You would not believe some of the things I see here. You might have seen the movies, read all of Tolkien's books from cover to cover, but you'll never see the characters the way I do.
Realistically, even most of the other characters don't see the other characters like I do. But then, I'm their therapist, so I'm bound to come across things nobody else sees.
I had a reasonably normal life before I came here. Messed about at university a couple of handfuls of years and came out a psychologist. I had my own little practice in an inconspicuous suburb in northwest London, and saw all sorts, from royalty to the desperately poor. I even saved up enough to get myself a little apartment and a few pot plants. Weekly library trips, going for walks in the park, eating my greens and drinking plenty of water—I followed all the instructions people had given me for a prosperous little beige British life.
And then one Saturday morning in the middle of June, I woke up in the pitch dark. I could have sworn I'd gone to sleep with the curtains half-open, and thought I must have awoken at two in the morning, but I glanced at my watch (I'm one of those freaks who wears a watch to bed) and saw that it was 10am.
Newly awake and thoroughly discombobulated, I fumbled around, looking for my lamp.
-flick- nothing. -flick-flick- still nothing. I groaned and reached to turn on the much brighter ceiling light, which I knew I would pay for dearly over the next 15 seconds when it fried my unprepared retinas.
-click- nothing. I tried again. -click-click- Still pitch-black.
"Grand, the power's out," I muttered as I switched on my phone's flashlight, and as I lifted it up, light fell on my curtains and I saw that they were indeed half open, revealing an almost absorbing blackness outside that poured in through the window like inverted sunlight.
"God, the world's gone out." I tentatively crossed the room to go into the kitchen. I don't know why I didn't want to open the window in my bedroom for a look. The kitchen window felt somehow safer, possibly because there was a bench between me and whatever was shrouding everything in blackness. The only thing I thought it could have been was an eclipse, but we had only had one a few weeks prior, so it was pretty well impossible that it would happen again so soon.
I lay on the countertop belly-down like I was some sort of seal, cracked the window open, and glanced out to the left and then the right. The air outside was still and warm, as if the sun had never set and the darkness had never taken the edge off the day's heat. I could see absolutely nothing, no matter which direction I looked in. My neighbours were a metre away, but I couldn't even see the next set of windowsills, even while shining the light outside. I frowned and pulled the window shut as I slid off the counter. This was decidedly odd.
As I went back into my room, I switched off my flashlight to conserve battery and in the immersive blackness, clumsily pulled on yesterday's jeans, t-shirt and button-up shirt I'd carelessly chucked onto the end of my bed. It was time to visit Libby, my neighbour across the hall. Libby was a formidable 90-year-old with a sparkle in her eye and a penchant for making fruit cake. I met her the day I moved in, and we took such a liking to each other that we usually spoke and visited each other most days. She had lived in the same apartment with her husband for 50-odd years, and noticed everything that happened. She would know what was up for sure. I had the strange urge to take a backpack with me, which I swiped on my way out and chucked some chocolate, water, a book or two, and my first aid kit into.
"Libby?" I called out as I knocked loudly on her door. "Libby, are you in there? It's Rhodri!"
No answer. I must have stood there in the blackness hammering on her door for ten minutes, then spent another ten pounding on the doors of my other neighbours. Nobody answered. I went to call someone, anyone, but my phone had no reception. This was becoming quite alarming. I had to get out of here.
I took the stairs down as quickly as I could, hearing the blood rush in my ears as my panic grew. I'd read a couple of apocalypse novels in my time, but I hadn't noticed any bookstores amalgamating that genre with the nonfiction/documentaries, or people running around like headless chickens in preparation for the grisly end. Evidently, though, I was very unobservant, because as I burst through the front door, I was met with yet more nothingness. My stomach dropped. I had been in the middle of suburbia, buildings and cement as far as the eye could see, and then as I stepped off the tiled entryway, my foot landed on—
"GRASS?!" I roared as looked down. I looked up and shone my flashlight all around, but there was nothingness everywhere. There wasn't a soul around, and all the buildings were gone. No roads, no footpaths, no nothing.
Most people you talk to about an apocalypse will usually say they have it all worked out. First they'd raid the local grocery, starting with all the perishables, and then spend the rest of their days feasting on chocolate. Raid any other shops for necessities as often as needed. Easy enough, really. I had also planned to do that, but in this blackness, this void that was utterly bereft of all signs of life, my only urge was to walk. Just keep going in the hopes of running into something, anything.
After walking about a hundred metres, I looked behind me and saw that even my apartment building had disappeared. I ran back to where I had been, and it was gone, like there had never been a sign of it. I couldn't help but let out a terrified gasp now. Everything had disappeared except the grass. Zapped away like deleting a house- or an entire neighbourhood- on the Sims. Nothing remained except me.
It felt like I was walking for hours- possibly in circles, I couldn't say for sure. Eventually, I caught sight of some flicker of light in the distance. I couldn't believe my luck. I'd spent however long in the darkness coming to grips with the idea that I would probably perish if I couldn't find any food or water or light sources—and things were looking pretty grim there. I felt a surge of energy along with my newfound hope, and my walk picked up to a run—a sprint, really, because I was bolting as fast as I could to get myself over to that light.
As with the walking, the running just went on and on. As I drew closer to the light source, which I now saw flickered orange, I could have sworn I saw a black dot in the middle, and the light looked as though it were on some kind of enormous plinth, so high that it silhouetted what appeared to be a mountain range in front of it. It looked an awful lot like the Eye of Sauron, which amused me to no end, but I still decided not to go directly toward it out of a feeling of unease, instead heading to the left of it.
I got lucky with my choice of direction, because I eventually found a small body of water after a few panicked days' traversing. I drank from that stream for straight minutes, and joyfully splashed around in the dim light like some kind of ecstatic, screaming fish. I was thrilled to have postponed my death yet longer, and celebrated by anxiously walking as close as I could to the river without actually falling in.
To cut a long story short, I followed the river for a few months, and in moving away from the Eye of Sauron, I had thought I was leaving my only source of light behind me. I was proved wrong. As the time passed, the world around me started to give a growing sense of normal- out of nonstop blackness, days started to grow, and the sun shone brighter and longer until it finally stretched into a normal day-night cycle. To my delight, my environment finally showed signs of life, too. A fox, some deer, fish in the river, and there were trees and bushes with fruit that apparently wasn't deadly, because I still hadn't snuffed it by the point I had found-
"My god, a person," I gasped to myself as I saw a tall figure with long hair, armed with a bow and arrows, running around in the distance. I threw up my hands and waved them like an air traffic director on bath salts and screamed, "HEEEEEEYYYYYYY!" at the top of my lungs.