The Last Man Here

By Vasudev Patel

" I don't know if anyone's listening or if there is anyone left to listen. But I need to hope right. So, if there is anyone left. He came and terrible things followed. If you haven't seen him you wouldn't know. You probably think I am a lunatic, a madman with a radio. But I was there, I saw it happen. Eliot said ' This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper '. Eliot was onto something there. The world did end, but not even with a whimper. There was no one left to make that whimper. Ten days ago, I went to sleep at eleven, in a world that was too loud, the next morning I woke up at eight, in a world that was too quiet. In the middle of the silence, he was there. He looked at me, I wanted to run away, to hide myself from him, but I couldn't. His eyes held me in my bedroom window. After I don't know how long, he walked away, probably to spread the silence. I don't know why he is doing this and i don't want to know. I have been alone for so long. If anyone can hear me, anyone please answer. The silence is deafening. I don't know how much longer I will be able to.... Please answer, someone, anyone. There was no one left then. He ended the world. He walked through every inch of that screaming place and quieted it down. I used to hate the people, the noise, everything. But now.... I would love to go back to the loud place from ten days ago. I would love to go back to that shitty, loud place that moved without me. I don't like this quiet world he has left me. This is probably the last time I will talk to someone, well, at least the last time I will talk anyway... ".

"Then he goes on to describe his whole life story", the girl said to her father who was quietly looking at her as she told him about this stranger on the radio who keeps on coming live at exactly fifteen minutes past nine. "He knows something", the girl said "I know he does", a gleam of curiosity shined in her eyes. The father was skeptical about the stranger on the radio. Yes, it has been ten days since everyone has disappeared. At first, he thought that only him and his daughter made it. But this stranger makes a third survivor. The father and the daughter have been staying in their house for the last ten days. They haven't gone out, not even to see if there was anyone left, but the lack of voices, the lack of noise, told them that there weren't any. The radio was an old model the father bought when he was sixteen just like his daughter now. He gave it to her so that she would have something to do, after all what sixteen-year-old doesn't like old junk that belonged to their father. She had tinkered with it day and night like it was some new toy she has gotten. Well, it may have been so since the world changed. The electricity has not gone yet but there is nothing to do except eat and sleep. There is no daily soap to catch up to, no new premieres to wait for, nothing to do but wait. For what, he didn't know. But he was waiting.

"He could be trying to lure people for supplies", the father said skeptically. The daughter seemed to ponder at this fact. "We could at least go and see if he's alive", the daughter replied, "He saw the man who did this", she said pointing to a window where the quietness leaked into their living room. "A man came and made all the people disappear", the father scoffed, "And this same man, looked at him and then left him alone". The daughter was quiet at this. She may have been thinking of a retort but none came to her.

"We are not going chasing after some lunatic with a radio, when we don't even know what happened to all the people", the father said in the voice that all fathers used, that his father used with him, when they wanted to drive the lesson home, the calm and understanding voice. The daughter has seen her father's point. She will not argue any further.

"Okay" the daughter said in the sad disappointed tone of a child when he is denied a toy. Then she took the radio back to her room. That should have been the end of it. At least as far as the father's concerned. The daughter was a different matter. That night as they had dinner, the daughter was going over her plan to go meet the stranger who has seen the man who dod whatever he did to the world. When her father was asleep the daughter put on her pink jacket and filled her bag with some food. The stranger has telecasted his address on the radio multiple times before in an attempt to let someone find him. But, so far it seemed no one did.

She slipped out of the doors into the silence for the first time in ten days. She hasn't benn out here since the day it all started. She always wanted to come out but her father won't let her. Now she is out in the cold, dark silence of the world that came after the world. But what scared the stranger on the radio, the loneliness, the quiet, she welcomed it. There is the whole world to explore, the whole, quiet, desolate world, with no one to tell her to stop. Well, except her father. But he cannot stop her now that she is out of the house and in the empty world. The world however, as she would later find out, was not so empty after all.

