Stranger in the Wasteland

Stranger in the Wasteland

Everything was dead.
It had been that way for as long as he could care to remember, since the orange glow of sunset first pierced his world.
Rotting vehicles rested on flat, cracked tires. The roads were splintered and split by a complex web of blooming tall grass. Even the buildings—though they still stood tall against time— had grown dejected, weak, and crippled: Their windows only remained like countless jaws lined with transparent teeth, their walls peeling and sun bleached, their rooftops stripped of shingles and half-collapsed.
But it was the skeletons. The skeletons got to him.
They lay about everywhere, always. The weary calcium deposits dwelled in the streets, in their neglected cars, on couches, in their beds, on the sidewalks, along the beaches, underneath trees and swing sets, even in coffins that never quite had the chance to be buried beneath the earth.
Yet…here he was—alive—among an entire planet of death, every day searching for sustenance for both body and soul. Each day was a struggle.
Carefully, he stepped over and around the bones of humanity, passing through curtain after curtain of tall grass as he shifted along the main street. His caution was irrelevant: No matter how meticulous he was, his shoes still landed on flesh-less corpses. He could feel them snap beneath his feet like brittle twigs, he could hear them cry out in shattering agony with each step. It drove him mad, but it drove him forward. That was the only option to avoid becoming jagged, lonely minerals like everyone else. Although, in the back of his cheerless mind, he knew his fate remained unchanged.
He reached an intersection which was barricaded by rows of sandbags, police cars, and jersey barriers. Hundreds of dead were piled atop one another unceremoniously, as if poured from a dump truck. But he knew better; between the interlocked rib-cages and ragged clothing were countless gleaming bullet shells. They reflected the story of the end which he could only imagine, though he tried not to.
Stepping over a mound of finger bones which had washed into the gutter and overflowed from the storm drain, he took a left at the crossroads to avoid the mass grave. As usual, he was bluntly reminded that there was no escaping the prison of sorrow, greeted by another street of ancient dead.
Up in the distance was a partially engaged swing bridge, its mint green paint flaking away, exposing rusted steel beams. It seemed to call to him, but a family-owned supermarket caught his attention first. Most food centers had been completely ransacked during the last days of mankind, but this one held some promise: The entrance appeared to be sealed by a half-crushed pick-up truck and a mountain of zip-tied shopping carts.
He worked at the fortification swiftly, the sweet thought of a meal boring into his mind. The shopping carts shifted and crashed. He paused for a moment, startled by the sudden onslaught of sound erupting in the land of dead silence. He continued, more methodically and quietly than before, though he was unsure why.
Eventually, the mountain of carts was dismantled and he pried open the glass doors. They were caked with dust and dirt and sale signs that had lost both color and purpose.
The interior was dark and musty. Each step sent a cloud of contaminated air billowing outwards like a coiling snake. Underneath that veil of age, there were two skeletal figures, one holding a pistol while the other lay beside a shotgun. Thankfully, the shelves were mostly stocked, a testament to the sheer willpower of the perished occupants.
The canned food was well beyond the printed date but most of it, while not fresh, was still edible. Stabbing the top of a can of green beans with a knife from his back pocket, he strategically carved out the lid. He sat on the floor of the supermarket in half-darkness beside two skeletons, digging into his meal like a lost soldier. Decade-old memories swept through his thoughts like a hungry sandstorm…
Day after day, month after month, year after year, he paced that white, empty room, dragging his fingers along the perimeter mindlessly, pacing…pacing…it was all he knew. He would sleep, wake, pace, and sleep. Even in his dreams, it was all his imagination could conjure; a smooth, seamless set of imprisoning walls. Over time, a grey line was worn into the wall from the continuous tracing of his fingers and, as he grew taller, the line widened upwards. Six inches, one foot, two feet…it never seemed to end, just a grey bar to signify his life, his meaning, his existence.
One day, after an eternity of hellish laps, he stopped, fingers still pressed against the wall as something finally broke inside of him: That stupid, evil grey bar couldn’t be everything, there had to be more. His hand curled into a primordial fist and smashed ruthlessly into the wall. An unbearable, overwhelming discomfort shot through his arm like burning lightning. Red fluid burst from his knuckles and he dropped to the ground, writhing in the discovery of pain. Droplets began to form along the edges of his eyes and slip down his face like enigmatic strangers.
Such a strange feeling.
He passed out.
A sharp noise startled him, something that had never happened before in his silent, lonely world. Slowly, his vision cleared to find a man in a lab coat leaving the room. Their gazes met for an instant as the door swept between them and sealed itself with the wall once more.
He stared at the doorway in complete shock and awe.
It was there all along. Running up to it, he tried to force it open, but the seal was strong and perfect.
A single tear rolled down his defeated expression like a heavy boulder, while simultaneously recognizing that his injured hand had fully healed.
