Alone

Drifting up through sea-green layers of sleep, he reached for the brightly lit surface of consciousness far above, leaving the colors and confused stories of his dreams. It was not a desperate struggle, a lung-bursting search for air, but, rather, a half-reluctant bubble, pulling him into consciousness by the dim awareness of birdsong, an unfamiliar sense of light and the fuzzing of his clock radio. He opened his eyes, stretched, and, suddenly aware, stared at the sun’s slant on the wall. Late? Weekend? The clock radio captured his awareness; no music, no news, no annoying advertisements. Turning the dial, he rummaged through the frequencies, finding blips of static where music and news, and talk ordinarily prevailed. He looked at the clock. Overslept. Angry and frustrated, puzzled at the lack of transmission, he showered, finishing in record time. Gulping coffee, he turned on the television. Flipping channels, he again heard only static. Too intent on the time to analyze, he grabbed his briefcase and glanced at his monitor. “No new email. “Slow night,” he guessed.” Humming a tuneless tune, he unlocked the car, slid under the steering wheel, and started the engine. Radio static blared; its hiss intruding where his usual station should have been. He backed from the driveway, and headed for the arterial, three blocks away. No cars were in sight. “A light traffic day,” he thought. “Or is this some holiday I’ve forgotten?” Station hopping, automatically, he still found no voice, no music, only static. Division street, always busy, crowded with the draining or refilling of the bedroom communities to the East dotted with abandoned vehicles. His forehead puckered in a worried frown. A signal light changed from green, to yellow, to red. He stopped, glanced in cautiously in both directions; nothing moved. An electric shock surged up his spine, standing his hair on end. “AS if…” He did not, could not, finish the thought. Visual anomalies intruded: a car smashed against a telephone pole, No occupants. Another slewed sideways, its exhaust puffing a thin gray cloud into the cool morning air. A bus, its doors open and vainly waiting stood by the curb. As far as he could see, in both directions, nothing human moved. A block ahead, a dog loped across the street. Panicked, he slammed into gear, and screeched across the still-red intersection, weaving his way through the night-sparse sprawled vehicles. At each major intersection, he stopped, peering, searching in both directions for some sign of human life, but saw no reassurance. Rolling his window down, he listened. He heard No car sounds, no mechanical sounds, no sound of jets roaring into the sky, no human sounds of any kind. Keening, frantic, terrified, he caromed through the streets. Slowly reason returned. It felt like an eternity. Sunlight streamed between overshadowing clouds in the west as he Pulled into a convenience store parking lot. Sliding to a stop, he sprinted for the bank of telephones. Fumbling with the receiver, it finally hummed its familiar welcome. Dropping a coin into the slot, he waited, impatient, listening to the mocking ring. No answer. She was gone, too, then. His heart sank. Alone, terribly, frighteningly, alone. An ocean of grief filled him. Driving, aimless, he wandered, until, at last, without conscious volition, he woke to find himself outside his office building. Angry, rebellious, he parked in the red “No Parking” zone. Pushing into the lobby, he entered. Elevator doors stood waiting to receive the morning horde of workers, their mechanical mouths open, seeming astonished at the absence of their Monday-morning meal. He pushed the button for his floor, then, with a shock of fear, he slammed his hand against the rubber edge, forcing it open, panic sluiced through his veins. “The machines?” He wondered, remembering sci-fi stories read three decades before. “Could they…?” Dashing across the lobby, his anxious steps silenced by thick carpet, he flung the emergency door against the wall and, shoving a chair under the panic bar, he secured his retreat. His footsteps echoed, now, loud, hollow, hard, in the concrete cavern. Panting, he reached his floor. Inserting his electronic key, half expecting it to refuse him entrance, he sighed, relieved as it clicked its tiny mechanical welcome into the quiet. No telephones rang; no morning coffee chatter; no cheery “Good morning,” from the receptionist. Opening his office, he crossed to the windows. As far as he could see, from the river, at his feet, to the distant mountains, nothing moved. Directly below, the street, usually clogged with traffic at this hour, was empty. An errant breeze shuffled a newspaper, aimless in its arbitrary control. The window cooled his forehead. At his desk, he touched telephone buttons for their memorized numbers. No voice answered; not the local ones, not the long distance ones, not the international ones. He called directory assistance. A recorded voice assured him repeatedly, “Someone will be with you, momentarily,” but no human voice interrupted the automatic electronic apology. His monitor blinked to life. Familiar chimes announced his arrival at the electronic desktop. Clicking and selecting, he logged onto the stock market. The flow of letters and numbers streamed, unchanging; Friday’s numbers. He ran to the storage closet and, fumbling, grabbed the baseball bat he’d left at work following the company picnic.. He hefted it, testing its welcome weight and balance. Doors left swinging behind him, he leaped entire flights of stairs, swinging on the handrail at each landing. At the bottom, he fled across the lobby into the street. Stopping on the white dividing line he turned in a slow circle, looking, truly seeing, what he had never seen before in his haste. Then, purposeful, drunk with a potent mix of rebellious pleasure at doing the forbidden, the formerly dangerous, and sensing around him the vacant city, he walked