L. A. Romano

The Great Game

We were human once. We were human when the world wasn’t filled with creatures who clung to the shadows, afraid of the sky in the day and the night. He was the reason we had become this way. It had been years, decades, a century maybe since his arrival. No one was sure exactly when, in fact, nobody knew what he actually was. For all we knew it could have been a man-made machine, an alien, whether from outer space or the devil from hell itself. Either way it didn’t matter, it doesn’t, and it never will; he existed, while this race of ours was gradually thinning into nothingness. Soon, I thought, there would be nothing. No people, no life, just a silent earth to survey peacefully. And only after each person was gone (those who would let themselves be seen in the open) would he leave. Although, most people wouldn’t believe this. As if it were that easy; to remain hidden behind our feeble bricks and underneath our rotted roads and ancient constructions, to simply wait him out. I however, wondered the opposite, if he needed only to wait for our starvation. This was the impending doom that awaited us as we played the game, merely stalling our eventual departure. I still felt however, like many alive then, the basic instinct to survive.