Bonnie, Clyde, and the Last Girl on Earth

*My entry for the "Doomsday Diary" Challenge

I’m walking on a dirt trail, when I hear a rabbit crash through a nearby bush. I pause and whip my head towards the noise, bow raised, ready to shoot. The two dead rabbits that are hanging from my belt bop around in a sort of morbid protest. I can hear my heart pounding in my ears as adrenaline rushes through my body. The rabbit darts out of the bushes as I take a step towards it, and let an arrow fly from my bow. I hear the ‘thunk’ of the arrow finding its mark. As I go to collect my kill, my foot lands on a pile of wet leaves. I twist and fall to the side, landing hard on my shoulder. A loud pop breaks the silence of the forest, and a searing pain immediately starts radiating around my collar bone.

“Fuck!” I exhale, as I roll onto my back and close my eyes. I picture Bonnie in my mind’s eye. I sit up gingerly, and look down at the silver object attached to my wrist. I press the round, flat button in the center of my wrist band. It’s made out of an unidentifiable metal. Immediately, I hear a high-pitched frequency and Bonnie hovers before me, in all of her bug-eyed glory. “Hey, Bonnie,” I mumble sheepishly. She hates when I accidentally hurt myself. Suddenly, the image of me sitting on the ground looking very pathetic pops into my head. I look into Bonnie’s huge eyes. They are lidless and unblinking, and constantly shifting colors. I think about my collar bone and she moves towards me, extending her two fingered hand. I feel another pop, then cool relief. She lifts her arm, which raises me to my feet. I dust off my butt, and grab my freshly killed rabbit. I turn around and nod to Bonnie. In an instant, I’m transported back to my pod.

I make quick work of dressing the rabbits, and start a fire. My mouth waters as I slowly turn them on a spit. Bonnie watches me from afar. She’s always watching, always hovering. It used to unnerve me, but I’m accustomed to it now. Everything that once seemed crazy has become my new normal. I have no idea where I am. I also have no idea how long I’ve been here. I glance over at the big rock that I once carved tally marks into. 365 days on one side, 13 days on the other. I stopped counting after I threw myself off of a nearby cliff. I wasn’t hurt. Bonnie caught me. She knew what I was going to do before my body even sprang into action. She could have stopped me before I leapt, but I’d like to think that she was curious to see if I’d actually do it. Up until that point, I’d never followed through with any of the violent or self-destructive thoughts that she’d seen inside my head. For a few precious seconds, I plummeted through the air to embrace my swift demise. At the time, death seemed like a welcomed gift compared to the loneliness and despair that consumed me. Bonnie let me soar through the air, and then suddenly I jerked to a complete halt. She hovered before me, showing me a picture of myself, dead on the rocks below. With the picture she seemed to ask “Why?”, because she followed it up with pictures of all of the things that she had provided for me: the pod that I was forced to live in, the food that materialized inside of metal box with the press of a button, the strange, waterproof silver clothes that somehow simultaneously protected me from cold and heat. Lastly, she pictured herself- my constant companion. It was hard to tell from her expressionless face, but she seemed to ask “Am I not enough for you? Is this not enough?”

I glance up at Bonnie from the memory. Her face is motionless, all eyes, as it always is. Knowing she was reliving those memories with me inside my head, I point at my roasting rabbits and smile. After that awful day and the weeks that followed, we made a deal. She would allow me more freedom to do normal human things, and I wouldn’t harm myself. Her eyes rapidly change from an iridescent blue to purple to pink. I’m pretty sure pink is her way of showing me that she loves me. “Yeah, it’s just you and me, Bonnie,” I whisper out loud. And Clyde, I think, as I shudder at the thought of him. Bonnie’s eyes flash from pink to red to pink again. Over time I’ve gotten the impression that Bonnie doesn’t like Clyde much either. Thankfully, he rarely comes around.

I eat one of the rabbits in silence, sitting on a big, flat rock outside the pod. My big, black pod is stationed in a clearing in a lush forest near cliffs and flowing streams. I surmised within my first year here that I must be somewhere in the northeast. I get all four seasons, but the summers are mild and the winters are longer than what I was used to. I could be in a completely different country, but the vegetation and wildlife seem familiar enough. I eat the rabbit with my bare hands. There’s no one here to impress. I’m the only human I know of that’s left. I’ve often wondered if there are more people out there, people who live in strange pods like me, with an alien babysitter. For the longest time, I thought maybe I died and that this is hell. There’s not a day that’s gone by that I haven’t wondered why I was taken. Or chosen. I can’t tell if my current state of being is a blessing or a curse. I watch the sun go down as I stretch out my muscles. After hiking multiple miles every day, this has become my monotonous, nightly routine.