the center of the street. Angling to the sidewalk, he approached the plate glass window of a jewelry store. He swung the bat, putting his weight behind it, a home run swing. The crash of sound, echoing in the concrete canyon, The alarm, a clanging claxon that went on and on, brought no lawman, no curious bystanders, no outpouring of curious office workers. He fell to his knees, sobbing in fear and frustration. Sharp shards sliced his palms and knees, but no pain intruded. He rolled into a fetal ball and wept and moan and rocked. Hunger, and exhaustion, drove him to move. Stabs of pain ricocheted as he staggered to his feet. Blood, coagulated and dark, stained his hands and pants. Finding a fountain, he bathed his cuts, cleaning them as best he could, then searched for a pharmacy. He disinfected and bandaged himself. He ate, standing in the aisle of a grocery store, sensing the incongruity of it, expecting at any moment, to be roughly expelled, anticipated the joy of it, the relief of it. Nothing happened. No one challenged him, no one ordered him to stop, to pay, to leave. He wandered the aisles, picking and choosing, taking a bite, discarding, selecting something else. Approaching the cash registers, He reached into the green piled and stacked the bills on the counter, blocked them into a bundle, and stuffed them into his pocket. A strange greed overtook him. Remembering the jewelry, he ran to the still-blaring alarm. Reaching, he gathered a handful of diamonds, pearls, and gold. He thrust them into his coat pocket. He approached the front door, seeking greater rewards. The glass would not break, no matter how hard he swung the bat. He kicked at it in frustration, sending a wave of pain up his leg, then remembered the hardware store a few blocks away. He returned with a crowbar and a length of pipe. It finally shattered, and he walked into the subdued light of the night-secured space. At first, he shattered the cases, snatched the biggest and brightest, the gaudiest baubles, then, nearly sated, he began a more methodical ransacking. His pockets bulging, he left, wishing he knew how to silence the alarm. Its shrill cry followed him through the darkening evening. That night, in his bed, he dreamed of people. People he knew, people he had never seen. They looked at him with sad eyes, then turned away, leaving him, even in sleep, alone. Terrified, he woke, struggling to free himself from the dream’s tentacles, Then, confronted by the more frightening reality, he Pinched his right thigh until he cried out with the self-inflicted injury, and a red welt swelled beneath his fingernails Hope faded as days melted into weeks, and weeks into months. His home, now a treasure trove of gold, jewels art and money, he left unlocked, secure from intruders in their absence. He traveled in luxury, the soft leather of the Lincoln’s seat on his back, the near-silent purr of the motor, the controlled climate perfectly suited to him. He drove long distances. Visited places he had never seen; took things he desired wherever he went. Museums yielded their treasures to him. Treasures from old and new worlds, from east to west filled his space. He requisitioned a mansion with a view of distant mountains and the city spread out at his feet. He began thinking of it as his, completely his. Finally, the gathering slowed, stopped. There seemed no point. What need to hoard, gather, secure. The seed of madness took root in his mind. It persisted, grew, blossomed, bloomed, fruited. Taking a diamond necklace from its place, he went to the workshop of the house. He placed the largest stone on the concrete and raised a hammer above it. It shattered into a myriad of scintillating shards. He ground the powder in his hands and threw it into the air. It settled in a shining mist around him, mocking him. Ruby red and emerald green dust mingled in a rainbow pool when he stopped, exhausted. He gathered no joy from his destructive act. He walked through the multicolored sand, its grit clinging to the soles of his shoes. Looking over his shoulder, it was as if the hoard was following him, tracking him, vengeful in its worthlessness. He drove to the house of his former wife. He walked through the rooms, sprayed her perfume into the dusty stale air, stared into her immobile face, framed by his engagement gift. He slept in her bed that night, bathed in the scent of her, the memories of her. Sunlight thrust him from dark oblivion into waking nightmare. Guilt flooded him, suffused every corner of his being, filled his very soul. “All for you,” he cried into his concealing palms, “All for you.” “But all I wanted was you,” her sad voice cried, echoing through memory’s halls. Standing, looking into the swirling water below, heavy with the ultimate aloneness of the last man on earth, no future, only a past, feeling the worthlessness of wealth without risk, without sharing, without the ability, even, to give. His life, before, a life wasted, by choice, pursuing, achieving, succeeding, overcoming all odds in his quest, and now, a failure. He lean out over the concrete precipice, gravity took hold, He welcomed the slow motion drop, the elevator lift in the pit of his stomach, and plunged into the cold, uncaring turbulent cascade. *** “…and now, in local news...” His alarm always went off in the middle of that same sentence. He fumbled for the button, automatically slapped it off, resigned to a new day alone, then, sensed her warmth next to him. “A dream” he screamed into the quiet, sitting bolt upright, dragging the bedclothes with him, waking her from her own dreams. “You’re really here…” he said softer, this time, touching her shoulder. Turning away, he listened to traffic sounds through the bedroom window. His smile faded. Time’s reality, money, duty, tugged at him, capturing his attention. Then, remembering his warning, he relaxed toward her, whispering her name. He winced at the still-tender welt on his thigh.