Eli Died Alone

Eli had no talents. No home. No friends. No career. No sense of future and no dreams of better days. Nothing going for him in life. Eli was a wandering vagrant in all the ways that didn’t matter. Which is why, he supposed, he was walking down the shoulder of a freeway looking for a rest station, food, and lodging. He was a drifting nobody.

Except, he wasn’t.

He wore silk-lined trousers with hems sewn with gold thread. Crystal watches more than most people’s salaries slept peacefully on his wrist and his teeth were perfectly aligned and polished to a buff. Money hugged his bones with top-notch medical care. His belly was always warm and full. His lips had never been chapped and his useless little hands were as soft and unworked as a child’s. Eli had never struggled with anything more than his perspective.

But he despised his life with a passion that could out-snarl even the worst pauper’s woes. He wanted to be free from dollar signs and realtors. He yearned to watch all the plastic cards of the world melt into one big puddle. Equality, he decided, came from suffering and not success. If he didn’t suffer, how could he be expected to be human? How could he connect and live and love like someone else, anyone else, if he hadn’t shared the essence of humanity with them?

Eli yearned to be human. Normal. If the world stuttered its last breath while he sat on his pedestal, Eli knew his life would have been for naught.

A day before everything ceased to exist, however, Eli had finally reached the peak of his frustrations.

And promptly snapped.

His father, a despicably cruel man with sallow skin and angry eyes whose hair had been white for decades longer than it should have been, had handed Eli a pearled envelope. On its front, in a curled, delicate script was his name: Elijah Johnson.

He’d nearly vomited at the sight of it.

Those envelopes contained one thing: business propositions.

When he had peeled back the flap, tugged the thick stationery from its prison, and flipped it open Eli had looked into a crystal ball and seen his future. The note outlined various next steps he would take. A betrothal in three months. Inheriting parts of his father’s fortune and company. Working up to larger factions until he was ready to inherit the company, hypertension, and white hair.

It was all a formality, really. An unavoidable decline into wealth.

Still, only three words stood out to him throughout the whole letter.

Sincerely,

Michael Johnson

No warmth. No care. Strictly business.

Eli smiled as he remembered the edges curling with the black disease of fire.

The night he had received that letter, he casually took it to his father’s study, made a small pyre of sorts, and ignited the thing before he could back out. The flames ate at unimportant tax documents and mounds of useless law books. Eli snorted as he recalled it. The estate was a show home. Useless for anything other than scandalous overnight bags, cheap hookers, and decorative books. It burned slowly enough to give Eli time to escape without breaking a sweat.

And now, he was getting sprayed by plumes of diesel on the side of the road, sweating quite profusely under the August sun.

Snarling up at the roar of a third truck puffing black into the sky, Eli’s mouth twisted into a proud smirk at the sight of the bright red scrawl across the black box trailer. Johnson Enterprises. He tugged his shirt over his nose and mouth as it stormed past, snickering to himself at the thought of his father sweating over the incalculable loss of one of his homes, never mind the new trouble of finding another successor to his company and fortune.

Eli had given his father quite a headache, he was sure.

Granted, he himself was in a rather headache-inducing state. Eli had very little practical knowledge of the world despite the continuous flow of various tutors and au pairs throughout the years. He knew nothing other than two simple facts: he hated people and he hated money.

Unfortunately, it seemed those opinions followed him like a bad smell.

The cars this far out refused to pick him up. He had yet to stumble across a rest station or restaurant, which he thought was horrendously unfair given how hungry he was. Going by the signs, and his lazy walking pace, he supposed he would be able to get some food and drink by the end of the evening which was still better than being called down to a supper of quail eggs and rabbit stew made chunky by the bones. He sneered at the thought. The hunger could wait.

Twenty miles couldn’t be that far, after all.

As the sun trailed through its various overhead positions, Eli began to eat his words. Blisters bubbled beneath his rich, leather shoes until each step ached with pinpointed pain. His eyebrows were permanently raised, wrinkling his forehead with the average man’s concerns. How would he walk tomorrow? How would he manage to eat, to drink if he sat down now?

He wiped the dwindling sweat from his burned forehead. Was this the life he had desired? If he’d cared to burn into a charred pile of ash he would have stayed back at the estate.