The stranger from the radio was waking up as the daughter was looking upon the rising sun. The stranger had survived for the first four days on the food that was left in his home. After four days he ran out of food. The stranger decided it was time he went out and looked for food. He could just walk into a store and take what he wanted. There was no one to stop him, not the old shop owner, not his neighbors, not his father or his belt. The stranger and the belt had a very close relationship. The belt had raised him as much as his father did. The belt would come out on many occasions like when he failed a class for the first time or when he came home bruised from a fight or when he dragged mud with him into the house. The belt was an old friend hanging right there on the hanger in his father's room where he had left it. The stranger liked that belt where it was. His mother had died years ago before the world went quiet. The stranger had not thought about his mother much, but he thought about her every time the belt came out. The belt has helped him become what he is today. One of the times he went out for food, he thought of exploring further. At this moment he had the same thought as the daughter, about the whole empty world left for exploring. He came across an electronic shop, the smallest little electronic shop anyone will ever see, squeezed right between a barbershop and a cloth shop. He knew the owner back when there was an owner to know of. He pushed open the door. The door creaked on the rusty hinges. He tried turning the lights on but the bulb just went out with a poof. He went in feeling his way with his feet and his hands. He didn't know what he was doing there, there won't be any food in the electronic shop. Maybe he was just exploring. After feeling his way through a number of different machines and contraptions that were made when the world made noise, he found an old walkie talkie, probably the owner's. The walkie was about the size of a brick. He couldn't see in the dark but he could feel the antenna, the knob to adjust frequency. The walkie felt like it was in good condition. He slowly made his way out of the shop with the walkie. He didn't think he would be calling strangers to him at the time. He went back to his house and turned the walkie on. He adjusted the frequency to 9.99. Nine was his lucky number, at least he thought it was. Then he said, " Hello ".

The daughter had decided to walk to the address given by the stranger on the radio. It wasn't far but it wasn't close either. She thought about taking her bicycle out and cycling there. But it has kept right beside her dad's window and she didn't want accidentally wake him up. So, she was walking to the stranger on the radio. She had not realized exactly how much the world had quieted down since she was never exactly out in the silence before. She was always with her father and they talked about everything and anything. She had never heard nothing before. There was always something making some noise at her house, even after the silence fell or was brought by the man as the stranger on the radio said. He had actually seen the man responsible for ending the world. Maybe she could convince him to come with her to find that man and solve whatever this was. They could find others who were left behind just like them. They could help them. They could ask them for help. The optimistic outlook of an optimistic child, rooted more in fantasy than in real life. Hope. She still has hope. The address the stranger said is still three days away on foot. She will have plenty of time to prepare what she is going to say to him. On the way she kept seeing the places she used to visit before. The little barbershop her father always took her to. The shop they used to buy from. Step by step she was nearing the small bridge that would take her out of their little town. She kept looking at the places that used to be her favorite and her pace kept slowing, as if those places were slowly tying her to themselves. Step by step it started getting harder and harder to go away. Maybe it was nostalgia, maybe she didn't want to leave her father, or maybe it was fear of being alone. No matter what anyone says they don't know or enjoy truly being alone. But this wasn't loneliness, it was something else entirely. You see, in her time always inside their house since the day the world went quiet, she has never truly stepped out of her house. When she did last night, she didn't think anything of it. But this morning, unbeknownst to her, the realization seeped into her, she was really alone out here, not in the sense she was lonely, but that there is no one left. She will never see the barber who used to cut her and her father's hair, she will never see the shop owner who used to always forget exactly one item on her list. As this set in her feet came to a stop. She just wanted to go back to her father and forget that she ever heard someone on the radio. But she also knew that she had to go. The stranger was all alone out there. She could help him, she could bring him back with, they could find out what happened to the world. Oh, to be a young and hopeful. She pushed her feet, one step at a time, to the bridge, took one look at her house, her favorite places, and crossed it.

Almost a day has passed since the stranger telecasted his message for the first time. He wasn't hopeful that someone out there was listening, that there was someone out there. As he was getting ready to telecast the same message again, he heard a knock on the door. At first, he thought it was just his imagination, but the knock kept coming. The stranger went down the stairs to his doors and opened it. There was a man at the door. " Hello ", the man said, " I heard your message on the radio ", the man said hesitantly. " Yes, come in ", the stranger said as politely as he could. The stranger offered the man one of his leather covered chairs. One of the ones he made himself. He told the man as much. " I didn't believe anyone else was left ", the man said, relieved. " You need water, tea? ", the stranger asked. " No, thank you ", the man replied, " Was there anyone else who came here, after hearing your message on the radio? ", the man asked. " You are the first one ", the stranger replied. The man smiled. Whether for being happy to find someone else or for something else the stranger couldn't decide.

