Soleness

             The echo from the last cry of the second to last man on Earth left me alive. And it wasn’t just from the adrenaline of having killed him myself after watching him feed off of my daughter. I hadn’t been strong enough to protect her from the beast a man can become, but I avenged her. She didn’t live long enough to find a man like me. She lived long enough to see beasts and monsters. She was the last human female, and I was the last human male. Everyone else might call themselves human, but they are beasts.

            My hands, covered with his slimy brains and thick blood, trembled as I realized I was all that was left. I was the last man on this hunk of rock, surrounded by beasts and monsters, left to live and die any way I saw fit.

            Raising myself onto my feet, I looked at the beast’s body. Blood crusted brown fur covered the human-like body, along with torn and holy clothes that must have been decades old. It’s sandals were worn down and had previously been sneakers, bits of leather and bark held them together and tied them to his feet. His skin was black, and that wasn’t because of his natural skin tone. That was the dried blood, bile, mud, feces, and whatever else their kind didn’t wash off from years of not bathing. They preferred to drink water than bathe in it, just like they preferred to take lives than raise them.

            Leaving the corpse of his daughter, or what was left of it, in the cave that they had used for shelter, leaving the beast behind, leaving everything behind, he found himself looking into the silent night. Its stars were multiple and glamorous, like his hopes for his daughter. The night was silent, like his daughter is now. The night was dark, like his heart.

            He let out a howl, one that sounded ferocious and agonizing. The sound a gladiator would make when thrusting his sword into a fellow gladiator in one last move before death would claim him. Like a father who lost his daughter right in front of him. Like a wounded wolf before he fell to his demise. It was long, and low, and it had been his last bit of humanity that he had inside of him. He was alone, he was the last, he was the sole survivor of a world gone mad.