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Center your story around a person who believes they’re the last human on Earth.

Posted in Dystopian on Nov 29, 2024

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✍️ 63 stories

The Empty Laboratory

Winner of Contest #279 🏆

Seventeen blinks. The yellow warning light on his air gauge always blinked seventeen times before turning red. Dr. Chen counted them like heartbeats while replacing his oxygen tank, each one marking another three hours of borrowed time. Through the reinforced windows of his BSL-4 lab, the setting sun painted the research facility in the same amber shade as the viral suspension he'd been perfecting when the sprinklers activated.The test results still glowed on his screen: successful protein synthesis, perfect binding affinity, precise species...

134 likes 99 comments 99
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Last Man Standing

Submitted to Contest #279

When I woke up, the world was dead.Somewhere in the darkness, a sound rippled - soft at first, like distant rain. Within seconds the gentle whooshes grew louder until a chaotic thrumming enveloped the room.I lay still, my eyes shut, trying to make sense of it. The unworldly noise had a hypnotic pulse. It grew and shifted, rising and falling like an oncoming blizzard. Wings. Hundreds of them, beating the air in frantic, uneven rhythms. I prised open my tender eyelids and squinted at the window. Outside, an avalanche of fleeting silhouett...

46 likes 40 comments 40
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The Fallen Grace

Submitted to Contest #279

The Fallen GraceDo not judge my fall. If you had suffered as I have, you would sympathise with me. I daresay you have done the same. Desperation corrupts the purest grace, banishing them from their rightful place in paradise. When disaster first warred, my husband, son, and I were on a visit to my mother’s home, in Winchester. Having as yet enjoyed the day, we crowded around the television, so as to watch Courage The Cowardly Dog. The cartoon was interrupted, though, by the news. The broadcaster reported of mass bombings having rained d...

45 likes 9 comments 9
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Given Up

Submitted to Contest #279

TW: Gore/Suicide.“It has been eighteen months since my last traveling companion was speared through the chest by a white tail deer. I told him to wait before tracking an injured animal when hunting with a bow. He didn’t listen and the deer charged him, pinning him right up against a tree. I followed the boy’s scream through the woods. I knew he had to be injured, but I wasn’t expecting him to be gored by a deer. He was lying against the tree, coughing up pink, frothy blood with terror and shock in his eyes, blood pouring profusely from his w...

37 likes 22 comments 22
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How To Go Back

Shortlisted for Contest #279 ⭐️

[Trigger warning: gore, suicide, death/corpses] Two years ago, I stared into the eyes of a little dead girl. She was sprawled on some highway, deep in what used to be the Midwest, her dead, fermenting eyes staring past me, and up, up, up, into the sun-bleached sky. They didn’t leave many bodies behind when they left. Didn’t want to find skeletons when they came back, I assume. Her skin was dark and leathery. There was a hole growing in her cheek. Blue tendrils came twirling out of the rotted, bony mass, with those little orange tips. I wish...

35 likes 13 comments 13
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Broadcast

Submitted to Contest #279

…Hello? Is anybody out there?……Does anyone read me?…God dammit!Theres got to be someone…please!?………sigh…I thought the analogue signal from this radio might have reached other like-minded folks by now. I guess I was wrong…or perhaps the range is just too short…I just don’t know. The machine must purely use digital signals…otherwise it would have tracked me down by now, with all the attempts I have made with this dusty old thing.……My name is Marcus…and this will be my last recital. What follows is a broadcast, detailing a true telling of the h...

33 likes 22 comments 22
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Fusion

Submitted to Contest #279

CW: Mentions of unethical medical practicesLithe of build and bare of limb, he felt the shockwaves as he settled back in his bolted-down padded armchair, his long black hair cascading into the surrounding darkness as he untensed every muscle and sinew and raised his face to pray…In the beginning was the end, and the end would be his glory, for he alone would survive to recreate…He whispered the words not to some unlikely, unproven deity but to the only god he knew – the one he held within him, the god of his untapped and unaltered genius min...

