several people will want to tell stories about who I was and what I died for. That's just how it's done, and I can't stop any of them, but I'd like to at least have the truth out there. I don't know what you'll think of me after hearing this, and I don't even care much. The point is to tell the truth, no matter how it makes me look.

So here's my side of the story. It starts, of course, with the Event...

{}The day of the Event started out so normal, at least for a little while. It was a few days before my birthday, somewhere around eight o'clock in the morning in Prishtina. Most kids were either in school already or on their way. I was blending in with them, as I liked to do back then. The ice on the sidewalk kept thawing and refreezing, so I was walking carefully in order to avoid slipping.

They say a lot of people didn't get to see the Event with their own eyes, but I did. I was just looking up to check on some kids walking ahead of me when they vanished.

Did I know, then, that I'd just seen the beginning of the world ending? H--- no. I thought I was seeing things. But the kids had been there, I was sure, and now there were just... clothes. Folded clothes, that matched the ones I had seen the kids wearing.

The only reason I didn't just decide I'd lost it completely was that I wasn't the only one to react. Everything went quiet for a moment, and then a car crashed into the wall right in front of where I had stopped. Somebody screamed, and it might have been me. The next few minutes were chaos, but by the end of it, all the people on that street had sorted out that there had been young children present just moments before, and now I, estimated at twelve or so, was the youngest around. There was no sign of where the children had gone, nor any indication that they had been present except their clothes and bags that lay abandoned on the ground. We all had many questions, of course, but except for inconsequential things, there were no answers forthcoming. Someone with a cell phone had dialed the emergency number, and relayed to us the news that it wasn't just those children. It was all the children, as far away as they had heard anything.

School was canceled, of course, since there were so few of us left to attend. I spent the rest of the morning roaming the city, trying to figure out exactly what had happened and why. If you lived through this yourself, you must know what I found already. But in case future generations somehow find this, here is what I learned that day:

Every child in the world vanished without a trace. The whole time, searching the city, I didn't see anyone who looked younger than me, and I met several people who said that teenagers older than I was had also been among those to disappear. Hoping someone there would have some idea, I went to visit the local hospital. When I first entered, I found a woman hidden in a corner, weeping. She told me that she and her husband had wanted a child very badly for years, but they had never been able to conceive; the previous fall, they had finally managed it—or so she had thought, but now the doctors were telling her that she was not pregnant and never had been. She couldn't understand what went wrong. Although I was as scared and confused as anyone, I could tell her what I did know about what was happening everywhere, and offer a guess that she had seen the same thing. I think she was relieved to find out that someone actually believed her. I know I was glad I wasn't alone.

{Asu forgot Icy's name...}

{Don't kill the kids!}

{Don't bruise the brides either!}