The whole town. All at the same time. I wasn’t from there, but it was nearly an hour and a half drive from the city I lived in at the time. At first people just moved out in droves for every reason you can think of. They disconnected from their family, better employment options elsewhere, change of climate, looking for something new, until there were just a few thousand left.
The ones that didn’t leave still spoke. I heard from those of my friends that had left that others had become “hollow” to varying degrees. The ones that still answered their phones spoke in clipped sentences, like they had to force themselves to speak, but really wanted to. Some were barely noticeable (either because they were previously known to be melancholic or because they were able to keep up appearances) while others simply locked their doors, put blinds on their windows, lay in their beds, and died of thirst and hunger. What was left of emergency services did what they could, but the vast majority of those that had chosen fate were too far gone, and those that weren’t were comatose by the time EMTs got to them. That didn’t help matters.
People tried to go in, but very few ever came back. The ones that did said it was empty. The outermost houses were abandoned. Everything from mansions to apartment buildings with all their possessions and food rotting away. Everybody had crowded into a few homes and projects in the middle of town that could now accommodate everyone because of the exodus. They cooked, cleaned, the kids went to school in apartments converted for the purpose, they still took care of the chronically and terminally ill among them, though all with little enthusiasm. The videos that came back showed populations without crime or competition; just people doing their “OKest”. And people decided to stay, thinking they could integrate into a society that had reduced responsibility. Anybody that came in to loot, or hurt whoever was left, or to try and sell them things like drugs or commodities found themselves unmotivated. First they stop wanting to do what they were going to do, then they stopped finding value in the items themselves, and before long they were distributing their food to the locals or just laying down and refusing to leave.
Communication plateaued. And then ceased. For a few days nobody went in or came out and no communication was had. Interest had dissolved and people stopped talking. Until, of course, somebody got curious. Some unnamed adventurer remembered and decided to show the world what was left. So they went. For days they hiked through that crumbling and overgrown ruin of a town with a camera strapped to their head streaming every detail. It was like the first videos that came back, though even more rotted and tarnished. Occasionally, they came across a skeleton that had been a desiccated corpse in the video of an earlier explorer completely intact as though only the microorganisms had taken their toll. All the places that had been previously inhabited were empty.
At the base of one of the apartment complexes they made the first sound they had for the entire stream: an exclamation that indicated something nearby smelled awful. Of course, our brave protagonist must know, and above all else: show. They followed the smell to the opening of an underground car park and descended. The lights didn’t work, so the flashlight would have to suffice. It did. Some people claimed they knew where it was going from the start. Others said they didn’t think it could happen at all. The fact was that they were all dead. It didn’t matter how. Or why. There was no order to it. The men and women and boys and girls all lay in that pile of flesh that had been dead for so long and piled so high that it had begun to melt into self, leaking a viscous puddle that spread across the entirety of the floor. They just stood there staring at it, looking left and right to get the whole thing into view, focusing on one body or another, before getting closer. One step in front of the other, they ascended that hill until they seemed to find a place for themselves. They lay down, turned the camera off, and that was the last anybody heard about a town that wanted to be forgotten.
Now, the narrator must also finish, as it is with all stories. Remember, dear reader, to treasure and live every day like a whole life, because eventually we must all sleep.