He’d been asleep for quite a while.
Then a weight heavier than any boulder slammed him in the chest: The grey bar he had worn into the wall was gone, painted over. He keeled over, unable to breathe. An ocean of sadness washed over the shores of his eyelids as he dragged a hand down the fresh wall.
Days turned into months, yet he no longer paced the room’s edges. The walls were no longer split by an arbitrary grey line. Instead, a perfect faded rectangle was carved by his fingertips where the door blocked him from happiness. Smears of blood were faded into it from frantic clawing with raw fingers. Even when he slept, he slept with his back against the exit in case it opened while he slept.
That’s how he spent the remainder of his days.
Until that day.
The white room began to shake violently and he stumbled into a wall. The light to his world flickered, then shattered. The unbreakable walls cracked and groaned in fatal agony. His dark world quaked viciously and he was thrown to the far wall, head smashing against it unforgivingly.
Darkness engulfed darkness…
Eventually he awoke, a tiny sliver of blood-orange light reaching into his dark cube. He glanced towards the hazy source with blurry eyes; the door was open, held that way by an extended forearm. The fingers were like four trees on a distant, fiery horizon.
Inside the palm, he found a note. Symbols of black struck the paper with meaning, but he couldn’t understand it. He kept it, then pried the door open with great effort. Crawling through, into a new world, his eyes followed the forearm to the shoulder, then to the man. It was the same stranger as the one whom he saw in his room. Although, this time the man was empty, expressionless, unmoving, rotting.
He looked up with instinctive fear and found this newborn world of his rotting, rotting and decomposing, unwinding into the spoils of defeat…
He threw the empty can of green beans at the shelf in front of him, trying to forget those first weeks of total decay, of watching people gradually become skeletons. The can rolled back to him, as did the memories. Echoes of death obscured his vision and filled his nostrils. He tried to hold it all back.
Not again...
...not again...
He heard a scream in the distance, and it reined him back into reality.
It was…someone.
Someone was alive.
He immediately forgot about the can and the past and the dust-covered skeletons. He dashed through the streets, crushing hundreds of vacant bodies beneath his feet without a second thought.
Someone was alive.
He wasn’t alone.
Underneath the glow of the afternoon sun, he found her laying in the street.
Rushing up to her, he saw the blood.
Blood everywhere.
She had fallen on her back and a skeleton’s rib-cage pierced through her body.
He fumbled aimlessly, until their eyes met and never let go. Orderless, his arms dropped to his sides as he stared into her eyes, into her soul.
A tear slipped from a weary eye as she reached up and touched him on the cheek. The bloodied hand slid down, never to be raised again. He grabbed it as it fell, silently pleading for her to not become another skeleton.
She curled her lips into a shallow grin and, somehow, he followed suit, cringing his face into a primitive smile for the very first time.
Then he remembered the note. She was the last one, the only one left, who could understand it for him.
Gently letting go of her hand, he carefully pulled out a heavily yellowed and stained piece of paper, unfolding it like a sacred document. The edges were frayed like the countless, colorless flags which fluttered like ribbons in the wind.
Gingerly, he brought it close to her face so she could read it.
Her eyes squinted, then flickered back and forth, becoming reverse typewriters. They slowed as they reached the bottom of the aged paper, then became still. She began to sob audible, gut-wrenching sobs which oppressed any happiness left in the desolation.
The note was pain. He tossed it aside and their gazes met again, but the pain did not relent.
He glanced around helplessly, without reason or success.
Her lips breathed words like gentle skies whispering to meadows. Surprised and confused, he leaned in to hear her voice, only to find the press of her kiss against his cheek. Emotion burned through the white walls of his loneliness.
Looking back, he found her stare to be lifeless.
Her mouth was agape, her chest unmoving…she was now just a skeleton covered by meat.
He stared into the deep orange sky just as her empty eyes did, while his precious, painful note tumbled aimlessly in the wind.
His body hurt, but there were no bruises, no cuts, no blood: The wound was beneath the skin, and had severed his soul.
Despair infested his memories.
Everything was dead.
Everything…
…except him.
Turning his head, he saw the raised swing bridge: It was a rusted, shadowy road which led into the burning afternoon sky.
Without realizing it, without thought, he reached the summit of the bridge.
The heavens were bright, the land was dark. Even from across the dried ravine which once held a river, he could see the shells of people strewn about the streets, with their lost emotions and murdered futures. The buildings were like trees against the blood-orange horizon, like a lifeless hand holding a note.
The dead don’t cry.
Skeletons don’t feel pain.
He let himself fall forward, his weathered clothing rippling like ribbons in the wind.
♠ ♠ ♠
Tell me how this made you feel, please. Ill take any feedback, of course, but I write to employ emotions on others.
So tell me.