The first sense that came back was sight, or lack of it.
I opened my eyes yet it was strangely darker that way. Smell soon followed, a stench mixing burnt meat, children's stink bombs and a subtle smell of smoke. I lay there for what seemed like an eternity, and for all I knew it could have been as my watch had been reduced to a few cogs and shards of glass in my sleeve.
I willed my legs to move, but to no avail. I felt like every muscle in my body had been removed from my bones like a piece of over-cooked meat. Taste. My mouth felt like I'd been in a wool eating competition; some prize I'd got.
I started to regain full mental awareness and thought, maybe this was a dream, a nightmare, some twisted fake reality my brain is putting me in. But it can't be, this much I did know, this was real. Thoughts spun in my mind, contradicting each other. How can I live like this, Not knowing whether I'm alive and dreaming or dead and remembering. What pathetic excuse for a life is that?
After a few minutes I heard for the first time since I could remember. A cockroach crawling over the dust-covered floor beside my head. I fell into a deep sleep in which I was at my old high school; I was roughly 14,15; 16 at the most, I was reading a book of useless facts and there on the page was a picture of a mushroom cloud after Hiroshima with a text bubble, " Although small, a cockroach is one of the worlds most enduring creatures, some have been known to survive nuclear disasters." I was both jealous and amazed; a tiny insignificant insect can withstand a bomb that can vaporise a steel tower in half a second. I woke with a start to find the aforementioned bug trying its best to insert itself into my ear; soon after this it became the first flying cockroach without wings. As I drifted back into a coma I wondered how it was that everything I could make out amidst the rubble of the building was destroyed yet it was only the cockroach and myself appearing unscathed.
Hours turned to minutes, as I lay there comatose. Returning to consciousness I resumed watching my new friend, the cockroach. Walking. Up the burnt remains of a wall. I'm lying there with no power while a bug is walking vertically and surviving holocausts like it was a day-to-day, same as usual occurrence. Eventually it came within spitting distance and found my hand flying towards it. A few hours passed when the supposedly dead insect started walking towards me. Well about a half did, the other half stayed perfectly still. At this point my jealous rage had given me a new power, enough to get up, run after the startled thing and jump onto it; in the hope of killing it. What I succeeded in doing was landing on a piece of rubble at a bad angle; thus relocating my damaged leg, making me both heave with pain and laugh with the realisation that I now had the long awaited ability to walk.
After a long walk outside I discovered three things; one, this destruction could not have been an accident, two, I was totally alone, and three, the buildings around me had been made mainly of lead; a metal that most radiation can not penetrate; so the only reasonable explanation of my survival and the destruction would be a nuclear bomb going off in a close proximity to where I had awaken. I had been in the epicentre of a nuclear blast and lived to tell the tale. The emotions in my head where varied. Pride; I had lived where thousands of others had not. Guilt; I had lived where thousands of others had not. Sadness; some of the others who had not, where my friends, family, and colleagues. Anger; some of the others who had not, where my friends, family, and colleagues. And the most clichéd of all, a sense of freedom; that I could do whatever I wanted. But what is the point of doing things if you have no one close to you to share it with? All the times in life you wish you could be all alone in a fantasy where you was in control, and I was in it, and the thing I needed most, was not control, but a friendly face to talk to; laugh with; be annoyed with, only to forgive in a few days time; but most of all, just to be there. I was alive and thankful for the fact; but how would I deal with the loneliness? The fact that everyone I had ever known was gone forever? For the first time since I had entered this nightmare, the realisation sank in; I was the last man on earth.
This story is copyrighted to Danny Holloway.
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