30 likes 22 comments 22
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The Last

Submitted to Contest #279

Lou awoke completely alone.Ordinarily, that would not be unusual. But this evening, he found himself seated in the middle of the city’s largest auditorium.“How…? Where…?” Squinting into the bright lights, he looked around, trying to understand. He sat, the sole person in a sea of empty seats. Moments before, it had been standing room only. Nothing made sense. Was it a dream? ‘Am I dreaming now?’Invited by Mona, he got stuck watching a speech by the most boring man in the world. Lou knew this was true. He'd heard them all. Only Mona could con...

26 likes 16 comments 16
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Bunny

Submitted to Contest #279

(CONTENT WARNING: Language, Drug Use, and Violence)Bradley Honaker was the last motherfucker alive. He knew it. Just fucking knew it. The last one. The last goddamned human being on the planet.           And he was sprawled on the living room floor of his home at the corner of Irving Street and K Avenue, propped up slightly by the world’s heaviest damned coffee table, unbathed and unwashed, wearing only a pair of whitey-tighties that hadn’t been clean for six weeks. Somewhere, from an un...

19 likes 13 comments 13
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The Plaything of Irony

Submitted to Contest #279

Chapter 1: FriendUnderneath a violet sun, on a hilltop, sat a man. He wasn’t watching the swelling sun descend, or the secondary reflection of the sun for that matter. Nor was he looking out over the field of trees or the forests of grasses beyond. He was far too tired of all the strange phenomena that plagued the Earth these days. No, he was unconcerned with it all, and instead busied himself with the tinkering of something in his glove. There was a time when he still found parts of the world around him beautiful despite its seismic shift f...

18 likes 11 comments 11
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Power is out

Submitted to Contest #279

The world went dark all the power was out people were scared. This was no ordinary black out. Something was really wrong. I sat at home by myself and watched the sky go pitch black. No stars no moon just black. As I peered through the window everything was covered in orange dust. Cars, houses and roads. Like it was falling through the sky. There was no phone service and electrical wires sparked. Was this the end of the world. The rapture. I couldn't see a soul. I couldn't hear anything. It was quiet.  That was unusual in itsel...

17 likes 6 comments 6
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The Last Frequency

Submitted to Contest #279

For the three hundred and seventh morning in a row, Sarah Chen broadcast her message to the world. "This is Sarah Chen, broadcasting from Seattle. If anyone can hear this, I'm at the Space Needle. I broadcast every day at sunrise. Please respond on any frequency." She waited, counting to one hundred as she always did, the familiar static crackling through her handheld radio. The morning fog pressed against the observation deck windows, obscuring her view of the city below. Not that there was much to see anymore – just empty streets gradually...

16 likes 2 comments 2
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Peace & Quiet

Submitted to Contest #279

Journal Entry 1 – Where is Everybody?I could start off by simply stating the obvious. I am currently thoroughly confused.Everyone besides me seems to have disappeared. It has been days since I have seen another living soul, just how many days, I am not sure. My concept of time seems to have been altered, although I have no idea how that could be done. My surroundings are familiar, yet so many things seem strange to me now. My emotional responses don’t seem to always be appropriate. I try to examine one odd feeling, and another manages to com...

14 likes 8 comments 8
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“It’s Just Me.” #ReedsyUnknown

Submitted to Contest #279

Trigger Warning: This short story contains mental health issues, and moments of madness. Some demonic content lies ahead, as well.It’s Just Me.There was no water. I wanted to kill myself, or drop dead from thirst.I had to take my meds with water. Lots of it. Twenty-three different pills a day. From Trazadone to Oxicodone to Tylenol, and what have you. Whatever I could find in a dead drifter’s backpack. I haven’t seen a drifter in days, though.So, what to do? Fight for it? Get it. Get ‘er done? Water. Life. What they call the nectar of the go...

14 likes 6 comments 6
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Alone with the Wolves

Submitted to Contest #279

Snapping, snarling, howling. Tearing, clawing, ripping.Whether nightmare or reality, it was all the same cocktail anymore to Peter Simmons, who was indeed slamming back some vodka. Prowling, hunting. Fury, feasting.They were out there. And Peter would be up here, enjoying the last of his poison.They’re coming. There are so many of them.The noises below were as terrifying as ever. He always wondered if tonight would be the night, If one of them would find him up here, if some stray downwind would betray his scent. Peter let the stupor ov...

13 likes 2 comments 2
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