It's a Llama

William has been everywhere and everyone (Billy, Will, Liam, Toots (after an unfortunate bean incident)) and done everything except be happy. Genuinely, long term happy. But that's what happens when you wish immortality without thinking to ask the genie for a friend to keep you company when the world ends.

There's a few others in his predicament, he thinks, keeping things afloat with him, and he could go seek them out and repopulate the earth, but in the few hundred years he's walked the earth (and those few months he rolled, because he was taking a crack at wheelchair basketball to impress a girl) he's never found his passion, and if he has forever to find it, he's going to before he runs ragged searching for company. 

All his life, William has hunched over a desk in his suit with no regards for the sun. Sleep was a rarity, because his boss believed in sleeping when you were dead, or in the five minute bathroom break you took after drinking too much coffee to stay alert. (Not blaming all the water from the cooler he'd go to just so he could pass by Paige with those long stockinged legs of hers, nope.)

So it's Secret Santa, and his co-worker gifts him a lamp, after some misunderstanding that he was obsessed with Aladdin after catching him singing One Jump to himself all day (the kid he was babysitting had earwormed him well), long leg Paige gifted him the lamp. He put it on his desk and returned to work. She left before him, and joked he should rub it and wish to go home too, and he did to humor her, only to find that it had been rigged with a genie. 

What kind of connections did Paige have?

He figured it was all an illusion, as she did dabble in making things, and wasted his wishes.

One, he wished he could go home. Which he did, because apparently his boss recognized Christmas as a holiday, and you can sleep on holidays.

Two, he wished to score a date with Paige. Which, again, he did, finding out what was beneath those stockings, and going on a whirlwind romantic date, only to get interrupted by a phone call that her mother had died, and he had to hold her for hours as she cried. And then she moved out of state to live with her father, to soak up the last years while she could, because she would rather soak up him than poor old William.

She had left his house, and he stared at the ceiling, frustrated at the concept of death. To tear a person apart like that wasn't fair. His parents would be devastated if he ever died on them.

Three, he wished to be immortal. Boom, it was done, or so he thinks, because the Rapture came and went, and he's still here on earth, biding his time until God takes pity, and his soul.

Without a world to push forward, he doesn't need to work. Somehow the power is still on, and food is still fresh where he goes, so he assumes that there must be others, or that God is very generous and has left the world functioning for him. He had been destined for Heaven, he thinks, and shouldn't be punished just because a genie put a spell on his soul. He decided to get a hobby.

If only one would stick with him.

He tried to learn an instrument. First it was a piano. He had seen his mother glide her fingers over the keys as a child, and had taken a crack at it. He had been sitting so long in his life that he hated that bench and ditched it in favor of the guitar. His fingers began to callus, and he hated the sensation of rough hands, so he gave up for singing. His voice echoed through the empty town.

But that was the problem.

Why sing, without millions of screaming girls flooding to your feet for a chance to touch you? 

He traded in his microphone (okay, so it was a water bottle, because all that walking was making him thirsty) for a spade. His neighbor had a beautiful garden, now abandoned in the apocalypse. Every summer he would come over and gift Will a basket of produce, and every summer he would skip out on his day off catching up on sleep to cook him ratatouille and help him can all the fruits into jams and jellies for his peanut butter sandwiches at lunch. 

Maybe it was time to bring it all back. 

He had given up on his pb&j ritual when he had lost his job. With all the time in the world, he could find time to actually make lunch, like boiling spaghetti and making meatballs. When he had cut his finger on the can of sauce, he thought back to those tomatoes. Bandaging his finger, he drove over to the gardening store and helped himself to some seeds and tools. 

The sun was beating down that summer, but he sweat through it, and in the end, he had three overflowing bushels of tomatoes to sauce.

That was a lot of nights of spaghetti.

He had also planted flowers, and they grew, tall and fragrant. He wished there was a pretty girl to share them with. His father had a tendency to bring his mother bouquets home, just to say he loved her. (Conveniently on days that the less desirable chores needed to get done, not that he was going to point out the genius in his plan.) He cut them all and walked to the cemetery. There were the graves of all those dead before the End, and he gave each a flower. 

Under the big tree, he had stuck a sign in the ground. 'Here marks everyone else who never had the time to get a grave. RIP.' 

Of course their souls had immediately left the earth, along with their bodies, so there was nothing to bury, and nobody that'd actually notice the flowers. But it made him feel less alone. It made him feel like he was honoring the mortal.

In a way, he missed the mortal. It wasn't a strong pull, not one that would lead him out of his comfort zone of his own area code, but enough to plunk in front of the biggest tv he could find to watch a time when there were humans to interact with each other. He had made himself at home, searching the cupboards for something to eat. It was during his search that he found it.

There was a bin full to the brim with balls of yarn and crochet hooks. He read a tutorial and took up the craft. There was something soothing about it as he watched season after season of crime shows, honing the detective skills he would never use. He crocheted until he ran out of yarn, his blanket spanning across the entirety of the living room. If only there had been someone to share it with. 

He brought it outside and stitched it around a tree. In a way it reminded him of his mother in her end times, always wrapped in her shawl, shivering against the cold. He carved a face into the tree.

Finally a friend.

He decided to take up hiking. All the sitting around was making his body sore, and he could use more than one tree friend. It was at that point that he decided to abandon his hometown, to explore. Tree friends were well and good, but there was a slim chance that someone else was out there. A chance that he could take up hobbies like tennis and chess and learning to tango.

Trees aren't very good at dancing.

Packing a bag (which mostly consisted of snacks and fresh boxers, still labeled Liam in the waistband from when his ex needed to differentiate them in the laundry from her son, also William) he took off. There was this strange joy walking down the middle of the street, because he could, shouting out 'vroom vroom,' because it was too quiet. The world had become so quiet without all the rush of humanity. 

At last, he had reached a nature preserve. He rifled through his backpack to see he had depleted his stash of snacks. There was a nature center, and he stocked up there. It was mainly honey straws and a bag of chips someone had left at the front desk. It wasn't much, but after his hike he'd be on his way to a rest stop to see if there was anything in the freezer. The journey was hot, and he could really go for a carton of Rocky Road ice cream.

The terrible thing about hiking alone is falling down. Being immortal hadn't made him immune to injury, and a jagged rock reminded him as he fell over, rolling onto his back. His foot hurt, a lot, and without anyone to help him, he was stuck. He'd get up eventually when he garnered the willpower.

In the meantime, he was going to take up cloud watching. There was nothing else for him, laying on the ground, wishing he hadn't wished for immortality. Wishing that he had lived life when he was supposed to, instead of staying chained to a desk and job that didn't even matter anymore.

Only problem is, he wasted his three wishes. Genies never give out extra wishes.

So he points up at the cloud and says to nobody in particular, "It's a llama."

And nobody tells him that it's really an alpaca, because there isn't anybody. 

He's all alone.