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THEY SAID THAT AT THE END OF THE WORLD, darkness would consume the planet, creeping along everything living, all the light. We expected that a burning hell would rise, that things would rapidly wither away like it was never there in the first place.
Though, once it really ended, none of that was true. We were still here, just existing within the end. We lived in a world that wasn't truly ours to keep anymore, yet things still remained. People, light, even old memories from before. Just like the crackling fire in front of me, and the family picture that didn't belong to me, crumpled in my pocket.
We still remained, I still existed.
Of course, once the end truly came, things did begin to slowly wear away. The soles of my shoes, burning against hot asphalt. Clothes became tattered, things became memories, and my skin had become stained with reminders.
I wanted to scrub away all the parts of me that shouldn't exist, but did. It was impossible still; everything that I had done, and seen, made me into the only reason I was here right now.
Surrounded by survivors, I was alive, but that didn't stop me from feeling odd on the inside. It was sort of like everything had been taken out of me, my only remains being the shell of what used to be a home for my soul. The worst part of it all, was that I knew something was no longer present in me.
I felt empty, vacant.
Instead of possessing the will to live, I only had the need to survive. Sure, some may have said that those were the same thing, but they weren't.
My body was magnetized towards my soul, except it was almost as if it couldn't quite click together, like two wrong pieces of a puzzle being smushed to fit one another. It didn't work however hard one tried.
"All done." Rosita said, placing a rather large square bandage on my side, which she had just stitched.
"Thanks." I told her, standing and walking to the closest tree, not too far away from the kindling fire.
