“Where would you like the cut this time?” I raise the butcher knife, pointing it toward my victim.
The face that looks back at me is blank – lacking emotion. It’s my face, and it doesn’t care that it’s in danger.
“How about right here?” The knife tip skims my neck briefly before I jam it in.
I watch it unfold in the mirror as I keel over, hitting the bathroom floor—my blood gurgles in waves, staining the white tile red. I stare at the unmoving ceiling fan as I drift unconscious, finally getting a respite from my loneliness.
#
The world ended, by my estimate, about six years ago.
Ironically enough, I was one of the first to get sick. It started as a cough and a body ache, but I forced myself to the store, as usual. It’s humbling to admit, but I needed the money. I was listening to a podcast on abiogenesis, restocking shelves of books no one would likely buy when the sirens began. I ignored them at first, but then I saw people running down the street. Cautiously I opened the door, the familiar jingle of the hanging bells barely audible over the hysteria.
Suddenly my head felt light, and I stumbled forward, smacking into the pavement face first. By the time I was placed on a stretcher, I was burning up.
“I can’t die,” was the last thing I said to the EMT before I went black, and the world as I knew it was gone.
When I awoke, I was in a hospital bed with a splitting headache, surrounded by a white curtain. The monitors were dark, and the IV in my arm was empty. I winced, pulling it out and stepping out of the bed.
Something was off. I heard no scurry of feet, hushed voices, or beeping machines. I peeked my head out of the curtain and quickly pulled it back in.
“No,” I whimpered, straining my eyes open to wake myself from the nightmare, but when I dared peak through the curtain again, I couldn’t deny the truth.
Bodies were everywhere –– in beds, behind nursing stations, sitting at desks, just lying in the hallway as if dropped mid-stride. What they all had in common were twin streaks of blood flowing from their eyes.
When I caught a glimpse of myself in the glass door during my escape, I saw that I also wore crimson lines down my cheeks.
It was the first time I was disappointed not to be dead.
#
I choke on dried blood caked inside my throat, and my feet slip in a puddle of it as I pull myself to stand.
“Still here,” I sigh, looking at my reflection – my only companion in the aftermath.
I help myself to a plush robe hanging on a hook behind the door and begin to rummage. I find an old box of photos under a bed and look through them, cross-legged on the floor, staining the white rug with my DNA.
I flip over a photo from the eighties of a small boy and a middle-aged woman to read the back.
“Henry and Mom,” I grimace. “Let’s see what Henry turned out to be, huh?”
I plod down the stairs to the kitchen. That’s where the newest photos will be and, hopefully, something to take the edge off. I’ve likely been out for days, and my body is probably on the verge of dying again of dehydration.
I find a large bottle of water on the counter, half drunk. I chuckle lightly at the thought of germs. Do germs even survive this long? I take it down in one gulp while my eyes scan the room for something more substantial.
“Money,” I say, spotting a bar cart. I take a swig out of a dusty bottle of gin, taking in the walls littered with family photos.
“Henry, my, how you’ve grown,” I point to a college graduation portrait before caressing the edges of the handsome photo face. “Wish you were here.”
He would have done nicely, I think, as I inhale SpaghettiOs straight from the likely expired can.
“Henry went to Harvard to study biology. His lifelong mission was to find a cure for cancer. Henry loved his mother and country, and when he visited, she fed him his favorite, SpaghettiOs. Today he goes house to house with me, scavenging all the SpaghettiOs we can get our hands on.” I speak to myself as I lay down in a creaky bed.
This is my game –– this and killing myself in new ways to break up the monotony. I travel, house to house, city to city. Last I noticed, I was in Fort Worth, Texas –– quite a far drive from the Philadelphia suburbs, where I began the apocalypse.
