Bonsai Cutting

And Then There Were None

Like cookies in a cookie jar, we were picked off one by one. By who or by what, few of us knew. And those few who knew refused to tell. Before we knew it our numbers were down to a hundred. We were frantic, there was mass hysteria. By the time we realized that panic solved nothing, it was too late. We were down to twenty, hiding away into a single building we thought would keep us safe. We tried to work together and lived in harmony. However, with the risks looming over our heads, our nerves were more than frazzled. Some of us snapped, some of us left, some of us were snatched away and some of us either gave in or gave up.

And then there was one – me.

I'm the only human left in this city. Perhaps the only one in this country. The nurses have disappeared and so had everyone else in this godforsaken nursing home. It was not too long ago though, which would be one of the reasons I have yet to starve to death (the other reason being the stock of dry biscuits I had stocked beforehand). Why the younger ones were taken first was a question that often lingered in my head along with one very simple question: "Why not me?"

Of course, I would have left this place if I could. Unfortunately, there's only so far I could go. Now that the building had no more power, I was stuck on the second floor- the residential area. I've tried the lifts, they wouldn't open. The stairs were out of the question, there was no way my wheelchair was going down those. An old lady like couldn't do a damn thing.

I had decided that if I were to go, I might as well spend my last moments in the TV room. I never really liked that stuffy old room but there was a certain air to it. There were people. There used to be people. It was the friendliest place in the building, in my opinion. But then again, I might be biased, I do love to chit-chat and if anything the TV room might as well have been called the chatterbox station. Well, not anymore.

I noticed two very strange things as I approached the room; I could hear the sound of white noise and the lights were on.

Now, the sound I was hearing could have been explained by my hearing aids malfunctioning but the lights? Was I hallucinating?

I entered anyway.

The TV room was dimly lit, just like it always was back when everyone else was around. However, instead of Prime Time television, all that was on the screen of the television was static. It didn't make any sense (although, it did tell me that my hearing aids were not malfunctioning at all). Why was this the only place with electricity?

I didn't know what to make of it so I went to turn it off. As I got closer, the static started to sound less like mere noises and more like...words?

Was I starting to lose it already? In this situation, who wouldn't? I swore any time soon I would be seeing the silhouettes, the featureless shadows that Martin from room 204 described to all of us the night before he was taken. We used to talk a lot, Martin and me.

I would be taken away as well and then, I told myself, it would stop.

It would stop.

It didn't stop.

It grew louder, clearer even. I clasped my hands over my ears. I did it out of reflex. I did not want to hear a thing. I did not want to hear a word. And yet, the noise leaked through the very gaps of my fingers. It was a noise- no, a voice- I knew. I had heard it somewhere, sometime.

It was a soft and wheezy, forming words in the most deliberate manner.

"You have company."

I still couldn't put my finger on whose voice it resembled. And yet it was...so familiar.

"Go outside" it told me.

"I can't" I blurted out. I was talking to it now. I was talking to something I don't even believe in.

"Go to the lift."

The lights outside the room flickered on. The corridor was lit. I had no other option. I complied. Wheeling myself down the corridor and towards the lift, I found the doors were wide open for me to enter. Should I? I could not see how anything could possibly go wrong and yet unease weighed into my chest.

I got into the lift. The doors closed behind me. As I turned around, for a split second, I thought I saw a dark outline of a person behind me with their hands propped on my wheelchair. But I was alone in the lift.

My squeezed my hands together I closed my eyes. It was getting harder to breath. I could hardly tell if what I was experiencing was actually happening or not but the twisting feeling in my gut said yes. So did the fact that the lift was actually moving.

It stopped at the lobby floor with a halting jerk. I held my breath, expecting the lift to go crashing down, for it to all end. Nothing happened. The lift doors parted and I left quickly before whatever it was that was causing the lift to work changed its mind. The lobby was deserted. No surprise there.

But this was no time for me to be loitering around. I had to see what was outside. I had to see if anything changed. Sure, I had been keeping a close eye on the streets from the window of my room, but for all I know things could have changed while I was not looking.

It did.

It had changed in the most familiar of ways. The streets were busy, filled with shapes that marched urgently to and fro. Dark silhouettes void of any feature whatsoever hurried on their ways to who-knows-where. All of them looked exactly alike. None of them seemed to notice my presence. They lacked eyes. They simply kept on moving in synchronised steps.

Across the road was a store, The Boon Brothers' Electronics. It had caught my eye. It was impossible for it to not catch my eye. In a city with no light, the flat-screen displays glowed. Unlike the one in the TV room, the screens there did not play static. There were shapes, there were colours.

There were close up images of moving lips. The lips of men, the lips of women, the lips of children; all of the screens had a different pair displayed across them. And yet they all moved in unison. They talked with no sound. But I could read lips.

"Finally, it has shown itself..."

Behind me, the crowd had stopped. I did not even need to turn around to feel the eyeless stares pierce right through me.

"..The last of the humans."

I heard their footsteps. I couldn't move. I should be scared. I wasn't scared. I was relieved.

It was finally all over.

-

And then there were none.

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author's note: 

This was actually a fairly old story that I wrote years ago but re-vamped and heavily edited (it was really badly written originally) to use as a submission for a Halloween short story contest at school last year.