Before I'm Gone

Introduction

Waking up with the song of the birds was always nice, but it was still disheartening. To not hear her mother's voice, was saddening.

When Marie opens her eyes everyday, the first thing she sees is the grey sky. She sees ravens flying past the clouds, feels a soft breeze blowing past.

She hasn't seen another human in years. 10 years, to be exact. Ten years have gone by for her, with no contact of any sort. Not since she had to shoot her family-following their wishes.

She lives in an abandoned warehouse, using the space between the ceiling and the rooftop to sleep and store her most valued possessions. Her secret hideout, she'd call it with fondness. She slept on the beams of that secret space of hers-apparently, the workers must have forgotten to fill up the space-using a pile of clothes as a mattress and as a pillow. The only blanket she had was a purple one with many holes in it and ragged edges.

Her routine was simple; wake up, check supplies, go look for supplies if needed, then do anything you want. Sometimes, she just found a nice place to sit down and drew animals. Read. Stayed silent rarely. She listened to the silence of humans and the hustle of Mother Earth.

Nothing changed. Nothing was new.

The birds still sang in the mornings, the squirrels still climbed up their trees, the sun still set, the moon still appeared every night on the black sky. The plants still grew, and the flowers went on blooming beautifully.

The only difference was that now there was no one to admire them, but her.

She wasn't living. She was surviving. Alone. For the sole reason of recording everything that had happened and would happen until she died, with the hope that someday, somewhere, another species would come to be, and they would be able to read and find out about humanity and learn from them; how intelligent they were, how cunning, how beautiful, how wonderful, how creative, how kind. But also how cruel, how violent, how ruthless, how evil, how selfish, how self-centered, and how stupid they could be. So that humanity would not be forgotten, and so that if anyone else came by, they could learn from their mistakes.

Unlike humans.

The world is silent.

Her world is silent.

She had access to endless knowledge, entertainment, and data from the library and the internet. (Because even if humanity was gone, the internet still was around). She had read more books than a philosophy professor could ever wish for and then some. She had learned how to speak and write in several languages along the years, though it was not like she'd be practicing conversation anytime soon. She had studied Vesalius' 'De humanis corporis fabrica', memorized Shakespeare's 'Macbeth', studied Einstein's  theory of relativity, along with engineering, mathematics, chemistry, programming, and pretty much anything else she could get her hands on. She had picked up many hobbies through the years like violin (which started when she found a violin in an old mansion; it was out of tune and dusty, but she fell in love with its sound), skating, drawing (which was her favourite, since she could create images of any world she imagined), reading (which was a rival of drawing, since it also allowed her to concentrate and reach with her mind into other worlds with actual people), singing (particularly songs from the eighties), experimenting, inventing mechanisms, programming video games, etc.  Anything to be so caught up in something, in her concentration, that she would no longer be able to hear the silence.

She had graffitied the walls of the police station, the inside of her warehouse, the exterior of the containers in the area, some of the columns in the library.

Anything and everything.

She was a very knowledgeable woman in her twenties, with no men to put a stop to her or harrass her. Although she sometimes almost yearned for one to appear and tell her to stop, or anything. Sometimes it felt like someone needed to appear and put a stop to her endlessly ticking machine.

Sometimes she talked with the birds, asked them how their day was going. Other times, she joked with the squirrels. Either way, she always talked outloud, never kept her thoughts silent in her mind. She had grown used to it and could no longer not voice her thoughts nonstop. This she did with the hopes of her voice not disappearing or growing coarse from the lack of use. Mostly because she did and would do anything not to hear the silence.                                                                                      The silence that had engulfed the world and drowned its memories.

There was also another reason, one she kept secret and close to her soul. Even she would not admit it to herself.                                           She secretly hoped a day would come, where her voice was not the only one she heard. So she made sure it didn't fade, hoping to be able to someday greet someone-anyone-and tell them how lonely it had been.

How happy she was, not to be alone.