DISCLAIMER: All characters in this story belong to Spelling Television and Constance Burge with the exception of Brad that I created.

Running across the floor of the living room of Halliwell manor was a small gray squirrel. She stopped in the sun room and hopped up on the bureau.

Phoebe came running in yelling, "Piper, Piper. Come here sweetie. I can change you back, I hope. Piper!"

Piper, the squirrel, stood on the bureau chattering away at Phoebe.

"I can't talk to animals, at least yet anyway, but that doesn't sound very happy. Oh, Piper I'm so sorry. Let's go back to the attic. I'll turn you back, I promise. Come on, sweetie." pleaded Phoebe.

Piper jumped off the bureau and followed her sister up two flights of stairs. The Book of Shadows was opened to a page that allowed witches to transform themselves into other animal forms. Phoebe had a reluctant Piper thumbing through the Book looking for new spell ideas. While reading one of the spells to Piper, Phoebe accidentally changed her sister into a squirrel.

"Now go sit on the settee. Listen closely.

"Hear me the spirits
In winds that swirl,
Make thee this witch,
Change back from a squirrel."

The diminutive creative sitting up on the settee glowed for a moment, turned into a indistinct green glowing light, increased in size and became her sister Piper. She was still on her legs with her hands tucked up near her chest. She wiggled her nose a couple of times extended her legs, stretched and stood up to her full height.

"OH, WOW! It feels good to stretch. Um, Phoe-be. You didn't do that on purpose, did you? I really don't like running around the house on ALL FOURS! AT least KIT didn't catch me. Not that I'm not appreciative to be changed back, but just leave the MAGIC to our DEMON FIGHTING. You just don't have the full knack for it." said Piper.

"I..I..don't know what happened. Usually the spells don't activate if you're reading through them to get the chant right. I'm sorry Piper. Is here anything can I do?" she asked.

"Just leave ME out of the magic, at least for awhile. I have to go put on some nut-bread," said Piper stamping out of the attic.

Pheebs inched her way down the stairs giving Piper plenty of room. She had seen Piper mad before, but today she was just plain peeved with her.

As Phoebe came into the living room, the front door opened and in literally stormed Prue.

"PHOE-BE! I thought I asked you to drop off those negatives this morning! My client called up and CANCELED his order since I couldn't deliver today on time. What were you thinking?" glared Prue. "I am trying to get a business started and that was my largest order yet."

"Prue, you have my word. I dropped them off as you requested at 1642 Mission St. In the big deposit box." said Phoebe looking mystified.

"That was 1462 Mission St. I don't know where you deposited them, but it was not at the print shop. It'll take two weeks to make up the commission I could have made on this one job. And who knows how long it might affect my reputation in the business? Mixing up the street numbers! How could you be so stupid?" Prue yelled at her sister.

"Oh, oh. OH, stop it, just stop it. Both of you stop picking on me! Why don't you all just leave me alone? Why doesn't the whole world just leave me alone?" said the very emotional Phoebe. She turned on her heels and ran upstairs. After turning at the landing she rushed up the rest of the first flight of stairs. Through her tears she didn't notice that Kit was hidden off to the side of the last step. Phoebe stepped on the cat that shot out from under her. Phoebe lost her balance, tried to grab at the air and went over backwards.

"H-H-E-E-L-L-P-P!!" she cried as things seemed to slowdown. She tumbled down the steps hitting her back, then her shoulder and then her head. She could hear Prue call out her name as she came to rest on the landing and blacked out.

Deep from within the blackness, Phoebe began to move. Her whole body ached and as she opened her eyes, the blackness did not go away. Bringing herself to a sitting position Phoebe realized that the sun had set. No lights were on and the moon cast shadows across the living room floor. With great pain, Phoebe stood up finding no broken bones.

"Thanks, guys!" she called out to the dark house, "Thanks for leaving me on the landing in a heap! Nothing broken, as if any of you cared."

She turned on the lights and headed into the kitchen to give herself some first aid. She had bumps and bruises, but no scrapes or contusions. Grabbing a granola bar from the kitchen she wandered around the house turning on lights calling for her sisters.

"Where could they be? Why didn't they call 911? I don't think they would have both left me lying there to go for help. Or would they? No! I was upset; I had made a couple of little mistakes. All right, they weren't so little, but would they just abandon me? No! At least not Piper. And to more extent now, not Prue." Pheebs said talking out loud to herself.

Phoebe decided to drive herself down to the emergency room. It was after mid-night and she wanted to get checked out to be on the safe side. Grabbing the extra pair of keys to the Cherokee, she backed out into the street. Everything there very quiet and all the houses were dark. After two turns onto the main road, Phoebe had not come across a single other car. In her neighborhood that was not unexpected at this hour, but the major streets, too? The streetlights, traffic lights and some of the shop neon signs were lit up, but no lights showed from the shop windows or the upstairs windows. It was very eerie in the moonlight.

