Rain lashed against the windows of his Karachi apartment, mirroring the storm brewing within Rahim. He was hunched over his workstation, the glow of the monitor illuminating his worried features. News reports flickered across the screen – snippets of violence, panicked voices, images too gruesome to fully process.
It had started subtly. Whispers on the internet, grainy videos surfacing on social media of figures moving with impossible speed and precision, dispatching targets with horrifying efficiency.
At first, it was dismissed as elaborate pranks, or perhaps regional conflicts escalating. But then it spread. Cities across continents became stages for these terrifying displays.
World leaders fell, their security details useless against these phantoms. Public figures, celebrities, even ordinary people caught in the wrong place at the wrong time – all targets in what appeared to be a global purge.
Rahim scrolled through a news feed, his heart pounding in his chest. A video showed a bustling market square in Spain, suddenly erupting into chaos. People screamed, scattering like pigeons as a figure in dark clothing moved through the crowd, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. The speed, the cold efficiency – it was like watching a nightmare unfold in real life.
His phone buzzed on the desk. It was his brother, Tariq, calling from Islamabad. Rahim answered it quickly, a knot of dread tightening in his stomach.
"Rahim," Tariq's voice was strained, barely above a whisper. "Have you seen the news?"
"Seen it?" Rahim replied, his own voice trembling slightly. "Tariq, it's all anyone is talking about. What in God's name is happening?"
"They're calling them… Cullers," Tariq said, the word heavy with fear. "No one knows where they came from. They just… appeared. And they're killing everyone."
"Everyone?" Rahim repeated, the word tasting like ash in his mouth.
"It seems random," Tariq continued. "But… but there are patterns. High-profile targets, yes, but also… ordinary people. No one is safe."
A sudden crash from outside Rahim's window made him jump. He peered through the rain-streaked glass. Nothing. Just the wind howling and the relentless downpour. But the sound had been sharp, distinct. Like shattering glass.
"Tariq, I have to go," Rahim said abruptly. "I think… I think something is wrong here."
"Be careful, Rahim," Tariq pleaded, his voice thick with concern. "Please, just… be careful."
Rahim hung up and slowly moved away from his workstation. He walked towards the window, his senses on high alert. The apartment was silent save for the drumming rain and his own ragged breathing. He scanned the street below. Empty. The usual nighttime bustle of Karachi strangely absent. An eerie quiet had descended on the city, a silence more terrifying than any noise.
He turned from the window, his gaze falling upon the small hallway leading to the front door of his apartment. It felt different somehow, colder, the shadows deeper. A prickling sensation crawled up his spine. He knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that he was not alone.
Cautiously, Rahim started to move towards the hallway, his bare feet making no sound on the cool tile floor. He reached the edge of the doorway and paused, listening intently. Silence. But it was not an empty silence.
It was a silence pregnant with tension, a silence that screamed of something hidden, something waiting.
He took a breath and stepped into the hallway. And then he saw it.
A figure stood at the end of the narrow passage, near his apartment door. It was tall, clad in dark, form-fitting clothes that seemed to absorb the dim light of the apartment. He could not make out any features in the shadow, but he could feel its presence, cold and predatory, like a viper coiled and ready to strike.
Terror seized Rahim, paralyzing him for a heartbeat. He wanted to scream, to run, but his body refused to obey. He was trapped, frozen in place, staring at the embodiment of his deepest fears.
The figure moved. It was not a run, or even a walk. It was a glide, a liquid flow of motion that defied natural movement. In a blink, it was upon him.
Rahim finally found his voice, a choked gasp escaping his lips. He stumbled back, trying to create distance, but it was too late. The figure was impossibly fast. A hand, pale and slender, shot out and clamped around his throat.
Pain exploded in Rahim's neck, hot and searing. He clawed at the hand, his fingers scrabbling against smooth, cold skin. He tried to scream, but only a gurgling sound emerged, cut short as the pressure on his throat intensified.
He looked into the face of his assailant for the first time. It was obscured by shadow, but he could make out eyes, dark and devoid of any discernible emotion. They were not eyes of rage, or hatred, or even malice. They were simply… empty. Vacant. Like looking into the abyss.
The figure tilted its head, a slight, almost curious motion. Then, in a voice that was soft, almost musical, yet utterly chilling, it spoke.
"There is no escape."
The words were not shouted, or even spoken loudly. They were whispered, yet they resonated within Rahim's skull, carrying a weight of finality that crushed his last vestiges of hope.
The pressure on his throat tightened further. Rahim's vision began to blur, black spots dancing at the edges of his sight. He struggled, his limbs flailing weakly, but it was futile. The figure was too strong, too fast, too… other.
He felt his consciousness slipping, the edges of his awareness fraying. The rain outside seemed to fade, the world narrowing down to the cold, empty eyes of the figure looming over him.
Darkness consumed him.
Across the globe, similar scenes were unfolding. In bustling metropolises and quiet villages, in opulent mansions and humble dwellings, the Cullers arrived. They were relentless, unstoppable, their motives a complete mystery.
