A REASON TO LIVE

Growing up we had always thought that it would be some global man-made disaster or something from the outer reaches of deep space that would finish off mankind but is wasn’t any of those things. Not a zombie apocalypse or asteroid hit like in the movies. Not a rising of the seas caused by global warming to flood all our cities or a pandemic either that all the scientists warned us off. Although the seas had rose and some cities had slid beneath the waves. There had been pandemics too, but even these were not to be the architect of our demise. Man had adapted to the inevitable, new cities had been built in the skies, floated off the new coasts, Scientists had kept ahead, just, of new viruses that came and stole millions from us every decade or sp. No, it was something much smaller than that, something that man did not expect and that took billions upon billions of us, too quickly for us to stop.

I sit here writing this, hardly able to believe that it was barely a year ago when it all started, I was getting ready to meet David for our 1st anniversary of blissful happiness together. He’d called me at work to tell me to meet him at the top plaza at our favourite restaurant and to wear his favourite dress, the blue one that hugged my figure, it was the one he’d first seen me in and drawn him over to tell me that I was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. At the time I thought that it was a corny line and was about to dismiss him until I turned around. He was tall, dark and strikingly handsome himself and way out of my league. I could hardly breath let alone speak, he just stood there and smiled at me waiting for my response. Eventually it was my best friend Angle that spoke on my behalf, “Get lost creep”, and she had pulled me away still staring back at him until I was forced to turn away or trip over. “Why’d you say that”? I eventually stuttered, “He was gorgeous”. “Pha”! she said, “He was a creep, leering at you like that”. She continued to tow me away, away from the bar we’d been stood next to and away from him, and that was that. I never expected to see or hear from him again, why would I, there were thousands of people living in the city, what would be the chance of every seeing him again, I never had before, or I would definitely have remembered.

It was a month later when I was sat on the outer ring overlooking the sea having my packed lunch, which is where I usually went to eat it, that I felt someone sit next to me. I was turned away, looking out over the rolling waves so couldn’t see who it was, but I could feel that they were a little too close and turned to say something. But when I looked up at the intruder I was once again struck dumb, it was him. He smiled at me with his almost perfect teeth, one was slightly out of line with the rest, a little crossed over the one behind, but it made him seem more approachable, a little less perfect, that was a tick in his favour, perfect men usually knew they were. So, focusing on that and not his startling green eyes, the long lashes, the dark hair being lifted by the sea breeze, I spoke. “Hello”. His face lit up, “You speak then”? and I smiled back, “Yea, even to creeps” and chuckled, he chuckled back too, “Sorry about that, Angels words, not mine by the way”. “Can’t blame her though, she’s a luck girl having found you first”. So, he thought that me and Angle were a thing, wow, nothing wrong with that I guess, but so not true. “Me and Angle, no, she’s just my bestie, nothing more”. I responded. “Need to tell her that I think, she was definitely being territorial there and not just of a friend”. I shrugged, he might be almost Mr perfect, but I wasn’t going to get into a disagreement over Angle with him. “Well, whatever you think, that’s not how we are”. He recognised the end of that subject and didn’t pursue it, another tick in his favour, non-confrontational, I didn’t like confrontational men. “Mind if I join you for lunch, it’s a nice spot here”, he asked. “Yea, sure, I haven’t seen you here before” I said. “That’s cos I haven’t been here before”, he smiled back, biting into a piece of fruit he’d taken out of a lunch box. Two more ticks, he smiled a lot and wasn’t afraid to look too poor to be able to eat all their lunches in a fancy restaurant every lunch, which he clearly wasn’t, tick, tick…

After a few minutes of companiable silence of mutually munching, he swallowed and said, “I have a confession to make, I hope you don’t think me too creepy”. I looked at him with my mouth still full, “Mmmm” was my response. “I’ve been looking for you ever since I saw you in the top plaza that night, every spare minute I’ve had actually”. “Oh”, was all I could think to say, and blushed, well, I’m not sure I did, but my face definitely felt hot under his gaze. “Not too creepy”? he asked. All I could do was shake my head and look down at my hands still clutching my half-eaten sandwich.

And that was it, after that we saw each other everyday in the same spot for lunch. We exchanged numbers after a couple of weeks, when he announced that he couldn’t make it the next day because he had to leave the city for a meeting. He said that sometimes there was no notice for him to go and he didn’t like the idea of me sitting there thinking he had forgotten about me, which I probably would have. A couple of weeks after that he phoned me one night and asked if I would like to go out for a real meal that hadn’t come out of a lunch box and I didn’t hesitate to say yes, we went to the best restaurant in the top plaza, it became our favourite place to eat, not the only place, but definitely out favourite, it’s where we met on our last night out together.

I remember that night very well, it was perfect, we sat at our favourite table and had ordered our favourite food and wine. He leaned across the table and handed me a small box, “Don’t open it just yet, it’s just something small for you to wear and to remind you of us”. “As if I need anything to do that”, I said and leaned across to kiss him. Little did I know how right he proved to be, I have it now.

It was the next day that it was all over the news, people were dropping dead, just dropping dead, all over the world and nobody knew why, millions of people. The day after, the news said that they thought it was poison but didn’t know where it came from. Then the next day, they said that everyone who had died had the same purple mark somewhere on their body, a bite they said. The day after that they announced that it was from a small black spider. A common house spider that had been round for millions of years and had never had a bite that was dangerous to humans before and they had no idea why it was now, but it was too late. People either died of the bite or didn’t, it was almost always fatal, and they hadn’t had time to come up with an antidote, and even if they had, unless you got bit in a hospital, they wouldn’t have had time to administer it to save you. If you got bit you literally had minutes before you died, or you didn’t.

David had come over to my place to watch the news with me the very next day it was on the news, he said he was scared that he’d never see me again, we were both scared, the whole world was scared. On the day they announced they knew who the villain was, we spent the rest of they day taping up every gap we could find in my apartment, vacuuming all the carpets and the curtains and the bed. It still didn’t stop the inevitable, one or both of us would get bitten, one or both of us would die. As it turned out, we both got bitten, but I didn’t die and my beautiful David did. I woke that morning and I knew straight away that he was gone, I was curled up against his chest and there was no familiar warmth, no gentle rise and fall as he breathed. I stayed curled against his cold body for a long time, tyring to will my heat into him, to bring him back to me, even knowing that it would be no good. In the end I had to get up and reluctantly leave him. He’d been bitten on his neck as had I, his had been fatal, mine had not, it was as simple as that.

We’d got ourselves on a boat with other survivors, he’d paid a fortune for us to be accepted, although I didn’t see what good money would be to anyone now.

There was no one to call, all I could do was take my bag and leave, if I didn’t go now, the boat would leave without me. So, I picked up my bag which was next to David’s never to be used bag and left. I was numb , leaving what I had only recently began to believe was going to be my future.

So here I am, one year later, writing this down so that my son, our son can know about how his mum and dad met, and why he never met him. It’s taken me this long to find it within me to put this down on paper, but after last night’s attack on the boat I need to just in case something happens to me before I can tell him myself. I am grateful I have him, I have a reason to survive when there was none before. I’m sorry that he will never know his father but thanks to his last and most precious gift, at least he will know what he looked like. He has it now, grasped tight in his little fist, it’s a little gold locket with mine and David’s pictures in it, a heart shaped locket.

The end