In these houses, I drink the booze of the dead, eat from their cans, and learn as much as I can gather about their lives. I pretend that they were the ones I chose to spend eternity with. Before the world went to shit, they met my impossibly high criteria, and I offered them the hard-won gift I had bought for myself, with the only thing I had to trade before I realized it was a curse and that I was alone in a world full of nothing but my own regret.
#
A little red car was halfway on the pavement in front of the hospital. The door was ajar, and next to it lay a man, face down, with the key dangling from his fingertips. I held my breath as I plucked it from his hand and sped off.
What I found on the road was more of the same. Cars stuck with passengers looking up to the sky with unseeing eyes crying tears of blood. I didn’t stop, trying to keep my eyes on the road or what was in front of me when I had to veer off the road.
I was already there when I realized I had been driving to the bookstore. I ran in and slammed the door shut –– the familiar chime of the bell calming my breath for the first time.
In there, I could pretend I had been dreaming. Everything looked the same. The books I was shelving were still neatly stacked on a stool, waiting for me to put them in their places. After a few moments of peace, I tried the phone –– it was dead, and then the lights –– also dead. An inspection of the neighborhood brought more despair. I found that the dog from the barbershop next door had laid down gently beside its owner in its last moments.
I willed myself to stay calm. Told myself it was just a blip. Likely contained to my city or state. Sure –– I’d have to start over, but hadn’t I done that already a few times over the course of the last two centuries?
I knew where to turn for answers. Descending the basement staircase, I pulled the rug to reveal the pentagram drawn across the width of the floor. I opened the ancient text I had tracked down in Mayong so many years ago. It had traveled near and far with me, both of us somehow ending up in a basement in a sleepy town full of dead rich snobs in the end.
“Answer me!” I yelled at the top of my lungs after completing the spell. No one ever came. I wondered if the lines into a world get cut once all the people are gone like the cable does when someone moves out.
Only this world is not abandoned –– I am still here.
The last time he arrived, it was in a plume of smoke that nearly caused me to die of asphyxiation. He towered over me, all hooves and horns, and for a second, I thought I had made a mistake, but then I realized something that made me smile.
“You smile in the face of primeval power?” he boomed.
“I do,” I said, looking up at him without fear.
“Tell me, human, what makes you so brazen?”
“I smile because no matter what you do to me, I did something beyond most people’s comprehension.” I cocked one eyebrow above the other. “I know things no one else knows.”
He chuckled at that, reducing himself to a man’s body and settling in with me –– a sign of his favor.
“You know there is more than meets the eye –– more power than even your monarchs can grasp, but in one human lifetime, you cannot know everything. Knowing love is the most important to your kind. Is that what you wish to know?” He looked down at his fingernails as if he was already bored by my reply before I’d had a chance to give it.
He didn’t know that love, or my contempt for it, was what had sent me to him in the first place. Just when I thought it was a constant in my life, it had been given away to another without remorse.
It was not shame but pride that made me pick up and leave the English countryside I knew in search of something better –– something more than love. I ventured East to the Indian colony, seeking adventure initially, but once there, I kept hearing of Mayong. Human sacrifice and lost armies were often highlighted in these tales, told to scare one another at parties, but occasionally, there was talk of a book –– an ancient tome of black magic that detailed how to get through to the other side to be granted the favor of ancient deities.
Soon I’d ditched the man I’d been traveling with and hitched a ride with a local to the storied village on the bank of the Brahmaputra River. It took months and a little spilled blood –– not mine –– to track down, but finally, it was in my possession, and nobody would ever be able to make a fool of me again.
I scoffed at his talk of love. “Anyone can have love. Even my mother has love from my father. It’s not something to bother the likes of you over.”
He looked up at me with red eyes so bright they burned to look into. “Then what?”
“I want to live forever so I can know everything. To be here until the end. To be the most alive human that ever lived.”
“Not love?” He asked incredulously.
“Not love.” I was resolved.
I was dipping the quill into a new cut on my arm, ready to sign my name in his book, when he held up a hand.
“What is it?” I was worried for the first time that he might prove as mercurial as my once-betrothed.
