The end had come not in one swell swoop of death and destruction, but in a series of small disasters. Year after year they had picked at the world's defenses, whispering rebellions into ears and brandishing revolts with abandon, and year after year humanity's grip on their minds and their homes weakened, and weakened, until it finally broke. He had been there when the first true turn for the worst had come, when an already broken country was hit again and again with natural disasters from out of season tornadoes to an inland tsunami. Death outweighed survival 1000 to 1, and as the months trickled by, extinction loomed inescapable and cruel. It was universal, a pattern repeated on every continent, every region, and every island. The religious prayed and screamed to their gods, the scientific went mad trying to translate incalculable variables, and the survivors? Well...they clung to what little life there was left, lingering on the cusp of the end and feeling like barnacles clinging desperately to a ship going down, down, down to an icy depth they will not survive.
He tried not to remember his name anymore, tried not to recall the sunshine and the good days where the grass was green and where laughter exploded like tiny fireworks in his ears. He tried not to make a sound as he tiptoed across countries and continents, delicately weaving in the skeletons of cities with the scurried, hasty pace of a scared mouse. He tried to forget, but memories remained in the whisper of a wind, bringing pain and loss and a thick, everlasting grief that sunk into his bones and curled against his innards. It was a pain that waxed and waned with the breath of a tidal moon, never completely going away but occasionally settling to a bearable ache until one day...it ceased.
Brown eyes were wide, lips parted against a scarred face, and Theodore straightened from his crouch, pushing his ragged hair out of his face as he took a stumbling step forward. His wife smiled at him, all blushing cheeks and dimples, and he coughed out a startled laugh, something more kin to a sob as he dropped the meager shreds of supplies he had been gathering and ran, not caring if he tripped or stumbled or broke his toes in the desperation of climbing over rubble and rust because she was here and he could smell that goofy perfume she said reminded her of Hawaii, and he sank into her embrace, wailing like a child and trying desperately to say how much he loved her through his broken voice box. She hummed, a melodious sound that blended into a happy noise, and wrapped herself around him, her fingers in his hair and the sweet smooth softness of her easing away the hardships and the deaths. "Oh you always are the slow one, aren't you my darling?" She whispered, tucking her head against his, and he smiled against her chest, drawing her tighter to him as he gave a sniffling laugh and croaked out a reply.
"I gotta be fashionably late, babe."
He smiled, eyes squeezed tightly shut, and lost himself in the sweet sound of her bell-like laugh, in the warm and the comfort he had so desperately lost, and surrounded by the corpse of a city he had never seen in full glory, he let go.
Name: Theodore Andrew Smith
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Species: Human
