Disclaimer: All recognisable characters, events and places belong to Patrick Ness.
Trigger warning: suicidal thoughts and intentions
—
"And I began to think that I was not just the last of the Burden, but the last of the Land as well. That I was alone. And on the morning I thoughtthis, a morning where I stood on a riverbank, where I looked around yet again and saw only myself, only 1017 with a permanent mark burning into his arm —
I wept."
— Monsters of Men, Patrick Ness
On the twentieth day of loneliness, you wake to a rainwashed sunrise. Over the hills that roll on forever and ever into the distance, the sun rises like soft lava, watery and hanging like it may just give in at any moment. You imagine it falling, imagine the leaden wash of it that will bathe the world in blank, blank light. It may spiral, too, as it falls, painting the sky in single arcs of diluted despair and the utter endlessness of empty-eyed horizons.
It has clearly rained the night before. The leaves you have been sheltering beneath sting and slap against your cheek as you crawl out from beneath the bush, wet and cold, and you pull yourself into a more comfortable position and simply sit there. You will walk later, if you must. And you must. Run, even, if you are going to get any help, if there will be any help at all, if this whole chase will amount to anything at all and not just a bullet to your head and that nauseating chirping jeering of men in your face, if —
You will walk. But that is for later.
Later.
The rising sun bathes a weak glowing sheen onto the deserted hilltop you sit. You imagine the air sparkling before you, individual particles glittering weak and fitful like quivering dust motes before the approach of day sweeps them away. You lie onto your back and rest your head on the river bank as the water thunders on. It reminds you of the hoofbeats of great battlemores that have coloured the legends that lived in the voices of those left behind (no more, no more, no more, because even the most defeated of lives cannot be spared —)
Briefly, you think you can hear the voices of fish, darting like quicksilver, but the deep rush of the river sweeps them away before you can catch individual voices. You cast a look around you, more out of reflex than anything else, and sure enough, there is nothing that you may have hoped for. No sign of footprints, no rustle of leaves no sign that there is anyone else left on this wide, wide, wide world —
Something pulls at your chest, some sort of void that grips and tugs and sucks the air from out of your lungs, and over the hills that roll on forever and ever into the distance, the sun is soft lava, a water mirage hanging in the shimmering air, fitful, and for a moment, you are unable to see as you should, unable to speak, to breathe.
The river thunders on, it's roaring rush sweet in the deafening silence that threatens to swallow you whole, and you put two feet over the bank and into the frothing water, icy as a blade. A dark strength curls beneath its currents, and a terrible sense of purpose grips your body and your hands are taut as they hold you to the river bank, and just for a moment, you sit there and you breathe in, and you breathe out, and you breathe in again and this mere action feels like you're tearing yourself apart and it hurts so much that you squeeze your eyes shut, shut, shut —