He handed me a glowing red vial of liquid.
“What’s this?” I fingered it in my hand.
“If you do find that love of yours, give this to them, and they can join you on your journey of knowledge and wisdom.”
I scrunched up my nose at the offer but have carried it with me, unused, ever since.
#
I wonder if the stench of rot and decay has receded or if I’ve just gotten used to it. These days the bodies are more bone than flesh. I say hello to them as I walk down the street, especially ones that seem to be going about their daily life, like the one I pass sitting at the bus stop.
Was it really that fast, I wonder, or were some people just too lazy to panic?
Before the end, I saw lots of different sides to humanity. I’d been married twice and had hundreds of flings. I learned something from every one of them. From one, I learned to play the guitar; another, I learned to oil paint; a chemist taught me nuclear physics; and a spy taught me espionage. I never tired of lessons, but eventually, they ran out of things to teach. None made the cut to drink from my vial.
How could they? Marriage was eighty years max. Forever was an entirely different thing.
I think back on each of them as I try to walk a straight line on the highway divider, avoiding the car crashes on either side. The sun is shining, and I’m grateful for its warmth on my skin, the gentle breeze, and the hum of a bee as it buzzes past my ear. There are still signs of life on this planet. Birds still chirp. For some reason, they never left.
A shot rings out, and for a second, I forget I’ve shot myself everywhere a person can shoot themselves on their bodies, and I drop to the floor, covering my head.
After the surprise disappears, I sprint toward the sound, screaming, “I’m here!”
#
A man in a white hazmat suit with red boots stops dead at the sight of me.
“I’m here,” I still find myself saying, although a bit lower now that he’s in range.
“Stay back,” he orders, holding up a gloved hand.
I put my hands up, a sign of peace.
“Why are you smirking?”
This exchange sounds familiar.
“It’s just, I haven’t seen anyone in so long.”
“How are you alive?” He doesn’t exactly point the gun at me, but he doesn’t not point the gun at me either.
“Would you believe me if I said immune? I had it. Bleeding out of my eyes and all but,” I shrugged, putting my hands in my pockets, playing the humble innocent. “But here I am by the grace of God.”
At the mention of God, he lowers his gun, although his back is still stiff, and he’s contemplating.
“Immune, huh?”
I nod.
We walk about a mile, and although he seems deep in thought, my synapses are firing on all cylinders. This is so much better than burning myself alive ––next on my list of boredom cures.
“My name’s Mabel. What’s yours?” I ask.
“Henry,” he looks straight ahead. He clutches the bird he shot by the neck, trailing little droplets of blood along our path.
“Henry,” I repeat, thinking of the boy in the photos.
“You know a Henry?”
“Not really. I know of a Henry. He was a biologist whose house I was just at going through his things.” I laugh nervously. I used to be a conversationalist, but it’s been a while. “It’s not like he’ll be needing them anytime soon.”
“I’m Henry. I’m a biologist. I lived near here.” As he speaks, my eyes widen.
“No shit!”
I hope he doesn’t decide to take a trip home only to find my blood staining his bathroom and most of the surfaces.
We cross a field and walk into an old barn.
“Isn’t this how scary movies start?” I’m trying to lighten the mood. I don’t have to see his face through his suit to see that he’s a very serious man.
“You’re free to go if you want, of course,” he says, turning to me. I hear a plead in his voice. He’s unsure yet if I am a threat, and it will be easier for him if I’m not here.
“I haven’t seen anyone in years. Please.” I put a hand on his arm, and when he looks up, I can see the round, sympathetic brown eyes inside the suit.
He knocks three times on the metal door on the floor, and the hatch opens.
“Scanner,” he calls down and is instantly given a handheld device. My eyes widen with a giddiness that I’ve encountered more than one human. Henry holds the device up to my head, and a red laser shoots out to skim the surface of my body.
“Protocol,” he explains before banging on the lid and yelling, “All clear!”
