TweetStories #1

Said I:
Dear readers: I am creatively blocked. Please send me ANY ideas for short stories and I promise I'll try em! Could be fun! Respond now!

Said twitter friend supreme:
StereoForBrains@iKeralot Remember the old story about the last man on earth who hears a knock at his door? Write what happens afterward. Sounds interesting

Ok, I'll give it a go.



As he set about his tasks, the phrase "not if you were the last man left on earth"echoed around in Chance's head. It resonated mostly because he was.
(...And yes, he did realize his name was ironic.)

Little did Earth know, earlier that year, but it was just about at the apex of it's doom. Well, human's doom, I should say. The planet didn't explode or fly out of it's gravitational orbit, the people,well...they just died. If there was anyone left to speculate, you can be sure there would be many theories, but alas every last doctor, researcher, scientist and the like, was most assuredly extinct.

Chance had been hiking for about a week on his own. Gathering up silent moments like rare gems, he basked in the absence of noise. The only thing he heard was the birds and the insects and the water pushing past the rocks of his camp. He wasn't antisocial, so much the opposite, that this was the only way he could gather his thoughts when he had to do his "deep thinking".
Some big stuff was going down in his life, and he needed to really think things through without the city noise and computer babble.

At the end of the week, he felt rested and resolved, ready to conquer all of the demons at his door. Actually, some really great things were coming down the wire, and he knew now what he would do next. Looking forward to his life back at home, he drove back into the city. After a week of solitude he had grown rather lonely, and was thinking about his girlfriend slash possible future fiance, Sarah, and what they could order in for dinner.

He had left at the crack of the crack of dawn, in order to make it back before rush hour traffic, and was pleased with himself when there was none. Pleased led to confused, as the sun continued it's climb and the cars didn't exponentially appear. That's strange, he thought, his eyebrows knitting together. ...Ordinarily, he'd be doing a happy dance for the lack of stop and go, but this was just plain wrong. Uneasiness settled in him to the point where his intuition now definitely told him something was horribly wrong. He stopped the car in the center lane of the 405 freeway. No one honked.

After a week of brutal realization, Chance came to understand that he was the only person left. He couldn't say for sure that there was no one left anywhere on god's green earth, but he could pretty much say without a doubt there sure as hell was no one here. Well, no one alive. Never having liked the horror or science fiction genres, his psyche would not let him dwell on the decomposing bodies that littered the streets. He could barely deal with it, so he deftly stuffed those type of details in a tiny room in his brain and firmly locked the door. Body, what dead body? Stench? What stench? He donned a gas mask he acquired at the Army Navy Surplus, and went about his business- the business of coping with the fucking Twilight Zone reality that was now his lot.

I'll just skip the part of his mental breakdown, because really, it's pretty cliche. When one finds themselves in this situation, naturually they are going to melt down. ...Have bad dreams. ...Throw large items off tall buildings while screaming, etc. None of those things changed the reality of it, and, being a pretty level headed guy, he moved on.

After that, as any of us would, he did all the things one thinks of in this macabre scenario. He collected diamonds until he had bags that overflowed. He drove every kind of car he could never afford, as fast as he could. He went through people's homes and looked at their personal and warped effects. It all got pretty old, pretty fast.

He chose a house that suited him inside and out. Never in a million years did he imagine that he would live in such a beautiful home. He spent weeks filling it with every creature comfort he could think of. Of course all food had to be imperishable, but in this day and age, that was pretty doable. He stocked and decorated, till he was pretty sure he had the best damn fortress any one could ever imagine. This took up weeks of his time, and he singlemindedly went about doing it.

Once done, the silence, no longer like a rare gem, was now oppressive. He longed for the city noise and often dreampt about it...waking up only to hear a nothingness so loud it hurt his eardrums. Laying in what could factually be called the most comfortable bed known to man, he looked out the window and really contemplated the nothingness. In that silence of silence, a sudden knock on the door made his heart stop. His stomach dropped like rock thrown into the ocean. The noise echoed through the house, or was it just in his head, sharp and loud, a staccato beat. His mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. He couldn't move, he was frozen and suddenly so dizzy and cold, his last thought before his heart gave out...

"This is seriously fucked, now I'll never know who was at the godamned door."