Phoebe pulled up to emergency entrance and parked normally where the ambulances did. The automatic doors opened for her and there was plenty of light, but not a sound except for the swoosh of the closing automatic doors.

"HELLO!" cried out Pheebs.

"IS ANYONE THERE? YOU HAVE A PATIENT! WITH A MAJOR CONCUSSION! HELLO??" she cried getting a small echo from the large empty waiting room. Phoebe started going from office to office and found nobody. The rooms looked like someone had just walked out of them. She found nobody on the entire first floor. As she circled back to the emergency room she jumped back in the Cherokee. Now she just started driving nowhere in particular. She drove into San Francisco beeping the horn and crying out the whole way. There was no one on Mission or Market or down by the wharf. She got out and looked across the bay. The waves still lapped at the piers, the birds still flew overhead, but there was not one sound of a human being. No speech, no laugher, no crying, just nothing. Driving back into the city, Phoebe's panic turned into terror. She almost had an accident turning into Union Square. At three o'clock in the morning Phoebe left the car halfway up on the sidewalk and climbed out. She stood in the middle of the square calling out.

"IS ANYONE THERE? ANYONE? HELLO! HELLO! HELLO!.." she cried until she was hoarse and fell to sleep.

The early morning sun showed directly into Phoebe's eyes. She was very stiffed as she got up off the grass and brushed the coolness of the morning dew off. The birds were making a huge racket overhead. Phoebe felt a huge pain in her heart thinking that she was in the only person in San Francisco. Or was it even the world.

Phoebe went over to a public phone and got a dial tone, but every number she called was either out of service and just rang and rang and rang. On the car radio, she got nothing but static up and down the dial. Only in the low AM band did she pick up a redundant traffic report about a backup on the Oakland Bay Bridge. It just repeated over and over again.

Just to make sure Pheebs drove south into San Jose and other towns honking her horn and making as much racket as she could. No one was around anywhere.

"Well. Unless they evacuated the entire West Coast without telling me, you Phoebe Marie Halliwell are the last person on earth! Whoa! And I have NO ONE to talk to. I AM ALONE!" she said with tears in her eyes.

She drove all the way back to the Manor. At the first red light she stopped and then thought, "WHOM am I waiting for?" she put her foot on the gas pedal and headed straight home.

"There are got to be something in the Book of Shadows," she said pouring through it. "Though I should know it will by now. It's just that is does change from time to time. It is magical you know. Why am I talking to myself? Because like all humans, we like to hear the sound of a human voice, even if it's our own. And I better like the sound of it, since you're is the only one you're going to hear is Phoebe Marie Halliwell."

Despite several times through it, Phoebe could find nothing to condemn a witch to total solitude.

"You can create a world for a witch, but the entire world? And we never came across a warlock or demon that had so much power that they could get rid of all life on earth. Because why me? It would be all three of us that some demon would need to get rid of. Prue? Piper? Where are you? Where am I? Is this heaven? Is this hell? Grams? Mom? Anyone? Anyone?" Phoebe cried standing in the middle of the attic.

Waking up the next morning Phoebe put on some CD's playing them as loud as possible. The quiet was getting too much. Pheebs started using up all the fresh food in the house. She knew that it wouldn't last forever. Just as the power coming through the power lines would quit soon. She was going have to start raising vegetables, but didn't want to try figuring out the San Francisco power grid.

"I better start looking for an industrial size back-up generator. I should be able to hook it up to Halliwell Manor. And then there are bulbs, lamps, gasoline, seeds, mulch, paper products, clothes, canned food, matches, meat, guns, ammo, a new truck, and who knows what else. I have to stock up enough for the next sixty years! A lot of things will last, but some just won't have that much shelf life. If something just doesn't last, I will have to find an alternative. Most things I can get from the stores, but I may want to raid other houses. And once the remaining wildlife realizes the town is now wide open, I'll just be another meal for a bear or mountain lion. Imagine just being someone's dinner in the food chain. Whoa! And I thought that demon busting was tough. Geez." said Pheebs trying to figure out her new life.

"I can dig up several of the neighbors yards and start my vegetable garden. Maybe I can visit the fruit orchards out in the valley to gather oranges and the like. I just hope those trees won't require too much maintenance. I will have a 12-month a year job here just maintaining the Manor. There is NO ONE I can call now. Pheebs. You're on your own now. Just think of all the great clothes I can get from the mall! Of course whatever is in style will be my style now and 50 years from now. I have to round up some livestock for meat. Then I have to butcher..um..I think I'll become a vegetarian. Gardening I can do. Pork chops? NO. It first looked like all the time in the world, but it is going to be full time work just trying to survive. But Pheebs, you can do it. I hope!" said Pheebs looking up for guidance.

