Last man on earth

The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door. 

The wooden noise reverberated across the empty room. The only furniture in the room was the chair on which he was seated. The sudden noise sliced through the vacuum, sending a chill down his spine. He immediately sat erect. ‘Who could it be?’ It was terrifying to even imagine. He had been sitting there for a long time now, he had lost track of time after the first few days. Strangely he didn’t feel any hunger or thirst, he had just been sitting on the chair…sometimes asleep and other times awake, thinking of nothing. He couldn’t comprehend how he ended up inside this room. He tried hard to recollect what had happened – how did everybody else die? how did he manage to survive? where was he now? where was this room? – a thousand questions pounded his head but he wasn’t able to answer any of them. It was like his head was wiped off clean of all that had happened in the last few days or weeks or even months, and he had no way of finding out.

Meanwhile, the knocking continued. It was slow and rhythmic. Whoever was knocking the door was in no hurry. Did they know he was in here? What were they looking for? Have they come to help him? If everybody else in the earth is dead, then who is this? His mind raced…who could it be?

Could it be his mother? 

No, that’s not possible. She died when he was 16. It was the saddest day of his life. She had been sick for a while then. ‘Acute lymphocytic leukemia’ the doctors had said. Blood cancer was the more common word. He didn’t have the money to treat her. Chemotherapy was very expensive. He didn’t even have his father with him, he had left them when he was 4 years old. And he never came back. He was their only son. He had loved his mother more than anything else in the world. She was a short woman, with thick brown hair and green eyes. She had loved him, provided for him and taken care of him. He was her prized possession. He remembered how she used to carry him along with her to work since she could not afford a nanny. She was a very kind, gentle and generous person. All their neighbors liked her.

He remembered the day he had won the debate competition at high school. His mother had taken two-hour permission from the soda bottling company and had come to school to watch him debate.

He recalled every small detail from that day. How overjoyed his mother was. She hugged him so tight, when the results were announced, that he had difficulty breathing. She had tears in her eyes when one of his teachers met her and told her what a brilliant ward her son was at school. All the way back home, she proudly told everybody in the streets about her son’s victory in the debate competition. She held his trophy high in one hand and clutched his hand with her other. She cooked him his favorite meal – pork chops and mashed potatoes – that night and kept telling him how proud she was of him and how he was destined to achieve great things in life. He listened to every word…he couldn’t remember when he slept.

The sickness had begun about 4 months before she died. She started getting frequent fevers and headaches. The first couple of times, she would just rest at home or take some meds from the nearby pharmacy and go to work. But then the fevers continued with increasing frequency. Over the next two months, she had cough too…incessant dry cough. She was growing weaker and weaker with every passing day. One night, there was blood in her mouth when she coughed. She had tried to hide it from him but he had found out. He had never seen his mother bleed. He was terrified, he was trembling, his knees almost gave way. Somehow he gathered the strength to speak and insisted that they go to a hospital immediately but his mother refused. The next morning, there was blood again. He rushed her to the hospital which was in the town about 8 miles away. They had done a few tests and found out she had cancer. With chemotherapy, the doctor said, she would live another 8-12 months but that was going to cost a lot of money. His mother insisted on not taking the treatment, she felt it was just not worth it.

She died in the next 4 months.  So it could not be her.

The knocking had become more impatient now. His mind was racing. He stood up to just walk to the door and open it, but he couldn’t. He was too afraid, too uncertain. He looked around for anything which he could use as a weapon if the visitor turned out to be hostile, but he couldn’t find anything except his chair which was bolted to the floor. And suddenly the knocking stopped. It was unnervingly quiet. The room had no windows except for a small outlet at the top west corner. He had no chance of reaching it. He sat back down, wiped the perspiration off his forehead and started thinking again.

Could it be his father?

No way. He left him and his mother when he was 4 years old. He hated his father. He did not want to think about it any further.

Could it be his girlfriend from school?  

He hadn’t met her since graduation. They had planned to join the same college but she never contacted him since then. She had moved from their town and he didn’t know where she went, she hadn’t given him any phone number or forwarding address.

Could it be his friend John?

John and he grew up together. They went to the same school and roamed about the streets of their small town always together. But he couldn’t remember the last time he met John or what had happened to him. Had he found him and come to take him with him?

He couldn’t think of anyone else in his life that was important enough to come see him other than these people.

Or could it be his captors? Have they come back to take him away and torture him and kill him? Why had they left him alone all this while?

A loud thud on the door brought him back to his senses. The realization struck him hard. EVERYBODY ELSE in the world was dead except him. He could not justify to himself how he knew that but he knew it. He was the only person left on earth. It could not be his mother or his girlfriend or his captors.

The knocking had become impatient now. His heart jumped. He stood up and paced across the room trying to come up with some kind of a logical explanation to what was going on.

May be it was the aliens. May be they had come to earth and destroyed everything. He had no way of knowing since he couldn’t remember anything. They could kill him or eat him alive or take him away to their planet. Images of all kinds of aliens from the movies he had seen whizzed through his mind.

The knocking continued. They wouldn’t call out his name or shout or anything. They just kept knocking the door. He shut his ears for a few seconds hoping that when he released his hands the knocking would have stopped but to his dismay, it still continued. 

Could it be God?

May be it was God. It didn’t seem possible but considering his circumstances, he didn’t know what was possible and what was not. Was God here to reward him for surviving the test which swept away every other living being on the entire planet? But why now? Where had God been all these days? Maybe, God was looking for him and finally managed to find him.

He decided to call out to God and see if he responded.

“God! Is that you?”

The knocking stopped, but there was no response.

It seemed to him his actions bordered on stupidity, but he didn’t have much option.

“Please answer God, is that you?”

Silence.

“Whoever it is, say something. I’m not going to open the door if you don’t speak up”

Still no answer. Only silence.

To his horror, the knocking began again.

He could not take any more of this. He decided to open the door, no matter what or who was on the other side. He was the last one left and he knew he wasn’t going to do much in this world alone any which way. He was going to do it.

He wiped his face with his sleeve and slowly walked towards the door…