I head into my pod for the night, and Bonnie stations herself at the entrance. “Good night, Bonnie”, I say softly. She projects an image of me sleeping peacefully into my mind. That’s her way of saying goodnight. Then she projects an image of a young man with dark hair and bright eyes and freckles. She does this often. I have no idea who he might be. Her eyes flash purple to pink as the door automatically shuts behind me. Everything in my pod is an iridescent silver, composed of fabrics and metals that are completely foreign to me. I take off my clothes, and stand naked in front of my mirror. The mirror is one of the only manmade objects in my possession. Bonnie brought it to me after the cliff incident. I think she was trying to cheer me up. It’s big and square and the frame is cream with pink flowers and green vines painted all around it. Sometimes I look at it and wonder who painted it; are they in a pod somewhere too? Or did they evaporate into nothingness like everyone else I once knew. I picture Bonnie going into some alien warehouse of human objects and picking out the mirror just for me. I shake my head and laugh off the image. The thought of empty houses and desolate streets and aliens collecting human things turns sour very quickly. They are only a reminder that I’m completely alone.

I brush my waist length hair as I stare at my reflection. My grandmother’s gold locket dangles from my neck. I clutch the heart charm in my hand that holds a picture of my grandfather. It is my only possession from the time before they came. Everything happened so quickly. The aliens moved with such cold efficiency. My family had just finished dinner and we were settled into our big sectional couch, about to watch a movie. My parents were on one side of the couch, my little sister was curled up with our dog, and my grandmother was in her armchair, closest to me. They came with no warning. All of a sudden, they just appeared before us, Bonnie so tall and thin, hovering above the floor, stared directly at me with her giant eyes, which were red at the time. Her mouthless face disturbed me. Clyde was even worse. He was shorter, bulkier, with his two toed feet firmly planted on the ground. His eyes were like long, black slits. He had a small, round mouth that emitted a high-pitched hissing noise.

We all sat there completely frozen, for an indeterminate amount of time. My dog’s panicked barking snapped everyone back into reality. In a matter of seconds, Clyde, waved his arm and our dog vanished. No noise, no warning. One minute she was barking with her hackles on end, the next minute she was gone. Her last bark was cut off so abruptly that it turned my stomach. My dad stood up next, and rushed at Clyde. My mother was screaming. No words, just shrieks. Within another second, my dad vanished, as did my mom. Clyde fixed his unholy gaze on my sister, who had gone completely white. I ran over to her and threw myself on top of her small body. “NOOOOO!” My scream shocked me. It was guttural and deep. I felt like an animal. My body immediately fell onto the couch where my sister had been. She was gone. I popped up and whipped around, as Clyde turned towards my grandmother. She was still sitting in her armchair. Bonnie had floated toward her, her eyes flashing a rainbow of colors. I planted myself between these creatures and my grandmother. Time slowed, and I was able to think several things at once- that I had to be dreaming, that I was about to die, that I had to protect my grandmother.

With my back to my grandmother, I stared down the aliens that I would go on to nickname Bonnie and Clyde. I felt my grandmother’s hand on my shoulder. She was staring into Bonnie’s eyes. She took off her heart locket and put it around my neck. She pulled me to fully face her, her hands gripping my upper arms. “You’re going to be okay,” she said softly. She smiled and then she was gone. The pressure of her grip melted away, and life as I knew it ceased to exist.

Turning away from my mirror, I flop into bed. I fall asleep quickly, dreaming of my grandmother’s wrinkled hands, my old dog’s soft ears, and the freckled boy that Bonnie always shows me. I wake up with the sun and get dressed, brushing my hair while humming “Dream a Little Dream of Me”. I walk out the door to greet Bonnie, and I immediately freeze. Before me stands two Bonnie’s. They’re both hovering with their flashing eyes. Then all of a sudden, I hear a voice yell “HOLY SHIT!!!”. I’m suddenly tackled to the ground by a flash with dark hair. I’m released from a bear hug as the freckled boy from Bonnie’s vision yells: “Are you real?!” Tears well up in my eyes and I choke out “Y-yes. Yes. I’m real. Are you real?” I start to sob. The young man picks me up off of the ground and we stare at each other. Then he pulls me into another hug and holds me while I sob onto his shoulder. He buries his face into my neck and we hold each other for what seems like an eternity.

Photo by Sebastian Unrau, Unspalsh