Am I Alone?

Chapter One

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I awoke in a daze to find myself lying on my back amongst a pile of blackened debris, with bricks and glass scattered all around. Confused and frightened, I pulled myself up into a seated position and stared at the dead world around me.

The scenery depressed me, as I had always loved nature, and I had to stifle a sob at the horrible sights that greeted me. All I could see in any direction was blackened soil, covered with glass, bricks and rags. There was no sign of life anywhere. The trees were all cut down, with just stumps of their trunks remaining, and all of the flowers were wilted.

I had no idea where I was, or why I was there, but somehow I knew that I was alone. It wasn’t hard to tell that there was no one around for miles, but my mind told me much more than that. I was alone. Not alone in this area, or this town, or this country, but that I was alone on this planet. 

Pulling myself to my feet, I allowed myself no time to mourn anyone else over their unknown fate. I may have been confused and frightened, but I was never one to waste time. As my mum always said “waste not, want not. Your time is your own, spend it how you will.” I found myself almost laughing at the absurdity of the idea that even when I had no idea what was going on I could still apply my mum’s life lessons.

I quickly headed towards the nearest pile of bricks, intending to see if there was anything hidden within, but, when I was only half way there, I felt a sharp pain in my left foot. I looked down at my bare, muddy feet and realised I had stepped on a piece of glass. Cursing under my breath I reached down and pulled it out in one quick painful motion.

Throwing the broken glass casually over my shoulder, I continued towards my destination. Pushing at the bricks with my toes I quickly found that there was nothing to discover here. It was just a pile of ordinary bricks, some broken slightly. I don’t know what I expected to find. Giving up on the bricks, I made a new plan.

Being careful where I stepped, I began to walk towards the biggest pile of rags I could see. It was far away from everything but a few shards a glass and a small puddle of blood. The closer I got the clearer it was that the puddle of blood was mostly underneath the rags, and that the rags were covered in the drying crimson liquid.

Becoming even more nervous than I already was, I approached the pile and carefully lifted up the piece of material on top. It was an ugly shade of green- closer to yellow, really- and had several dark stains on the silky surface. Beneath it was another piece of material, this one black and clearly made of wool. Touching it hesitantly I discovered that it was heavy, probably because it had soaked up a lot of blood. One thing was now clear to me… that ‘small puddle of blood’ was not as small as it seemed which meant that the innocent pile of rags must have been hiding something terrible.

Mentally encouraging myself, I worked up the guts to drag the wool off of the pile so I was able to see what lay underneath. There was another piece of cloth, which was a pretty lilac colour and quite thin, but it was close enough to the ground that I felt it was safe to assume it was the last one. Lifting it up, I glanced at the ground beneath it.

After I finally realised what was on the ground in front of me, I screamed.