“What’s this?” A blonde woman with eyes wrinkled from too much smiling asks when I follow Henry down the hatch. A young boy and an elderly woman; Henry’s mom, I realize; both stare in turn.
“I’m Mabel,” I strike out a hand that is not taken. The room is lit by oil lamps and lined with shelves stocked with cans and bottles of water. In the middle are cots for sleeping. A few toys and books litter the cement floor. The blonde woman is crocheting a scarf.
“Henry, what is this?” She drops her needlework and walks to him as he removes his hazmat suit.
“Mabel, this is my family. My mother Suzanne. My wife, Ingrid, and my son, Henry Jr.” He sits on a stool, taking a deep breath and running a hand over his beard. “I found Mabel on the side of the road. I made sure to scan her before bringing her in. I do believe we’ve found a miracle here. She was sick, but she healed.”
They look between the two of us with furrowed brows.
“Henry,” his mother is the first to speak, putting a hand on his knee, “you’ve gotten us this far. If you say she’s a miracle. She’s a miracle, and she’s welcome among us.”
Ingrid’s nostrils flare. I don’t blame her. I stopped aging at twenty-six and know enough about the laws of nature to know a man would be inclined to do his best to continue his species with the fittest of mates.
“You suggest she live with us?” Ingrid finally speaks up.
“I suggest nothing beyond tonight.” He puts a heavy hand on Ingrid’s shoulder. “Why don’t you prepare the pheasant for dinner?”
I can feel rage radiating off her, similar to that which I wore about my throat in my mortal life. Rage from not having control, not having a full understanding. If I cared enough, I might have sympathized.
“Mabel, would you mind coming to my laboratory with me?”
He pulls open a heavy sliding door, closing it quickly behind us.
“What are you studying?” I ask, running my hands over his microscope before picking up a beaker. Finally, my gaze settles on a surgical saw. I pick it up and play with it in my hands, wondering what he would do if I opened my wrists before him. That would be one way to come clean and get everything out into the open.
I decide against it, setting it down.
“I’m trying to find exactly what you have. Immunity.” He puts a hand on the cross at his neck, and his eyes meet mine. They’re so earnest that I’m almost moved. “I’m close. I’ve been able to isolate the contagion. Now I just need to find a way to fight it like your body did. I’ve been trying to use bird blood to do it. Somehow, they’ve survived. They can carry the disease but don’t get sick. But it hasn’t worked yet.”
“And you think my blood will provide that?” I try not to laugh.
“Do you believe in meant to be?” He moves closer, and I don’t back away.
“Sure,” I placate him.
“You were just at my house –– perhaps the one person remaining on earth that could help me find a cure. You happened to hear my gunshot and follow it. There is a greater plan at work than either you or I are privy to.”
I want to tell him that the lines to the cosmic realm have been shut down. That no one is listening anymore, but I let him continue.
He’s filled out since his college days. He looks like he could throw me around if he wanted to. I wonder if his little biologist mind would get excited about taking me apart and putting me back together.
I finger the elixir in my pocket. I bet it wouldn’t take much for him to leave these sorry-looking sacks of potatoes for a life free of hazmat suits. I’m sure he could teach me so much about what happened. Perhaps we could solve the greatest puzzle that has ever plagued humanity together.
When I feel his breath on my face, I give him my forearm.
“Take as much as you’d like.”
#
“Dinnertime,” Suzanne knocks on the door as he is bandaging my arm.
“We have a bit of wine,” he whispers conspiratorially as we walk to the next room.
“Oh, how I miss wine,” I sigh with desire, although I haven’t missed wine at all. If there is one thing of plenty in the world, it’s bottles of alcohol that never go bad.
He pours us each a small glass, even giving Henry Jr a thumbnail-sized portion.
