Mia Tamondong (10) l STAFF REPORTER
Heartbeats are a delicate thing. The steady tapping in one’s chest, the singular thing that said, I’m alive. Speeding up in times of fear, or love even. So to imagine it slowing, growing increasingly quiet to the point of silence, was unthinkable. That is, until you witness it.
When the virus came it gave no warning, there was no time to prepare, or say goodbyes. It simply washed over the world like a tsunami, swallowing it whole. Nurses and doctors alike worked to the point of exhaustion, trying to do something, anything, in order to save even a single life.
One day, they would learn to lose hope. One day, the death rate would peak to a point where humanity would give up, leaving the population to their demise. Of course, people had their theories. Some suggested eating an odd creature caused the outbreak, others believed it to be divine intervention, God’s way of ridding the Earth of the plague that is humans.
Today, however, today was the day when hospitals began to overflow. With patients, but even more so, the bodies.
The sickness was like nothing ever seen before, people dead within a mere two days of contracting the disease.
48 hours. 2,880 minutes. 172,800 seconds.
One day they would switch from nurse scrubs to hazmat suits, learn to lock out the outside world completely, giving up on any shred of hope humanity had left.
There was a time when people would mourn the loss of mankind. Where cities would crumble, bringing everyone with them… but that time is long gone.
I don’t know why the virus spared me. A stroke of luck, a really good immune system, the Noah of our modern tragedy, I’ll never truly know. There’s been millions of books, movies, and poems about humanity’s demise. What they don’t prepare you for is the silence.
Remnants of civilization scatter the Earth. Slowly, however, they start to change. Buildings so obviously human, populated by species far from them. As I wither away over time, new life sprouts. The harsh neons of society fade, replaced by shades of emerald and jade that persist even in a dying world.
In my final years, I walk through the forest, feeling the crisp leaves crumble beneath my feet. I have no goal, no destination, no place to be, but I am content.
A man– whose name escapes me in my old age –once said, “The worst cruelty that can be inflicted on a human being is isolation.” However he lived years before I did, said that years before all this happened, and didn’t live long enough to see what I see now.
Fern flourishes deep within the cracked concrete, birds soar higher than our structures could ever reach. Schools of fish paint the seas hues never before seen by the human eye, and wild cats run faster than our cars ever could. However, more than that, more than growing and thriving and populating in innumerable amounts, they survived.
The end of the world is lonely, but it’s a comfortable silence. So I sit still as the ivy creeps over my bones, satisfied, my life comes to an end while theirs only begins.
