The eternal night is silent. It hadn't always been so peaceful, so breath-taking as you try and hear your own heartbeat. Maybe it was before the war, maybe not. Who knows? All I know is that it's quiet now- almost too much so. I feel like a fly caught in a spiders' web, when the spider has been dead for years.
Vacant Lands... Vacant cities... Vacant world.
I was a soldier when the war broke out. It took me to many places while I fought for a blind cause, and I saw many things. I soon began realizing what was happening, but it was too late to convince anyone else. Maybe that's why I'm the only one left. The last human in existence, and yet there's an irony in all of that. Maybe that's why I'm writing this damn thing... Oh, wait, sorry. Where was I?
My name is Kael LeThorn, a wanderer and deserter of my race. I feel as if I am going mad as I write this, because who's left to read it? The dead? Still, the throb in my temples has started to lessen already, so I might as well continue. As I said, I used to be a soldier, until the war broke out. Now, I'm a lost soul. A last memory. Or, maybe, I'm the one who's dead, and everyone else survived? Who knows?
Anyways, on to what I was writing about. The war. It started out over a small gang-fight over supplies. This planet's drying up, and the ship sent for the 'new world' never contacted us, so all we really could do was ration what we had left out, and hope. Hope, pray, or sit around and rot. The minerals dissipated, the water was drying up, and the sun was growing hotter. It was probably the heat that started it all, but hunger was another part of it.
A gang-fight over food and some water broke out. And then people began picking sides. And that's when things got ugly. Massacres broke out on both sides, and soon even we, the soldiers, were placed on one side or the other, rather then trying to prevent it any further. It's not like we helped, anyways. After the soldiers were on sides, the fight grew. It took the countryside, and then the world. The entire god-damned war took up the last continent of Old Earth.
People were killed. Others got angrier. And some even killed themselves to escape the madness. Nonetheless, by the time I hid myself in a hole in the ground to remain safe, it was a bloodbath. And then, one day, everything was silent. They all just gave up and died. I've been guessing to myself as to how it happened, but didn't ask many questions about it. They never got answered, anyways.
Wandering around on my own, I've found not a single living thing anywhere. It's as good as a desert... one bathed in blood, and corpses. There are no flies to help the bodies rot, anymore. No animals to tear up the bodies. Nothing. Just the wind and sand to bury them, and that was what happened to the human race. Buried in the dust. Every trace of them but myself gone.
I've been surviving off of anything edible and drinkable I could find, but I'm starting to feel too weary to carry on. As I write this, I've got my back leaned against a sand-beaten square of rock that I assume used to be a wall for something. I am shivering in my rags, and not from cold. I've had a cough that has brought up blood every time, and has lasted for weeks.
I think I'm dying. I wonder what it'd be like to see wherever dead people go. Maybe it's alive, like the world used to be. Letting my limbs get heavier, I'm only using one hand to write this, and am surprised the wind hasn't blown the paper away. I see something shift in the dirt by my feet, and watch with mild fascination as an animal head pokes up. Soon, a toad emerges from the dirt, and I vaguely remember that being where I poured out the rest of the water I had in my cantine.
Maybe it's life.
Maybe I'm dead.
Disturbing Tale Teller Community Member 
|
|
