The Day The World Stayed at Home

The Day the World Stayed at Home

The road was empty but for a ball of crumpled wrapper that passed by like tumbleweed. On an ordinary night, I would have encountered someone walking in the opposite direction, perhaps drunkenly sloping to one side from their alcoholic repast, groping for the door keys buried in their trouser pocket, but nothing of the sort was happening now. Everything was dormant. The only activity came from the yellow rectangles aglow on each house, and even then, the figures within them were so fleeting that I could not tell if they were indeed people or if my eyes were being cheated by my imagination, like when you visualise a ghost hiding in the shadows of your house only for it to assume the shape of furniture or a raincoat hanging on the back of the door.

       I could not help myself feeling, despite the circumstances by which this occurrence was achieved, a certain fondness to the vacant space around me; that I could hog the entirety of the pavement without having to worry about making room for another pedestrian. It came not from a loathing for others, though we all get occasional urges for separation, but moreover a queerness to public freedom. I knew that I could dance in the wildest fashion and nobody would be present to judge me. I rounded the corner onto the adjacent street expectant to see someone smoking at their doorway or at the very least a pair of oncoming headlights. However, to my pleasant surprise, there was none. Not even a stray cat prowling beneath the underside of parked cars. 

Never in all my life would I take a stroll through this city and fail to cross paths with another person throughout its duration, no matter how cursory the journey might have been. Instead, people are peeking between drawn blinds and hiding behind closed doors. Not so much as daring to spy through their peepholes. I crossed the road towards the university completely undisturbed, looking both ways only by force of habit, despite knowing there was no chance of being run over. In the motion of doing so, I noticed the empty barbers shop on the corner. Beyond its closed doors was a ghostly room, whose purpose had since expired. I can safely speak on behalf of most lads in expressing that sorry sight. My hair was beyond a mess and urgently needed rescuing before it grew into a mullet. The lengths I would go for one last trip to the barbers bordered on extremism, if only to avoid that terrible fate. I missed sitting in the waiting chair and listening to the soundtrack of clippers in operation. I even missed uttering those six words: ‘short back and sides please, mate.’ Those six precious words had gone unspoken too long, but soon they will return again. And in their resurgence to our ears, we will consider them so sacred that they will be scribed into gospel. But until such time, I had to persist with the silly mop growing upon my head or else take matters into my own hands and shave it off myself. A task which I had not yet summoned the courage to undertake. I could only imagine some of the homemade tragedies made at the hands of novice trimmers. There must be millions of unfortunate recipients, wondering how their haircuts had gone so bad.

Despite these newfound struggles of isolation, I would not have traded places with anyone in the world at that exact moment in time, even if they did have a better haircut than me. It was as though my life had all been nothing but a prelude to that blissful bracket of existence which had finally arrived. I continued walking along, keeping myself out of the streetlight so nobody would see me in the darkness. Though it was irresponsible to be exploring at such a late hour, I could not help but take a certain pride in my roguery, finding excitement in doing something other than staring at my four bedroom walls. I imagined everyone will look back on this momentous occasion years from now and remember with vivid clarity, as I will, what they were doing on the day the world stayed at home.  

As I passed the local food shop, I made the mistake of looking inside, where the empty shelves seemed to grin at me through the glass. I drew my face closer to the window so I could get a better view, close enough that my breath fogged against the surface. It had been weeks since I had last seen pasta that I was coming to think it was extinct. Fusilli might soon be nothing but an ancient curio; the last of which put up for display in the Natural History Museum – a thing of the past. An Italian delicacy so quickly dying out of existence that our grandchildren will stumble upon it in the history books and ask us ‘what are those strange twirls of unleavened dough? They come in so many shapes and sizes.’ To which we would reply: ‘in our day, they were the godsend of easy and affordable meals. You wouldn’t understand.’ Meanwhile, our mouths would froth excitably in remembering their taste. To think of them steaming with tomato sauce and topped with fresh Parmesan cheese. They don’t make ‘em like that anymore, we would say. Perhaps they might be so rare in obtaining that they sell for millions at auction, going to the hungriest bidder who will later adorn them above his fireplace, with a sign stating, ‘display purposes only’. Guests would come over and find themselves marvelling at this ancient treasure, wondering the secrets behind these golden twirls. Others less fortunate would cook it up from old recipe books, though never to the standards we once knew.