Pheebs got out the yellow pages and feverishly started gathering up her supplies. It was too late to start a garden this year, but she would first thing in the spring. She used Dan's house and the house on the other side of the Manor for storage. Everything from toothpicks to CD's. She just ran into Record Mart and grabbed one of every CD. She had to have some human noise and her music was going to be very important from now on. She packed in a half dozen top of the line CD players, too. The audio and video CD's would probably last, but videotapes won't last long. Each of the houses would have to be air conditioned and humidified for the stock to last for decades. The fun part will be once all the gasoline goes bad. Even it had a limited life. Then Pheebs will be reduced to a bicycle, unless she can no longer find tires.

After six weeks of scavenging, Pheebs felt she was at least ready for the winter.

"Six more months of canned and frozen food. I'll get sick of that. But with all the physical work I'll have to do, I'll never be in better shape." she said out loud. Pheebs has stopped thinking to herself most of the time. She preferred to hear her voice. Any voice. But Lord, she missed her sisters. She could hear them calling to her sometimes in her dreams.

After all the planting was done, half of her street had been turned into a vegetable garden. Besides the normal vehicles, she had three yards in wheat and three yards in corn. She was not going to be without bread next winter. She still had to figure out how to grind it up. The Cherokee had given out and she had three brand-new pick-ups parked out in front of the house. Hauling was the only thing she really needed cars for any more, though she did have a cute red Viper she found to drive for fun. But Phoebe Halliwell had no time for fun any more. Even the Book of Shadows was gathering dust. And she had not had one premonition since she woke up that night at the bottom of the landing. She was one hard working mortal.

Five years later, a very tanned, very muscular Phoebe sat in front of a birthday cake.

"Happy Birthday To Me. Happy Birthday To Me. Happy Birthday Dear Phoebe. Happy Birthday To Me. Happy Thirtieth Birthday old girl. You survived. Though I don't know for what. Phoebe, you always had a good survival instinct and it got you this far. I will give you that. We survived two major fires, one drought and the loss of all of our water. Who thought I could build a water tower? And here you are and here we'll stay. Happy 30th my little resourceful witch." And with that she blew out her homemade candles.

Her house and her storage houses still looked pretty good. The other houses on the street were completely neglected. Her once urban area had turned into a pretty good farm. Up on her hill, she had survived two major fires that had denuded some of the local neighborhoods. She had also fenced in her neighborhood to keep out the animals. Most of California had gone back to the wild. Man had driven out the wildlife, but it had retaken the land.

"Well, enjoy you're cake. That's about the last of the sugar. I don't know where else to get any. There is still plenty of coffee. And my homemade bread is darn good. I have got to put another roof on this old house. It's not going to last another season. And the machinery house needs to be repainted and the windows re-sealed shut. I do wish somebody were here to talk to me. Anybody. But I still have myself to talk to. I better get the dishes done. Piper would never leave her kitchen a mess." And on and on Pheebs droned. She hadn't lost her mind, she just found constantly talking to herself helped her keep her sanity.

Upstairs she crawled into her bed. Except for using the last of the sugar, her birthday was just another workday. She still slept in her old room and she kept Prue's and Piper's room just the way they left it. That way it always looked like they were just about to return. That night as every other night she still heard her sister's calling her. But from where were they calling her? Phoebe doubted she even knew what her sister voices even sounded like. It had been so long. She heard what sounded like Piper saying, "Pheebs, Pheebs, where are you?" And Prue seemed to be calling, "Phoebe, Phoebe, come back to us!" Their voices appeared to be from a dream.

Phoebe began to stir. She was in a soft bed with bars on the side. A hospital, she thought. Quickly opening her eyes she saw Piper and Prue looking down at her lovingly.

"Piper, Prue? Where did you come from after all these years?" she asked grinning like a jack-o-lantern.

"Years? Wait a minute! You've only been in the hospital two days since you fell!" said Piper.

"Two days? I've felt like I have been gone for years, all alone! But I'm sooo glad to see you! I had been left all alone and no one else existed. I was living by my wits!" explained Phoebe. "But I'm so glad I'm back." Pheebs said hopping up and hugging both of them.

"Welcome back, Dorothy. The last thing you were doing was running away from us. We had been awfully hard on you. You must have just felt like you were the last woman on earth." said Prue.

"But it was so real. I can remember doing everything for years," said Pheebs.

"Maybe it has something to do because you're a witch. Maybe you were in some self-induced world of pity, some Twilight Zone type of..of.. thing." said Piper.

"There goes Mr. Spock again. But it sounds as good of an explanation as any." said Prue.

"So am I all right? After the fall, I mean." asked Pheebs.

"For the tumble you took, you had nothing broken. The worst part was the comma you had slipped into to. We were worried sick about you," said Prue.

"I know, through it all I could still hear you calling! Every night. Thanks guys! I know I can always depend on you!" said Pheebs taking each of their hands. "I love you guys!"

"Me too." said Piper.

"Ditto!" said Prue.

"So when can I get out?" asked Pheebs.

"Let the doctor look you over, Pheebs." said Prue. "Don't rush it!"

"Well, this time I really CAN'T wait. I just want to go and BE WITH PEOPLE," said Pheebs gleefully.