“We will toast after we’ve said grace.” His teeth are straight and white. I’m slowly getting used to the idea of him being my forever mate. I’m sure I can sort out his religious leaning quickly after he’s seen what I can do. Or perhaps I can convince him to worship me. I can play the part of the primeval power if nobody else is willing to show their face.
“Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for this food that you’ve provided at our table. Let it be a nourishment to our bodies. Thank you for communion and fellowship with new friends. Let this friendship blossom and bring about a new day, a new hope for your humble servants so that we may walk in your glorious light again. Amen.”
My eyes catch Ingrid’s open during the prayer. I want to tell her that it doesn’t matter what he says. No one is listening.
“Thank you for a home-cooked meal and some conversation for the first time since…” I let my words trail off. They don’t seem like the type of people who’d like to be reminded of the decimation of humanity.
“Tell us how you’ve survived for so long out there, alone.” Ingrid cuts into her meat with a ferocity that makes me respect her just a bit.
“The grace of god himself,” I say, sipping from the vinegary wine. I realized long ago that in religious circles, that phrase can get you out of all manner of lies.
It’s Suzanne that goes down first.
“Something caught in your throat, mother?” Henry asks, lightly patting her on the back, but when she looks up, we all gasp in horror. There are two streaks the length of her face, written in blood.
“No,” Ingrid shrieks, grabbing Henry Jr, who throws his arms around her. “It’s her. She’s brought this on us.”
I would agree, but I’m also starting to feel the familiar sickness coming on.
“The pheasant,” I point.
All the blood leeches from Henry’s face.
“The scanner. I used the scanner,” he stammers.
“You used it on me. Not on the pheasant.” I kneel next to him, placing a gentle hand on his shoulder.
“Henry, come be with us,” Ingrid demands with a stern yet sad voice.
“Your blood.” He shoots up, running for the laboratory.
I follow him as Henry Jr begins to cough.
“It’s no use,” I say.
“What’s no use?” Henry has the vials ready to distribute to his family.
“I’m not immune, Henry.”
He whirls on me. “What?”
“I’m not immune exactly. I did die from the disease. I die from a lot of things, but I just keep coming back. I made a deal a long time ago. I thought it would lead to an eternity of learning and new experiences but turns out that without other people, it’s kind of just more of the same.”
He isn’t fully listening to me, and I follow him as he orders his wife and son to each down a vial of my blood.
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with the source of the power, or any source of power, since the sickness. Nobody’s home. We’re on our own.” I shrug, following him over to his mother. She’s not responsive, but he still dumps a vial of blood into her mouth for good measure.
“There’s none left for you,” I say. “Which doesn’t matter since it won’t work. But what will work is this vial.”
I pull the red liquid from my pocket, still glowing with power from all those years ago.
“Take this, and you can live forever. Not this kind of living, however. Not underground living or hazmat suit living. Real living. Sun on skin living. Being with me living.” I entwine my hand with his.
He looks up at me as if seeing me for the first time, finally registering what I am saying.
I nod and smile, trying not to let the blood gurgling in Henry Jr and Ingrid’s throats ruin the moment. I am finally giving away the closest thing to my heart. It’s no small thing.
“You don’t have to spend any more time with this sad lot. You can be with me forever. Explore the world with me.”
He starts to stumble and falls to his knees grasping for Ingrid and Henry, who fold him into a weak embrace. I reach out to him, trying to hand him the vial.
“Come on. Time’s running out,” I prod.
Henry looks at me. Even though his eyes are already brimming with red, I can see their repulsion. “A human life means nothing without love.”
My eyes narrow, and I bare my teeth.
“You sound just like him.”
I scream into the ceiling, tipping over the oil lamps with my rage. It’s time to feel what it’s like to burn alive.
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The author lives in Philadelphia with her husband, toddler, and cat, working in advertising by day and writing speculative fiction by night. Her short stories have been featured in Myth & Lore, The Raven Review, Heartland Society of Women Writers, Mulberry Literary, The Selkie, and The Fairy Tale Magazine.
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