Challenge 6 

Alone, what if you were the last _______ ( unicorn, dragon, silky, mermaid, shifter, werewolf, vampire, fae, AI, clone, human, alien, etc...) 

Either alone in the world

Living in complete isolation or

Hiding in plain site by looking like everyone else in public?

Or do you decide it is time to stand out?

If you were alone, who, what, where would you be?

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Inspired by #turtlewriters writing prompt: Did You See It?

I went searching hoping to find some answers. My mind said plague, but my fear whispered that it was something more insidious. I had come out of the caves where I had been spelunking and cave-camping to find an empty world. Cars left in the middle of the road or pulled to the side, doors open, run empty of fuel. In the small town nearest the National Parklands, there were a few businesses closed for the day that never reopened, and at the truckstop and 24-hour gas station, items were simply dropped on the floor. Food and drinks left spilled, a wallet left on the counter, but more frighteningly, were the cell phones. The ever-present symbols of modern life were just dropped without regard and left behind. As I drove, I saw no one. 

Arriving home in the city, it was the same. I was glad I had taken my motorcycle on my trip. My jeep never would have made it through the miles of empty cars that cluttered the freeways and streets. At home, I found a window broken out and my old cat, Mr Fluffikins, was gone. It was quiet, so very quiet, even the neighbor's annoying bark machine was silent. I went over to see if the dog-rat was still alive but he and his humans were gone too. Like they had walked out the door and vanished. Upstairs, in their teenage children's room, I found their devices just like at the truckstop. I had never seen the daughter without her phone, but it lay there abandoned in the bed. 

The more I searched, the more terrified I became... I was alone. Really and truly alone. I mean, I have always been alone, no family, no friends, but there were always people around me and now... now everyone was gone. And not just the people, their pets were gone too. Not all pets, there were still birds and reptiles in cages that I freed, but there were no dogs or cats, and all the hamsters I found in cages were dead. In a moment of desperate fear, I went to the zoo. There were no mammals there alive, just reptiles. All the dead animals had white eyes. 

I went to the hospital last, I feared whatever disease had taken everyone. Paranoid dreams about every zombie movie I had ever seen haunted me until I screamed myself awake, but never did I see the undead denizens of Hollywood's horror industry. The places were all the same, everything dropped on the floor and the people gone, well those who could go. Those who couldn't died in their beds, white eyed and staring out the windows. 

It was in the third hospital that I found a survivor, barely alive. He was an elderly stroke victim, paralyzed and left behind by whatever took the others. 

"Did you see it?" He asked me again as I held water to his cracked lips. 

"No, I was spelunking. When I came out of the caves, it was all over."

"And the sky rolled back like a scroll..." He coughed, then whispered longingly, "It was so beautiful, like seeing angels." His white blind eye stared at nothing. "It called to me but I couldn't move."

He died in his sleep that night, still muttering about the light that came from the east  at midnight. He left me alone... I still don't know what happened because I didn't see IT.

That night, whatever The Light was, IT took everyone away with it. Birds still sing every morning, reptiles still crawl and slither, but no squirrels chatter in the trees, no dogs bark, no horses or cattle roam the fields. I always remember how strangely one-sided the zoos were before I opened the cages. I feel like I am the last mammal. 

I'm still looking for others, still travelling, but for every city where I leave notes spray painted on walls, I return to find nothing in answer to my query...

"Am I alone?"

Written during One-hour Sprint. No editing, just raw writing from the few sentences I posted after the prompt.

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Alone in the world by poeticdiva504 

https://www.wattpad.com/591552911-overthought-alone-in-the-world