Another wind gushed through the fields, tugging at his loose shirt like a child eager to play. He felt, in this impassive, golden evening he could toss coins into the air - and buy time back. He watched the yellow disk of the sun steadily dip below the horizon, its outlines shimmering hard and hot. Its rays spread like fingers through the grass, poking through the leaves, and eventually stinging his eyes.
He took another slow breath. One, two. The wind whispered secrets through the grass. He breathed out. Three, four. A bird called somewhere, the harbinger of the night, the warden of the morrow. He took a step back. Slowly now, so not to crush a snake or startle a rabbit by mistake. Another breath, another gust of wind, another shallow glance around his surroundings. The pangs of loneliness razored across his heart.
Alfred lived in a cabin sitting in the shadow of the hill. He set his hands in his pockets, continuing towards it. As he stepped closer, he felt the darkness tugging at him again. Inside of his home there was a box of candles left by the previous owners: so there was light. But it was artificial and waxy, and nothing like the glowing sun or the hard gems of night.
The house, made of meticulously cut wood and carved with love and necessity, proved to have everything he needed. Those who made it left their handprints inside. No matter how many times the voice of his in his head echoed the word "home", it never really was his to begin with. It belonged to someone else, to a different time.
He pushed the door open, the smell of brass from the handle clinging to his palms: acidic and bitter. No one greeted him. He didn't have a spouse to kiss him hello, no kids to laugh and cry out for daddy, and no pets to happily greet him. A cat's impassive glance and sly beg for food would have been welcome.
Instead, he was greeted with howling silence so loud it hurt his head and hurt. He shut the door behind him. There was no real need for this: no one would come in. It thudded dully in his wake, encasing him in shadow.
Boxy windows welcomed in bits of light untouched by the hillside. That was slowly ebbing as well.
The cabin was a single room cut into three parts: a main room with a basic army cot, a low table, and a grizzly fireplace, a kitchen, and a small cupboard. Alfred sat down on the army cot, causing it to jounce and toss up an army knife. Alfred picked it up and dug in his pockets. He vaguely felt an ache in his legs.
"Come on, Al, you only walked a couple of miles today. No need to feel tired."
"You did a lot, though." He said to himself, in a softer tone.
Memories crashed against an empty shore, sending up cold, salty ocean spray. The mist congealed for a couple seconds into a familiar face, and then vanished. Just as fast as time had eroded that same set of pale, gentle eyes.
"Got some food stores." Alfred agreed with himself.
He glanced at the kitchen, as if to remind himself that he really did walk into the abandoned city not even a parade's march away. A set of dusty can sat on the counter. A pan waited for heat from the stove below it. White mist coated the inside of it, from his last meal. When was that?
Alfred touched his stomach.
"When did I last eat? Did I even need to go out?" He frowned. His blue eyes, which once danced and waltzed and jitterbugged with joy now sat still, like silent sapphire stones. They stared ahead blankly.
His stomach murmured in protest.
He stood up, setting his finding on the bed. It vanished into the sheets.
The kitchen crowded around his tall, bulky form. A mirror, cracked with age and yellowed at the corners, sat at the corner.
So when Alfred went to eat, he could see how thin he had gotten. He looked inside of the grimy surface.
A bony, taut-skinned face stared back. Alfred blinked lamely, it blinked too. A scruffy yellow beard grew like mild around his chin. His hair was growing long and into his eyes. He brushed it back, knowing it would only flop forwards again. He smiled, then pressed his lips together at once. It wasn't a pretty sight, coupled with a throb in the back of his mouth.
He stared at the pan, his mind going slow.
Real slow, a tired horse marching across the brink of starvation and the desert.
He picked up a random can and cranked it open. He stared inside, scrunching his nose.
He tossed the chunky, green substance of who knows what into the trash bin, which needed to be emptied somewhere soon, and took another can.
This one smelled sweet and pleasant. The other must have had a dent or hole in its side, Alfred thought as he thumbed off the lid. Inside, in sticky, smooth fluid were peach halves. He took a spoon and began to munch. Slowly, carefully. One, two. The peach flesh was cool and slick, slipping down his throat like candied medicine. Everything would be better soon. Soon, soon, soon.
Or would it?
Dark thoughts oozed from the corners of his mind as he licked the spoon clean. He tossed the can and rifled through the rest of the food stores. As nourishment awakened his mind, the more he began to think of his situation.
He didn't eat so he could fall into the dumb stupor. So he didn't have to think. So he could forget the mountains of dead, naked, scrawny bodies piled high with disease - some still moaning. So he could forget the masks he had to wear, pumping medicine into his lungs as he operated on a patient.
To forget that the skies were once grey and streaked with bloody lighting. That he grew immune as everyone else weakened. That newscasters dropped off one by one until one man's frantic voice broadcasted the hysteria through all the networks.
Alfred coughed, feeling his legs tremble.
It was the past.
Once it was the present, but now it is the past.
Now he lived in a place without time, without space, without people.
He found a can of beans and downed that too. The more he ate the hungrier he became.
The hungrier
The meaner
The more desperate
The tender bodies that didn't resist, couldn't resist. The dead.
Alfred plumped down on his bed and shut his eyes. The cot wheezed below him. When had he bathed? Could he even feel the dirt clinging to his skin or was it a new layer of his epidermis? The nadir of his existence had passed, but so had his zenith.
Bitter tears leaked down the corner of his eyes. He stared angrily at the ceiling.
Breathe in, he told himself: just as he told countless patients too many to name, slipping through his fingers like the sands of time. One, two. He didn't save them all. He saved none. Let the breath out. Three, four.
Everyone but himself.
He would much rather have been in hell then in the sunny, open, free plains.
don't own Alfred