Loneliness

The strong scent of tulips and warm river water lies in the air; the first a light, airy smell, the second has the aftertaste of dirt. She likes the second better. It's grounding. Her empty cloth bag is dangling awkwardly from her shoulder and her left shoe is causing her little toe to hurt. She wouldn't admit it openly but the pain is, in a way, reassuring.

Tomorrow she will be alone for a whole year but in a way it feels like she has been alone for much longer. Not in a bad way. In a really good way, actually. It feels like it has been a long time since. And she survived. Lately, she experiences detachment from all the past pain. It almost seems like it happened to a close friend and not to her. Only recently, they changed from her memories to a narrative. When she breathes in deeply and focuses on the dirty water wavering through the air, she can imagine someone else telling her story. She imagines reading it on the back of a book she picked up in the little book store near the station, only because her train won't leave for another 15 minutes. She can picture herself, sitting on an unfamiliar sofa or waiting in line in front of the sofa's owners' bathroom at a house party. The bathroom is probably lit with fairy lights hanging from the shower hat and her bladder is probably close to bursting. It's probably way too warm and everyone started smoking inside even though or because the wallpaper has already started to peel. Someone is whispering, but in that specific way in which, despite whispering, they are as loud as if they just spoke normally. She would turn around to see who is drowning out the music with their whisper. “Imagine”, they would say. They would have to imagine because they wouldn't know. Right there, with her sticky Vans on the greyish carpet, she doesn't know either.

The birds have never been that loud, she is certain of that. Not in her lifetime anyway. Sometimes she hates them. Even though she knows it's just the general anger rushing through her veins, heating up her blood at times, she can't help shouting at them to stop. Other days she loves their music because it helps calm her. She crosses her fingers inside her pockets, wishing that she won't go crazy. She is afraid of that. She has never been afraid of something like she is afraid of waking up insane one of these mornings. Sometimes she is so afraid to go nuts while she is sound asleep, she stays up all night. Most of the time she can reassure herself by thinking that going crazy is a gradual process, that she wouldn't even notice it, that every day she would become only a little more insane. Becoming insane is not like falling down a cliff, it's like climbing a mountain. Lately, she feels like she is climbing all sorts of mountains.

The market stalls don't look like they used to, she notices as she gets closer. If the market stalls could speak they might tell her to shut up and look at herself. She would have to cave in because it's true, she doesn't look like she used to either.

And then, right there, in between the wooden remains of bygone capitalism, he stands. She notices his shadow before she notices him. Her heart skips a beat because she takes him as proof that she has genuinely lost it. With his appearance she feels like ramming a flag into the top of her crazy–mountain. Yes, yes, finally! The voice inside her head is shouting. Since I am crazy now, everything will go uphill. Life won't be as hard. We can start imagining, dreaming, referring to ourselves in first-person plural.

Then she looks up at his face, their eyes meet and a broad, almost aggressive smile appears on his face. She instantly loves it – his smile. It's so human. It's so real. Her imagination is brutally talented.

But when he starts walking towards her she realises something else. It's the way he walks slightly too fast, the way one of his hands hangs lower than the other and his eyes, despite his smile, look fearful. It's the fact that she can see in his features that he is afraid she might be proof of his insanity. This man might actually be a living, breathing human being, she thinks. And the thought scares her more than going crazy.

It wasn't a violent, bloody, brutal outbrake. Quite the opposite, it was a very quiet, peaceful plague. She likes calling it that: plaque. For hours on end she played around with synonyms for epidemic. There is something painfully poetic about words now. One can still use them; say them, write them down but no one will receive them. They still have impact somehow but only on her. She likes writing them best because, this way, she is able to imagine someone reading her words.

So it wasn't a violent, bloody plaque. People just started falling asleep. It was never painful for the dying, only for the living. Right from the start she considered herself very lucky because she didn't have anyone to lose. Her loneliness isn't defined by the absence of loved ones – or if it is, it was before as well – it is defined by the absence of people as a part of her surroundings. Humans were the only species called by eternal sleep. There were a few cases in the USA first, then a few dozens in Canada. It took a couple of days for the first in Asia to be reported. A couple more until there were cases in every single country of the world. When North Korea openly reported their first case, she got scared. She didn't even understand why she was afraid; she didn't have anyone to lose, and she wasn't scared to fall asleep but the fear grasped her nevertheless.

Today, she doesn't know how the plaque began, spread or why she didn't fall asleep when every single person in her town did. At first, she thought that the lack of certainty would drive her crazy, but she was surprised to find that it stopped bothering her after a few months. Humans never knew how the universe was created, whether it was infinite and if there was alien life out there somewhere. And now she can add another thing to the list of huge knowledge gaps. The fact that she didn't know a thing about biology probably helped come to terms with the uncertainty; there is no way she would ever understand what happened on her own. She has a degree in English Linguistics and it's laughable how irrelevant her qualification turned out to be. No one would ever care to provide her with a speech sample so that she could analyse the development of rhoticity in the English language. William Labov had fallen asleep before the virus hit. But even if someone would care to speak to her they couldn't, they are all gone. Except maybe, they aren't.

“Hello”, he says.

For a moment she thinks she might not be able to reply, might not know how to mimic the sequence of phones leaving his lips. But that is insane, she has been talking to herself the better half of the day.

“Hello.”

It takes him a long time to explain that he doesn't have a clue either. Which, in a way, is funny because he doesn't have to explain his cluelessness to her at all. It takes him a minute to tell her that he is on his way to the coast because he has never seen the sea and always wanted to. The sun is setting and the nights are starting to be cold again, so she offers him to stay a night. She shows him her home; her vegetable garden, her pig, her dogs. She tells him how happy she is that they can roam free without dangers, now that there aren't any cars around. He agrees. They make a fire and cook together. They tell stories and laugh. They sing but they can't remember the words. They go to the river to get water and let the dogs have a bath. They kiss but it is forced and awkward, and they agree to never do it again. Later, they go to bed and the wind plays its eerie music for them. The wind always remembers its lyrics and never fails its melody.

The next morning he leaves her. He wants to see the sea, and she doesn't. She never liked the sea, it has always made her melancholic. She has one dog that doesn't get along with the others and would certainly love to see the sea. So he takes it with him.

It definitely feels weird to meet the – potentially only - human that is alive alongside her and let him go but it would feel even weirder for him to stay or for her to follow him just because they are the only ones. She wouldn't have guessed but that's the case.

He promises to stop by if he returns from the sea, and she promises to look for him if she ever feels like triggering melancholy in herself.

When he is gone, she cries. Not because she misses him but because it feels so good to know somewhere out there is a human that in one way or the other is a part of her surroundings.

She doesn't start looking for other people, she doesn't change the way she lives, she doesn't head east to see if she can still catch him. And that is how she knows she is happy.