The plague spread slowly at first, selecting it's victims in a deliberate and discriminating fashion. All had certain common biographical features; all were of a certain age - about 40 at the earliest infection - and all suffered from the same symptoms: a peculiar sense of distraction and dislocation; a vague melancholy which spread across each countenance like frost on the wintry earth, their skins drying, hardening and cracking, their eyes taking on the dark, glassy quality of frozen puddles. Deep inside each was a terrible gnawing sensation - part fear, part yearning - and part of its horror was the knowledge that it was finite: that it wouldn't last forever and sooner or later the innards would be entirely eaten away, leaving nothing but a self-contained void.
The plague had no point of origin that can be determined. It seemed to surface in several places simultaneously, as if from a rising water table. Having arisen, it began seeking new victims to infect.
Unknowingly, men and women in disparate places began digging out old address books. They scoured telephone directories and posted on social networking websites. Without realising it, they sought one another in crowded public places, becoming alert and watchful where they had once been oblivious.
One day in May, a letter appeared in the local newspaper:
"Calling all former pupils of Roakham Comprehensive who attended during the years 1978-1983. I am looking to organise a school reunion party for the Class of '83. If you are interested in attending, then give me a call..."
There was a name and phone number, but it is of no more significance than the name of the ship which first carried the bubonic plague into Europe.
The response was extremely encouraging.
A date was set for some six weeks later: 8pm on the 28th June at the Labernum Hotel - the same venue that had hosted their school leaving party some twenty-five years earlier.
When the fateful evening finally came, many first sought to calm their fluttering anxieties with a few drinks in nearby pubs, and inevitably found one another. The balmy early evening air rang with shrieked greetings and bubbling laughter as former class-mates hugged and shook hands and bought rounds. Amidst jokes and insincere flattery, each appraised their peers with suppressed nervousness, somehow surprised to find them balding and sagging after so many years.
But there was something else, wasn't there? Something more than mere age. There was an eery and unnerving shadow cast by the passage of time. Who knew what had happened since they had left school together? Who wanted to know?
Having glimpsed themselves, many now began to have secret second thoughts about going on to the party. They were never my friends in the first place, they thought: I never liked them then, so why should I suddenly like them now?
Surely the past is gone and it's better to forget it and move on?
Despite these doubts, shortly after 8 o'clock, they all finished off their drinks and began making their way to the Labernum Hotel.
The hotel's function room was dimly lit, illuminated mainly by the bar running down one side of the room and some garish disco lighting around the stage, where a DJ leafed through an uninspired CD collection of 80's hits. The dance floor, however, was empty. Most of the people, having arrived in jovial, if slightly strained, spirits were clustered around the bar or the buffet. As the room gradually filled and the flow of new arrivals tailed off, a pervasive silence began to take hold, somehow overpowering even the music and causing it to recede to a faint echo from a distant life.
They looked around at each other apprehensively, every face appearing gaunt - somehow stretched too thin and worn out. Flickers of pain flashed around eyes and mouths. A peculiar deadness spread through the air.
And then, seemingly from nowhere, the dance floor was filled with silent gangly youths, moving with intent expressions on their acne'd faces - all bad haircuts and awkward, ill-fitting clothes. And as they danced, strange holographic lights appeared over their heads, bursting like fireworks in the November night sky. But there was nothing beautiful about them. There was a strange ominous quality about them - half-formed images of sorrowful faces and lonely figures appeared and disappeared restlessly. As more and more appeared, like smoke bellowing from a long-dormant volcano on the verge of erupting, they began to spread throughout the room, out over the heads of the elder observers, and there began to take more definite, personalised shapes. Now these holograms, silently, but in sight of all, spoke of the intervening years: of dully aching disappointments and the cold ashes of dead loves; of tiredness and tedium; of forgotten hopes and guilty consciences. They told tales of divorces and debts and drugs and alcoholism. They told of betrayals and broken promises, both great and small. Loss of pride, of dignity, of control and of care.
The youths stopped dancing and stared in hostile silence at their older selves. Somehow, without speaking, they asked a question:
"Who are you?"
But each of the elders, trapped and tormented beneath their own personal stormcloud of pain and misery, could give no answer.
"Who are you?"
The youths were now drifting from the dance floor to confront their older selves. Overhead, the strange lights continued to boil and flicker. Face to face, the youths studied their future selves, who, in turn, sought to avoid their gazes.
Again, they spoke telepathically.
"This is not what we expected. This is not what we dream of!"
The elders flinched from this sudden fury.
"What have you done with your lives? What have you done with our lives!"
Suddenly, savagely, the youths fell on their futures, beating and tearing them, scratching at their eyes, cursing them and rending their flesh in screaming madness. Quivering gobbets of fat and muscle were ripped from bones and cast aside in bloody confusion on the polished wood floor.
The party-goers thrashed around wildly on the floor, screaming and shrieking in incoherent terror until, one by one, they fell still and silent, killed by huge aneurysms.
There were no survivors and no explanations.
The End
Written 7th November 2008