The last Elsen in the world stands in the corner of his safe bunker.
For a while, other residents of the district had thrown themselves against the door and screamed. They've stopped doing that. Everything has stopped. The specters are gone, his neighbors are gone, and all the world has been bled white. There is nothing left that could possibly hurt him.
There's nothing left. There is no world.
There's nothing.
All white.
He's safe forever.
If he closes his eyes, the hissing in his ears sounds like shushing. If he didn't already know where he was, he might think that he's standing in the middle of the great library, surrounded by a crowd of people at this very moment.
He looks at the wall.
It's white.
Something is scratching at the door. It doesn't sound like his neighbors or like the shrieking things that killed them, but in what would otherwise be absolute silence, any sound is alarming.
"Hello...?" he says to the scratching noise. "Please don't... do that."
The scratching continues, now interspersed with meowing. He shivers. Is this the same cat as before? How is it possible for such a small animal to sound so demanding? It's impossible to endure.
When the last Elsen cracks open the door, an old white cat slips inside, seats itself in his corner, and, displaying no sign of having noticed his presence, commences washing itself. It begins by licking the red from its stained front paws. Red. The first color he's seen since he went into the bunker. The sight of it is no less overwhelming than the sounds of scratching. Then the cat flops over to reach its belly.
"I did not know for certain until this very moment, when my efforts to verify my prior assumption at last paid dividends," says a voice, pausing between strokes of the cat's tongue. "The belated intervention of yours truly, assisted by the equally untimely but nonetheless hoped-for volte-face of that unseen puppeteer, was not so doomed an effort as I had feared. This is a very pleasing development."
"...What?"
"The recompense on behalf of all those who were expunged from life, and the reprieve that one who was not, of course."
There is no one in the bunker except for the last Elsen and the cat. He certainly didn't say the odd things that have just been said, so by process of elimination, the cat must be speaking, even though he's nearly certain that cats shouldn't do that.
"I don't know... what you mean. Um... the one who is in charge of this zone—"
"Is most utterly deceased," hisses the cat. Then it grins. "And so too is the Batter, the omnicidal marionette dancing on strings cast through a liquid crystal window. Dead as dead may be, most thoroughly deceased, having been, from a strictly-considered standpoint, felled at the last moment by a ruptured aneurysm. He deserves no pity."
A little while ago, a man in a pinstriped baseball player's uniform came into the bunker, took some useless things from the basement, and went away. All the color had drained out of the zone by that time, so it's natural to assume that this Batter was killed one way or another. The last Elsen doesn't know what an aneurism could be, but it sounds dangerous.
"Will you not depart this lonesome refuge? Security may be procured in various locations, and, though we cats are fiercely independent creatures by nature, the company of whatever living souls may be plucked from the edge of the void would be most invigorating." To emphasize this point, the cat gets up, stretches, and rubs against the last Elsen's leg.
He looks down at the cat, afraid that any movement might provoke an attack. Cats carry diseases, so he's heard, and their claws are terribly sharp. "Umm. But it's dangerous outside... the specters are gone, but there are those... new specters... it's safer here."
The cat twines a figure-eight path around the Elsen's ankles. "Safety may be found elsewhere," it insists. "Have I not already eradicated the one who would otherwise have completed his vile quest of annihilation, my dear mannequin? What purpose would be served if I were to have done this much and yet allowed further destruction to take place piecemeal?"
"But it's safe here."
"You might go elsewhere."
"I don't... want to."
"Why not?"
The Elsen has never been interrogated like this before. "It's, it's not safe."
The cat sits in front of him and gazes up with its narrow pupils. "Do you not trust that I might prevent your harm, were such a necessity to present itself?"
"But... I'm already here..." says the Elsen. "It's... already safe... I'm safe where I am..."
"Will you stay entombed within these four walls forever, then? For ever and always?"
"Yes?"
"Truly?"
"...Yes?"
The last Elsen stares at the cat's rows of needle-teeth and the cat's unblinking eyes stare at the Elsen.
"What a shame," the cat says at last. "I am only a feline, after all, and have neither the will nor the power to physically enforce your liberty. Therefore I must, with a certain amount of reluctance, reclaim my own."
The cat brushes past the Elsen's leg on its way to the door, then paws at it and meows until he lets it back out. It takes its time in departing, settling on the ground and giving him one last glance over its shoulder before it resumes grooming itself. He shuts the door.
He walks back to his corner.
He looks at the wall.
It's white.
He waits for the soft hissing to fill the silence once more, but there are little red paw prints on the floor and the emptiness doesn't feel so comforting now. He's utterly alone. He will be alone forever now that the cat is gone. It said as much. He knows as much.
It's so very quiet.
Summoning all his meager courage, the last Elsen leaves his corner and peeks outside again. The cat is still there, sitting in the middle of a plastic street that once was magenta and is now as colorless as his own clothing and skin, as colorless as the cat, which raises its head at the sound of the door closing behind him and grins.
As if possessed by some insane and reckless spirit, the last Elsen gathers the cat up into his arms and cradles it against his chest. Its eyes close into slits and it makes a soft fluttery noise he guesses to be purring. He's never touched a living animal before. Its fur is warm and soft.
"Perhaps I took a needlessly dismal view of these circumstances, even accounting for my prior change of heart regarding the subject," it says, cuddling into his arms. "Our dear friends Zacharie and Sugar are, by all the most recent evidence, certainly alive and unharmed by the Batter's hideous machinations. Yes, yes, we will ascertain the location of that footsore merchant and our saccharine companion and embark from this moribund world. The four of us will go far away and imbibe all the sights and joys of a new locale. It will be just like the old days."
This pronouncement from the cat is more confusing than everything else put together. "Did you come here... from somewhere else? Another... zone? Who is Sugar?"
The cat purrs so loudly that it doesn't seem to hear him. "Shall we first pay a visit to that cellar? You will find the provisions which I have gathered to be most sweet and agreeable. We will at last forget all our sorrows."
The last Elsen decides to go back into the bunker with the cat, until its claws press into the fabric of his shirt and he freezes. But the cat, instead of scratching him to pieces, begins to knead his arm.
"Yes, now that you have recovered your senses and the Batter's efforts have been thwarted, we should not waste any more time. Let's go at once and find our friends. Aren't you anxious to see them again, my dear Valérie?"
