Myrcy had always been different, but no one really cared. She lived in a house at the end of the cul-de-sac, where nothing much ever happened. Her parents were dull people, consumed with their own lives, leaving her to her own devices.
There was something about Myrcy that unsettled everyone, even the adults. She was a strange kid. Quiet. Too quiet. But it was easy to ignore because she never hurt anyone.
Until she did.
It happened late one night. Her parents had been arguing in their room for hours. Myrcy sat on the edge of her bed, waiting. She wasn't afraid. She was never afraid. When her father stormed out, slamming the door behind him, she moved, slow but sure, to the kitchen. There was a knife on the counter, the kind her mother used to chop vegetables. It was sharp. It didn't matter. She had no hesitation.
The house was silent when her parents finally stopped screaming. Myrcy stood in the doorway of their room, blood on her hands. Her mother's body was slumped across the bed, her eyes wide open but seeing nothing.
Her father was on the floor, his mouth frozen in a scream. Myrcy stared at them for a long time. Then she wiped her hands off on the curtains and walked out.
She didn't even pack a bag. She left the house, stepping into the night as if she were heading to a friend's house, like everything was normal. The neighborhood didn't know what to think when she vanished the next morning. It didn't seem like anyone was looking too hard. After all, Myrcy was a strange child. She probably ran away.
But people began to notice that the streets weren't the same. The houses started to fall apart, slowly at first. A broken window here, a burnt-out porch light there. The kids who used to play outside stopped showing up.
People stopped visiting. The street, once full of cars and bikes, became empty. No one was ever out. The air felt wrong. Thick. It was hard to breathe, but not in the way you'd expect. It was like something had closed in, pushing everything in tighter and tighter until there was nothing left.
And then, one by one, the people started disappearing.
It wasn't sudden, like an explosion. It was slow. First, the neighbors on the left side, then the ones on the right. No one talked about it. No one mentioned it. Everyone knew what had happened. Everyone knew Myrcy was still out there. But no one wanted to say her name. No one wanted to remember.
Weeks passed. Or maybe months. Time didn't matter much after a while. The street became an empty shell. No lights. No sounds. Just houses rotting in place. The wind carried the smell of mold and decay, but that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that it felt like someone was watching.
The houses looked at you when you walked down the street. Their windows, cracked and empty, seemed to follow you. Every time you looked over your shoulder, there was nothing, but you knew it was there.
Myrcy never came back, but the town was still hers.
The last house on the street was the last one to go. People would still walk past it. They'd look at the house with its broken windows and crooked fence, and for a moment, they'd wonder if it was worth anything.
That was when they realized that no one was left.
Myrcy didn't leave. She didn't have to. The town was hers, all of it, empty and broken. It was like she had infected it somehow. The streets, the houses, the air—it all belonged to her now. The world outside had disappeared, and nothing else mattered anymore.
One morning, the last person in the neighborhood woke up to find the streets had finally swallowed them whole. The houses were gone. The trees were gone. The ground, the air, the sky—they were all gone.
The only thing that remained was the house at the end of the cul-de-sac, untouched. Silent. Empty.
And somewhere, in the stillness, Myrcy smiled.
She was finally home.