Vein

Window frames broken and curtains torn and tangled. The heart of the building crushed, the corridors and floors, destruction beyond repair echoed through the empty halls. And yet a soul, between the rubble, still standing tall. A young woman truly surprised by her own self. A woman who could walk.

Although, to speak the truth, waking wasn't the unexpected. Being alive had already defied the rules on its own. And nobody was there to explain why or how. Not even she could figure that detail out. And so she did all that she did best. She just walked.

She walked fast and then she moved slow. She stumbled as she did, once or twice, but giving up was not a choice she had anymore.

She walked out of the building with mouth clasped to a tight strict line. Eyes looked around the empty space, trying to realize all that had happened. And that realization was not hard to understand. No. But it was terrifying as any other for mind of human to conceive.

For seconds only lasted all that happened, but to her the time passed slow. So slow in fact, it felt like hours with no end. And how easily indeed do ten seconds seem like an eternity from time to time. Like a student waiting for the bell to ring, or a teenage girl sweating over a pee-stick, to discover what the rest of her life looks like, with or without children.

She was nothing but a woman. Nothing, but another woman. Just that. Alone on a world doomed. Survivor to the wipe out of humanity once and for all. For years she’d been aching. Fighting cancer twice in her younger days. She battled the beast in the ring of life, and both rounds she won. For years after she spent growing out her hair, and now it didn’t matter anymore. No one could see it. No one there to smell, and touch, and feel it, but herself.

With fingertips trembling and breath cut short, she combed the hair and felt them sticky from the rubble and blood. Alone.

She was all alone. “Alone!” she screamed and shouted as the voice echoed through this world. The last voice. Her own.

She walked toward the parking lot ablaze still, and shining pieces of glass were spread across the floor. On the side of a pavement shattered to bits, sat a television on its side, still playing the symphonious buzz of static. No channel left now. No news to predict this hit. All gone. Every last bit. The wind she only felt, lashing her cheeks. Veils of dust and billows of dirt blown away by the steaming winds and eastern gales. They made her greasy hair move even, like a living thing. Reminded her of summers long ago and left the mind a daze, lost for words. Reminder of the sun hitting the face she called her own. And rays blinding came through the curtains she called eyelids. The saltiness of the sea on her lips. She closed her eyes trying merely to ponder. 

Suddenly, on the horizon, she heard the hollow sound of feathers on wings flapping. A bird flew over her head and spun into a circle up there ,in the clouds. The woman stared at the creature as it dove deep towards earth and seconds, few to count with a finger passed, before the bird found itself by her side.

It was a seagull.

So filthy the feathers, the beak was black, and three toes missing. The gull jumped towards her and stared into her eyes. Lonely creature too, must have lost everyone after the event. Alone in the sky, no family to say hi, no fish in water for it to feed anymore.

The woman raised her foot and the creature came even closer. Curious the bird did so and the woman smiled. If the gull had a voice, she thought it’d tell her “Hey little lady, how you doing? I heard a bang, and then everything went black. When I woke up, I was all alone. Hey little lady, I’m happy that I found you. I ‘m happy these few last moments I’m not flying up there by myself and all alone. Hey little lady, if you’d be so kind- ” the woman stamped on its neck. She almost jumped on top it.

There was a loud crack. A fainted cry for help. The woman stepped on its neck and twist her leg around a couple of times. She moved her shoe out of the way and kicked the animal on the head, to make sure it was now dead and to follow her action she simply sighed.

How much time did she have. She looked down, her watch missing. But it didn't matter. That's what she remembered. Seconds, minutes, years. Time is a man-made thing and it lasts only as long as we all do. It lasts less than we do. That's what it feels like and it all ends so fast. The woman opened her mouth but no sound came out of her. She looked at the sky, burning red of blood, like heaven was hell and hell wasn't home. Tears run down those cheeks of hers ,dripping like a forgotten tap.

She didn't wipe them away. No. She wore them proudly on her face, like colors of war. And for only one person she fell down on her knees and to that person, right there and then, she did surrender. To herself.

Her mind crumbled under what was real, and the more she let herself open to it, the quicker run out her self of imagination. The shields were down. The woman was down. The daughter, the mother, the soldier, on their knees all had fallen, together as one, they cried like the minute she was born. And she closed her eyes tightly and opened up her mouth.

“Hey little lady!” said the woman now again. And this time she did so screaming. “Hey little lady! Hey little lady!” HEY LITTLE LADY! ... I’m all alone”