Governments crumbled, societies fractured, and the world descended into a state of utter chaos.
In London, a renowned historian was found dead in his study, a single, precise wound to his chest. In Tokyo, a tech mogul vanished from his heavily guarded penthouse, leaving no trace but a lingering scent of ozone. In Rio de Janeiro, a vibrant street artist was silenced mid-stroke, his canvas left unfinished, a stark testament to the sudden halt of life.
The Cullers moved with a purpose that was terrifying in its ambiguity. They were not soldiers, not terrorists, not criminals in any conventional sense. They were something else entirely, something new and horrifying.
They operated outside the realm of human understanding, their methods defying logic, their targets seemingly random, or perhaps following a pattern too complex for the panicked world to decipher.
News outlets struggled to keep up, drowning in a deluge of unconfirmed reports, shaky videos, and hysterical eyewitness accounts. The internet, once a source of information and connection, became a conduit for fear and misinformation. Conspiracy theories flourished, each more outlandish than the last, attempting to explain the inexplicable.
Some whispered of divine judgment, others of alien invasion. Some spoke of government experiments gone wrong, of ancient prophecies coming to pass. But none of it made sense. None of it offered any solace or any hope.
The world was bleeding, hemorrhaging life at an alarming rate. Cities once teeming with vibrancy became ghost towns, choked with fear and the stench of death. The routines of daily existence were shattered, replaced by a desperate scramble for survival. Trust evaporated, replaced by suspicion and paranoia. Neighbors turned on neighbors, communities dissolved, and humanity teetered on the brink of self-destruction, not through war or famine, but through the silent, swift, and inexplicable actions of the Cullers.
In the ravaged streets of Karachi, Rahim's body lay unnoticed in his apartment, another statistic in the ever-growing count of the demised. The rain continued to fall, washing the blood from the streets, but doing nothing to cleanse the deeper stain of fear and despair that had seeped into the very fabric of existence.
Days turned into weeks. The Cullers persisted. Their numbers seemed endless, their reach global. Resistance was futile. Armies, police forces, even desperate bands of armed citizens – all were easily overcome. The Cullers moved like shadows, striking with lethal precision, then vanishing back into the unknown.
Slowly, agonizingly, the world began to empty. The bustling noise of humanity faded, replaced by an eerie silence punctuated only by the wind whistling through deserted streets and the occasional, desperate cries of the few survivors left behind.
One morning, Tariq, Rahim's brother, emerged from the ruins of his Islamabad home. He had been hiding for weeks, scavenging for food and water, listening to the terrifying silence that had engulfed the city. He was gaunt, his eyes hollow, his spirit broken.
He stepped out into the deserted street, the sun casting long, empty shadows. He called out Rahim's name, his voice cracking with despair. "Rahim! Rahim, are you there?"
Silence was his only answer. He walked through the empty streets, past abandoned cars, past buildings scarred by violence and neglect. He searched for Rahim, clinging to a desperate hope that his brother had somehow survived.
He reached Karachi after days of harrowing travel, the journey a grim testament to the collapse of civilization. The city was a wasteland, eerily silent, the air thick with the smell of decay. He went to Rahim's apartment building, his heart pounding with a mixture of dread and faint hope.
The building was silent, deserted. He climbed the stairs to Rahim's floor, his footsteps echoing in the empty stairwell. He reached Rahim's door and knocked, a hollow, weak sound in the oppressive silence.
No answer.
He pushed the door open. It creaked inward, revealing the interior of the apartment. It was dark, dusty, untouched. And there, on the floor in the hallway, lay Rahim.
Tariq rushed to his brother's side, falling to his knees. He reached out, his hand trembling, and gently touched Rahim's face. Cold. Lifeless.
Tears welled in Tariq's eyes, hot and bitter. He cradled Rahim's head in his lap, his body shaking with sobs. He had lost everything. His family, his home, his world. And now, he had lost his brother, his closest kin, his last connection to the life that was.
He stayed there for a long time, weeping over Rahim's body, the silence of the deserted apartment pressing in on him, heavy and suffocating. The sun began to set, casting long shadows across the room, painting the scene in shades of gray and despair.
As darkness deepened, Tariq knew he could not stay there. He had to move on, to find food, to find shelter, to simply survive in this broken world. But as he looked down at Rahim's still face, a profound sense of loneliness washed over him.
He was truly alone. The Cullers had taken not just lives, but connections, relationships, the very essence of what it meant to be human. They had turned the world into a graveyard, and Tariq was one of the few left to wander among the tombs.
With a heavy heart, Tariq gently laid Rahim's head back on the floor. He stood up, his legs weak and trembling. He looked around the apartment one last time, his gaze lingering on the empty workstation, the rain-streaked window, the silent hallway where his brother had met his end.
Then, he turned and walked away, leaving Rahim behind in the silence, stepping out into the deserted streets of Karachi, alone in a world emptied of hope, a world forever changed, a world where the cull was complete.
His brother was just another name in the endless list of the gone. His sorrow was a quiet thing, in a quiet world, a world so quiet it was as if humanity had never existed.