The food she brought with her was about to run out when she reached her destination. In the three days since she sneaked out of her house she has been walking and sleeping. Sometimes she walked when she was supposed to sleep. Her father probably knows by now where she went. He might even be on his way here. She hopes he has found her note with the address on it. She wanted him to come with her but since he didn't want to this was the only way. She knocked on the wooden doors to the house that supposedly belonged to the stranger on the radio. She heard someone come down the stairs. That someone opened the door and peaked out at her. The stranger from the radio was older than she thought. She thought he was someone just a year or two older than her. The man who peaked out looked closer to her father's age. She explained how she got the address from his message on the radio. The stranger welcomed her and asked her if she wanted water or tea. She refused both. He offered her a leather covered chair. The wood beneath the leather felt thinner, hollower. The stranger said he made them himself. She thought maybe he was not that good a carpenter. The chair felt wrong somehow. " Did anyone else hear your message and come here? ", she asked. " Yes, there was a man, but he left to get his family, he came here to check whether I was a mad man with a radio or not ", the stranger said. She wanted to talk about the man who quieted down the world but she also needed rest. So she asked of there was a room she could rest in and the stranger took her to a guest room up the stairs. Then he went back downstairs. She put her bag down and shut her eyes.

When she woke up and looked at her watch, it was almost two in the night. She slept for fourteen hours. She felt very hungry on the account of not having dinner. She thought she would go out and look for some food. She pulled out a flashlight from her bag as it was pitch black in the guest room and somehow it was darker outside. She slowly made her way downstairs. Her flashlight was flickering. She thought she should have packed extra batteries. It flickered again and her foot caught in the foot of the chair she was sitting on. The chair fell as she fell. She thumped her flash light on her left palm and it stopped flickering. She straightened the chair, but the leather was torn. She pointed the light at the torn part to see the damage. Through the leather she saw why the wood felt thinner, hollower, why the chair felt wrong. It looked like a wooden chair only it was not a wooden chair. The place where the wood was supposed to be there was something much paler. She touched it through the torn leather to confirm it. The texture felt different than wood. Whatever doubt she had, went away. The chair was made of bones, human bones.

She pulled her hand back. The light was still pointed at the tear in the leather. She was glad her stomach was empty, she didn't she would have been able to stop herself from vomiting, partly because she was too scared to move. Then she noticed something else, the leather was two layered. The bottom layer seemed to have a hole, a slightly curved hole. It almost looked like a crescent. She moved closer, slowly, without making a sound but shivering all over, to see, to have a closer look. She turned the inner layer over. That was when another fact seeped into her. The leather was not just leather, and the almost crescent hole was not just a hole. It was a mouth or at least the skin of a mouth. It was a face that made the inner layer. The leather was human skin. As this fact set in, she pushed open the wooden doors she had come through that afternoon and ran, she ran in the direction she came from, to her favorite places, to her home, to her father.

Three days later a man knocked on the stranger's door. He opened it. The man at the door showed him a photo and asked him if she had been here. The stranger recognized the girl in the photo. She was the one who tore his leather chair. One of the ones he made himself. The stranger said he didn't recognize her. The stranger thought the man at the door must be related to her. Maybe her father. The stranger decided to go with father. He offered the father a stool to sit on and asked if he wanted water or tea. The father refused. He wanted to find her daughter. He sat on the stool. The father had decided he would just ask whatever he can of the stranger. He didn't trust him. The father didn't know what it was but he didn't trust this man who makes leather chairs.

The stranger was smiling, not on his face, that would be just rude. On the inside. He was smiling at the irony. The man who has come here to search for his daughter has already found her. The stranger would finally be able to complete his set.

There was something special about the stool the father was sitting on. The stranger always put something of his subjects in his art. In the chair was the face of the man who first came after hearing his message. What a stroke of genius that was. The stranger thought if he was the only one left in the world, he would never be able to complete his set. The set he had given years of his life to. But then he found the walkie. It was a last feeble attempt, a hopeless attempt, but it succeeded. His message brought him these fine subjects.

The father never knew, right up until his final moments. The stranger had left something of his daughter in the stool he was sitting on, besides her bones and her smooth skin. Her eyes. If only they were alive, the stranger likes to think they are. They would have seen, through their cage of bone and skin, the stranger hitting the father on the head then hitting again and again and again until it was not a head at all. Then dragging him to where the stranger had dragged their owner the night, she saw the bone and the face through them. If they were alive, they would blame themselves. The eyes saw it all. They were the last thing the stranger touched in the daughter's body. They saw it all.

By Vasudev Patel