Alive

He stared into the broken mirror, the memories of his nearly deranged wife and newborn son pulsing through his mind. He could almost smell her perfume seeping through the walls, but the silence he faced instead was like the edge of a blade.

He reached for the container of pills that had been prescribed for his late wife's depression from the bathroom counter. The flask was cold, as if death lived inside. With his new friends in hand, he made his way to the kitchen and grabbed a clear bottle of vodka. He silently prayed this would be the final time he ever had to do this. Last month's attempt only rewarded him with a trip to the hospital, thanks to a concerned neighbour's check in, after hearing a baby's cries and a mother's yells, and finding his comatose body on the ground.

Even so, he was out for a couple of days after the stomach pump, oblivious to the world around him. That was, until he awoke to an empty hospital and his own empty lungs.

Dead bodies, freshly decaying, blanketed the floors, the sidewalks, the roads. The smell was wretched, enough to be a makeshift stomach pump. He didn't know what happened, and he didn't really care to know.

He solely wanted to know he wasn't alone.

He couldn't be. He'd only been out for a couple of days, right? Three at most! Not nearly enough for an entire town to be void of all human life.

He remembered walking into his house, seeing clothes thrown all over the floor of the hallway and living room. The kitchen was covered in jars of half eaten food, cans of soda and beer, broken dishes and spilled anything. The bathroom had pill, soap and shampoo bottles and their contents scattered carelessly. Towels and the shower curtains were draped over the edge of the tub, sink and toilet.

As he slowly made his way to the bedroom, he tried to prepare him for the worst. As he touched the doorknob with his shaking hands, though, he knew whatever he was about to face was worse than he could ever genuinely be ready for.

As the door creaked open, his eyes met a baby first. A baby that was already nearly nothing but a skeleton. His eyes then met the mother of that baby, coated with dried blood on her bare skin, cracked and white lips, with one eye barely hanging in its socket.

He swiftly shut the door and swallowed.

His feet dragged him to the kitchen, where his answering machine flashed, telling him he had six unread messages. Giving it a quick glance of acknowledgment, he caught sight of the date.

June 27th, 2053.

Eleven days.

He had been asleep for eleven days.

Was that even plausible outside of a comatose state?

There was no way. He counted out the days in his head numerous times, ending with the same result each time. The day he overdosed had been a Tuesday, two weeks exactly after the birth of his baby, the 15th of June. He had been admitted late that night. They had pumped his stomach and talked to him afterwards, asking useless questions like, "Are you depressed and suicidal?" He stayed quiet and stared at the clock, never speaking, feeling so tired. So eternally exhausted. It was early morning the next day when he finally succumbed to slumber.

Tired of counting, he reached for his wife's favourite red wine and headed for the bathroom. He grabbed the pipe and last bag of marijuana that his wife had left in the cabinet behind the bathroom mirror, and he laid in the bathtub, smoking bowl after bowl until he could no longer lift the pipe to his lips. Taking the bottle of wine into his arms, he curled up next to it, and slept.

He awoke to a broken bottle and red stained clothing.

The sights and thoughts of yesterday flooded back through his brain, washing him with a new wave of despair and loneliness.

He spent the next three weeks going out and bumming anything he deemed useful off of corpses and unattended houses and stores. Useful typically consisted of guns or knives - for a possible zombie outbreak - and liquor, weed or food. When he finished his daily raid, he would return home to his refuge in the bathroom, stoned and drunk.

Until today, that is.

As the vodka chased the medicine down his throat, he laid on his back on the couch, and whispered final goodbyes to himself as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

The bliss of unawareness did not last long for the loneliest man. He too soon woke up, his warm vomit clothing his body, and was still coming, much to his displeasure.

"Not even my thirst for death can be quenched," he thought aloud.

He laughed sarcastically at what his life had become, and how pathetic he was. Even if he was the last human on the planet, and even if he wasn't, that wouldn't change that he was still alive, and that he should be able to find something that made him actually realize that fact. But he couldn't think of a single thing that might give him a purpose anymore.

"Humans are given such a beautiful blessing that is the human brain, yet we have no idea how to use it. We waste it on alcohol or drugs or self pity. We focus more on technological advancements than the arts, and look where that's gotten us. We still have cars that are restricted to the ground, even after the years of designs and dreams of a flying car. Telepathy only exists between twins and the mental. Holograms are merely glitches, and there are no space colonies. We spend so much time trying to figure out our purpose that we start letting ourselves drown under the waves of the unexpected. We spend our time teaching and learning and gaining knowledge of things we'll never need for situations we'll never face to impress people we'll never meet nor like. We idealize the heart and soul as homes to emotion and personality, but act as if the body is nothing more than baggage. Humans are capable of a greatness that we can't yet, and never will at this point, comprehend because we are too busy with our beautiful self destruction."

So the lonely man got up. He knew that even his own enlightenment could not bring the dead back to life, except for himself. He was the one with a chance to be put back together. The one human to redeem the entire human race in his own eyes.

"I could write books, make music, paint pictures, even if only for myself and God, who I only pray is watching. The power of self expression will always be stronger and larger than the power of self destruction, even if you're the man so alone that you no longer have the hand of history to hold, or a future to caress."