However exaggerated that might sound, the notion wasn’t all that far from becoming reality. The generation to succeed us would likely read this back and mistake it for an excerpt out of a dystopian novel. I can assure you, this was anything but fiction. I was the only living soul outside that night. It was as though I had been casted in an episode of Black Mirror, and soon enough, when the scene had taken place, the director would yell ‘CUT’ and everyone would come scrambling from backstage. The producer would approach me and give me some instructions for the next scene. ‘Go a little easier on the expression, son,’ he would advise, then return to the place from whence he came. But none of that happened. I was still standing alone outside the food shop, scanning for the surviving items on the shelves. It suddenly occurred to me how John Wright must have felt when he discovered the Mary Celeste adrift in the Atlantic, completely deserted of its crewmen. Except I had discovered an entire abandoned city. What if everyone had not merely retreated indoors but vanished from the face of the earth altogether and I was the last surviving member to tell the tale? It was a plot worthy of a Cormac McCarthy novel.   

Since I was wearing a black hoodie, I knew hanging around a closed shop long enough would invite unnecessary suspicion. Therefore, I wasted no further time dwelling on the shortage of food and proceeded along the pavement. I passed another row of houses until my gaze came to rest upon the Chinese restaurant across the street. The same restaurant my girlfriend and I had visited only weeks before the lockdown was enforced. It had long since closed, and yet my urge for cheap takeout made my stomach growl in protest. When all of this madness was over, I swore to myself to never again take certain liberties for granted. I even went to the length of revising its menu, which only teased my hunger all the more. It was heart-breaking to think that something molecular, visible from under a microscope, was the only thing standing between me and chow mein. How had it come to this? I understand having to close high street retailers but leave the food alone. If I had it my way, fast food would fall under the category of ‘essential’ and nothing less.

I walked past its storefront reluctantly; my feet dragging along behind me in effort to stay. Although it was blissful having the whole street to myself, I did miss the sputtering of hot pans loaded with cooking oil, and the lingering aroma of fried garlic and Sichuan peppers escaping from the open door. If I thought that was painful, nothing could quite prepare me for the anguish of walking past the pub. The wooden doors were barricaded shut, but I could still see inside from the arched windows. The bar no longer served a purpose but to accommodate cobwebs that stretched from across the spirit gantry to the empty glasses hanging above the taps. Imagine all the alcohol drying in its bowels, waiting for the moment to upwell through the pipes below and grace a customer’s lips. I think in that instant of painful reflection, I would have sacrificed my left arm to enjoy one more cold pint, leaving my right arm unharmed to pour it into my mouth. Instead, I merely limped away so overcome with heartache that it was proportional to being separated from a close relative. We looked back at each other, sharing a parting glance like two lovers at a train station. Then I disappeared into the distance to conclude my journey.

Five minutes had elapsed until I reached the front door again. I reached into the depths of my jacket pocket, listening to the keys jangle about in effort to get away. Finally, I pulled them free and opened the door. In the circumstances, I took every precaution to avoid contact with the handle, using my sleeve to cover my hand. Before I could lock myself in my apartment, there came a noise from nearby. So long had I gone undisturbed by civilisation that I had forgotten the sound of footsteps. They approached quickly. Clock, clock, clock against the pavement. In a bid to protect myself, I rushed to close the door behind me. My breathing had grown heavy. I pressed my ear to the door, waiting for the sound of movement to slowly die away. The footsteps passed. However, something worse sounded in its wake that sent the hairs raising on my arms. Months ago, it would have been regarded as an innocent deed, but now the sound alone could cause shopping centres to empty faster than firing a loaded gun. A single cough.