Lost Property

The pretty tune of dread rings out, impossibly loud.

So loud in the confined space of the corridor that I cringe in an attempt to make myself smaller, unseen.

Those few discordant notes pierce the ominous silence and they announce the beginning of my end.

The ripples of those sounds send me reeling and I clutch my neck. I clutch my neck knowing that everything has changed.

It has gone.

I look down at the metal slats beneath my feet and for a maddening moment, I consider the merits of a futile pursuit of the one thing I had left in my crumbling and receding life. A small silvered disc that I had worn at my neck for many a year. 

My talisman.

My good luck charm.

The leather that had bound it to me has worn away and now it has snapped. I retrieve the strand that was once a complete circle and I stare at it, finding it lacking, just the way that I am lacking and inconstant. That useless leather chord is now the symbol of me and my life, whereas once it held in place for me that small disc that I so valued, it has now let go and it doesn’t matter anymore.

My Yin Yang. A gift from a friend, from a time when I had friends. A symbol of the circle of life and balance in all things.

Now it is gone, and with it has my luck.

I see that as fitting, but were that last part of a life now gone, to glimmer up at me in a place that was tantalisingly close, would I leave it be? Would I find it within myself to let the past be the past and face the dark future as I now am?

I doubt it.

Even now, I a running. It’s what’s kept me alive. 

But now there is no point, probably never was. I wasn’t even fighting a losing battle, just delaying the inevitable and running towards what I kidded myself was hope when all it was, was an empty darkness that has been swallowing me ever since I fled.

There is a familiar noise further up the curving corridor.

My constant companions. I have got to know them so well.

They have heard the song of the last thing I owned from a life long past and now they are coming. They are coming for me and for one insane second I move my feet apart and I stand my ground. After all this time, there is a part of me that wants to fight. Only it won’t be a fight. There is no fighting them. There is hope in fighting. There is the possibility of a favourable outcome, however slim. My pursuers are a foregone conclusion. I am merely a delay.

I hear the sound of their approach and I glance down where the music of my lost necklace played, and then I am gone. I open the door to my right and slip through it, closing it quickly behind me and bolting it. 

I leave the bright lights of the main corridor for the sparsely lit room. Light to relative dark. Fitting in its own way, as I create a boundary between myself and those approaching the gentle sound that has caught their attention and driven them onwards. 

I stand with my hand to the surface of the door and I listen as they run clumsily towards the place I stood just moments ago. They are there in only a few heartbeats. Noisy and seemingly uncoordinated, but it is they who rule this place now, not us. We had our day and now there is no us to speak of, only me. So who am I to judge? They are success. I am failure. They are the future, I am a breath away from being history. 

I am all that is left and soon I will be gone and there will be nothing left, only a few artifacts in the ground. That Yin Yang buried deep in the bosom of a world that once teamed with life as I knew it. Gone, all gone. Just so much dust and an eternal silence. No one will say our name. No one will mark my passing.

All things must end, I know that, but still I cling to what was. Even as I lost the very last piece of me down through those metal slats, I craved an end to this reality and a return to how things were.

A sudden silence.

There is silence on the other side of the door. 

They are there though, I know that much. Those noisy, ravening creatures quickly slip into a dormant state. They become statues and they wait. 

I wonder what will happen when I am gone. 

What will they do?

The hunt will be over.

I suppose that with my passing, there will be a new beginning. The next chapter in the story of these things. They have changed even in the short expanse of time they have been here. That’s how it works. This place, this world, it shapes the life that it nurtures. Good Ole Ma Nature does her thing and her stewardship of the planet dictates how it is going to be. I’ve always thought that she did this. We had a hand in it, of course we did, but we were never as significant as we liked to think. Over inflated ideas of our importance. Hubris was our downfall.

Hubris and ignorance.

Global temperatures rose and we changed, as did the world around us. We never got that we were inextricably linked to everything around us. Our cult of the individual made us see things in a warped, selfish way that was never going to work out.

The heat caused mutation after mutation and yet we never saw it coming. An unprecedented decade of pandemics and still we thought it was business as usual and so we kept going, plodding to our end with our heads down, pretending that everything was going to be OK when it was evidently not.

Eventually a single cell mutation was the domino that took all the others down. 

We had choices. We had plenty of time to change and adapt. We got this far by adapting, but something in us stopped us doing that. We went against our own nature. When we stopped being ourselves, Ole Ma Nature intervened.

I’m the last domino standing, but for how much longer?

Carefully and silently I turn my back to that door, a door I do not intend going back through. My creed is simply to run, always forwards, never go back. I turn and I look into the room I have entered and my breath catches in my now bare throat and my heart is stilled.

The room is small. Living quarters for the people who staffed this place way back when living was fashionable. As well as small, it is sparse. This was a place for someone to lay their weary head, recharge and then return to their work. This was never home, this was something quite different to home.

And yet it is home, because she stands before me and as my eyes find her, everything changes.

She has been waiting for me, and still she waits. She stands before me. It is for me to close that last gap between us. This is my journey and my journey alone. I have not been running away after all, I’ve been running towards her and this moment. Always have been.

A single tear rolls down my cheek as I resolve to take the final few steps of this journey of mine. I move towards her, and with the final step separating us, she raises her arms to welcome me into her embrace. Her unblinking eyes have never left me, watching me intently and remaining patient. Knowing there is nothing else. There is nowhere left for me to go.

That last step is caught in a unique bubble of time, my senses fizz with energy and my mind opens up like a flower.

I catch her scent, but that does not break the spell between us. I see her for what she is, but I also see what she wants me to see. I see what I want to see. I know how this is going to end, but I grasp the enchantment and I know I will not let go. Not now. 

This is not her, not really it isn’t, but what else do I have? A prisoner on death row is afforded a last meal. A final taste of the life he forfeited when he took the life of others. A reminder of how things were. This is mine, my last taste of what was, and now it all makes sense.

I have watched this play out a thousand times. 

It never used to be like that. Everything was simple and these creatures were nothing more than hungry and infectious insects with only one thing in mind. They kept changing though and this is one of those changes.

I have seen so many people walk serenely towards their fate. Beatific, sometimes smiling as they allowed themselves to be taken by these foul and corrupt creatures and either devoured or transformed into another lost, mindless being.

Maybe I got all of this wrong. Perhaps they are not dead and unthinking after all. How can they be if they can provide us with these final moments of something approaching bliss? I hope that this is the case. That they are more than I ever thought they were. I find myself wanting them to survive and adapt and have a chance at something good here. We had our time, now it is their turn. There is something almost parental in what I am feeling now. They are, after all, what is left of the human race. Unrecognisable in their actions, but they occupy our bodies and they walk in our shoes. 

I hope they do a better job than we did. That is what a parent wants for their child, to take the baton and rise above the sins of their father and mother.

I am about to close that gap between us when she brings her outstretched hand across and touches a spot just below my throat. Her touch is gentle and I shudder with longing and anticipation. It has been so, so long. 

Her touch is a question, and as she strokes the place where that Yin Yang medallion sat for as long as either of us can remember I nod my answer. 

It has gone.

In the end, it is her who closes the gap. Arms encircling me and her mouth replacing her fingers. I stand motionless for a moment, enjoying something I never thought could happen again, then I slip my arms around her and pull her closer, encouraging her. 

She takes her time. There is no rush. I am the last and I am going nowhere.