The Other Ones

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there!
He wasn't there again today.
Oh how I wish he'd go away.
- "Antigonish"; William Hughes Mearns

~&~

The planet was a wasteland. A cold, colourless desert . Nothing but dusty, vaguely brown-coloured rocks for miles in every direction; crags that could slice your palms open if you tried to scale them; the landscape, sharp and jagged. There didn't seem to be many places something could live. Small insects and spiders, maybe. Lizards at a push.

But we'd been told there was no life here. No creatures to see nor microscopic specks to grow in a dish. Nothing. Which really begged the question: what were we doing here? There must have been a reason. We wouldn't be here for nothing.

Perhaps the view. 

A dense sky, painted dark blues and rich purples that gradually got lighter and whiter to the offing - the point where the rocky distance touched the horizon. And millions of bright glowing stars, twinkling and falling, some bigger than others, some blue-white and some a barely noticeable glimmering red. The perpetual crescent moon, barely visible but so close it seemed to take up half the sky on that side of the planet. And the other moon. The one that looked like a huge, gaseous planet, pale yellow in colour, encircled with rings reminiscent of Saturn. It was close enough that you could almost touch it, yet washed out and faded like the sickle-shaped satellite to its left.

That was only one side of the planet. On the other, a blazing yellow sun shone in a bright blue sky, never setting, frying everything not protected by a specialised suit. There was no wind. No rain. No cloud. Nothing. Just a still, dead rock, hurtling dangerously through the solar system. Every few weeks, a solar eclipse with a totality lasting up to three hours would plunge the planet into ice and darkness. Or so we'd heard. 

We didn't stick around long enough to find out.

~&~

"I don't believe nothing lives here," said the blonde girl.

A man with brown hair laughed. "Don't worry, we're the only ones. Nothing's ever lived here before."

I glanced around the hallway with interest. Interest, because this entire house, so utterly normal and cheap in its design, was already waiting for us. Nobody questioned it. Nobody seemed to think that this building that felt lived-in was already here, in this supposedly uninhabited world. I didn't question it either. I should have. 

Though nothing was out of place - not the furniture, not the pictures hanging on the pinstriped wallpaper, not the 19th century clock not ticking on the wall - nor was there even a speck of dust to be found anywhere, the place didn't feel deserted. 

Or maybe it did. 

Deserted. Evacuated. Abandoned. As if someone had been here. Very recently.

But that was impossible. The only things alive on this planet were the five of us. Not even a microbe or a virus or little bug-like speck. Nothing.

As we moved further down the hallway, the group split up. Two carried on toward a white-painted door with a plastic handle that gleamed gold. Another two went right, following the hallway to what I could see was a kitchen with stairs just by the entrance. The deep, spring green carpet continued through to the adjacent living room. Without the lights on, that area was bathed in shadow.

I turned away. We'd known this place was going to be here. Or rather, we'd known there would be a place for us. But we hadn't known the details, and as with anything new, it was always best to investigate first.