One Left

Preface

I've been sitting here for so many hours, trying to figure out how to start it all. I don't even know where to start it all, was there even a beginning?

Just on the other side of this coloured canvas, I know there's a bright moon. Her face pockmarked with holes that she tries to hide from us every month. She reflects a subdued hope that sings for those who listen. Its glimmer pales in comparison to her lover, the sun's, as he glares down when she hides. Forcing his strong warmth down our throats until we feel as if we are burning. But tonight she watches us to her fullest, and her shy smile is bright enough that I can see the paper in front of me.

The sun had just begun his last dance of the day when everyone chose me. For the last week we had done nothing without squabbling, sometimes even screaming like the money hungry housewives you never see on television, but can hear just a couple of houses down if you try.

As the sky was just beginning to blush, I can remember how everyone just turned and stared at me. James came up with the idea to document our experiences. To give those last survivors a look into the lives, to put everything we know down on paper so that those left can figure out the clues and fix whatever the heck went wrong not so long ago.

I was sitting on an old stump, trying to pick through its hardened skin when he made this announcement. I could see the little buggers had done it, and I was determined that I could do the same. The teeny termites looked like red devils in the setting light as they tramped through the ghost stump. A final, fading glimmer that darkened the lengthening shadow at my feet seemed to take all the warmth with it.

James put his hands on my shoulders, and suddenly it had felt like the sun was rising behind my back. Eight faces stared back at me, and I could feel the gaze of a ninth burning behind. Those scars that marred us all didn't look so ugly anymore, they spoke of a beautiful story. A story they were begging me to ink out. To freeze us all on parchment, to soak every drop of blood that had fallen into the dirt. To fill the empty void that had slowly begun to fill the gaps left behind by the battling hope and despair within every pair of eyes that had fixed on me. I tried to fight past my own fear. I took a deep breath, then another.

And then James had bent down to my ear, and whispered a soft "so we mean something" that even I could barely hear.

So that he could mean something.

So that I could mean something.

So that even if this kills us all, we will still exist. We will be remembered. We will help those that keep breathing and keep fighting keep their edge. We would keep going.

So maybe I'll start on the last day. It began the day everything ended, it began on a day that was perfectly, boringly normal.

It began like this...