I’m not deaf. I know I can hear. I talk, and my voice echoes throughout the house. And yet, the noises that I’m making are the only noises that can be heard.

  I’m scared. I open the silent door to the backyard and the sound of the trees rustling… should be there but isn’t. A squirrel jumps down from a tree onto the metal table and birds on branches open their beaks to sing… but I hear nothing. I go back inside and open the pantry and find cereal. My stomach growls at the thought of food.

  I find a bowl and a spoon after scouring through the cabinets and drawers, and I pour myself some cereal. Looking at the meal, I feel I’m missing something. Milk. I tug open the refrigerator and see a gallon container of milk. Carefully I add it to my small bowl of relief, and after replacing the milk, begin my meal. I pick up a spoonful and place it in my mouth, but there is no crunch. There’s no taste.

  Then I scream. It dawns on me that I didn’t really feel the texture of everything that I have touched so far. I could touch them, I could feel their weight, I could feel the resistance of the surface against my skin, but I could not feel the texture. I wasn’t truly feeling.

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  Black dots appear in my vision. I’m panicking. Remembering some paper bags in one of the drawers, I rush to pull one out and use it to calm my breathing. I lay down on the ground and relax. Panicking won’t help the situation at all, I think.

  Think.

  I sit up. Someone else should know what’s happening. I unlock the front door and leave the house. I go from door to door and find that every house on the street is exactly the same: the front door is open and the house is empty of life. A part of a human body part--face, arm, chest, or something else--lays on every single bed with the ends cut off and leaking what looks like a digital code.

  This all feels so unreal. I try the nearby convenience store and the high school; everything is the same save for the placements of the body parts. It’s an impossible world. Then I wonder, what world do I live in? Am I even alive? Who am I?