As his lips parted to laugh a dry, crackling sound escaped his throat instead. The arid summer breeze had stolen the last drop of moisture from his body. He was hot, burning from the wavy heat bouncing up from the asphalt and scorching him from below. The sun sprinkled him with molted rays, coating him with the unshakeable slime of summer. Making matters worse was his pasty complexion and damp clothes which had been wet for the better part of fifteen miles and chafing.

“Water sounds nice,” he croaked as a batch of rush-hour cars flew past. “Sparkling, mineral, spring, tap.” He swallowed a clump of dry phlegm. “Puddle.”

Eli smacked his dry mouth together. He had successfully passed his fifteenth-mile marker, making it five more before the rest station according to the green signs blinding him. It was hardly a marathon but the thought of moving for another hour and a half made him want to dig a pit and crawl inside. Call it a loss and let go. And then, his world shattered.

It started with one car swerving toward him.

Tired legs springing into action, Eli launched himself into the tall prairie grasses lining the side of the highway. He stumbled several steps before falling to the ground. His knees scratched against the dirt while pebbles embedded themselves in his palms.

Behind him, the metal mouths of hundreds of cars screamed. A cacophony of twisting and scraping exploded across the long freeway, whipping Eli’s head around. Glass sprayed high into the sky, creating a fantastic display of shimmering prisms as the world abruptly slowed. It was horrific. Titanic. Over the sound of metal chewing metal, Eli heard his breath whoosh from his lungs in awe.

Flecks of pearled paint leapt toward the sun. Oils and fluid sprayed the road in a glossy, flammable sheen. Eli sucked in a breath of fumy gasoline as a truck barrel-rolled past him. The world screamed. Hundreds of voices raised to a crescendo.

Then, it became still.

The gentle tinkling of plastic breaking and metal settling covered the road in the sound of robotic rain. Eli shivered violently as he wiped dirt from his eyes. Goosebumps paraded down his skin despite the heat. Something horrendous had happened. Something so horrendous, Eli found he couldn’t make his lithe limbs cooperate. Like a fawn first learning to stand, he wobbled and fell twice before making it to his hands and knees.

Sitting back on his haunches, he blinked back shocked tears.

“There’s no way,” he said to the dirt between his hands “No way everyone lived.”

He shook his head again, more firmly this time. “Well, if they aren’t dead they will be if you don’t do anything to help. Get up. Get. up.”

Gritting his teeth, he stood and continued his walk.

Those five miles to the off-ramp were the worst of his life.

Mangled bodies stuck through windshields and curled around steering wheels. Carseats held no recognizable life. The carnage was wet and horrendous. Fresh as a summer thunderstorm and just as violent. Accordioned metal stood in solidarity beside doors blown from their frames while rogue tires collected at random intervals whispering of what they witnessed. The color of bone was too white. The shade of crimson, too bright for him to stand. And no one was alive. Not a single one.

Over the course of his walk, Eli vomited what little bile was left in his stomach three times.

The last instance occurred outside a silver Miata as it smiled up at him, eyes beaming brightly in the summer sun. A young man lay gently across the dashboard as though taking a rest. There was no blood. There was no pulse. Not a single scratch on the paint. Simply the dinging warning bell of a stalled engine. It was as though the man had parked and perished. Tucked in for a summer nap. On the passenger seat sat a dislodged wallet.

Eli walked around the front of the car, reaching in with ease since the top was down, and plucked the wallet from the black cloth seat. As he unfolded the brown leather, the smiling blue eyes of the man greeted him. Mitchell Hunter. His light hair had been patted down in the front but still stuck up at odd angles in the back, making the disheveled mop more apparent against the blue backdrop. He scanned the card, stopping at the age.

Twenty-three? He’s…he’s one year younger than me.

Thumbing through the rest of the contents, Eli’s heart stuttered in his chest. Credit cards, bank accounts, and a punch card to Pizza Masters that was nearly full filled the slots. A movie stub and a happy life. Then, Eli pinched a small scrap of paper tucked beneath his license. It turned out to be a photograph of an old woman dressed to the nines in a blue, sequined dress. Flipping it over, he read the neatly scrawled handwriting: For my Mitchy, in case your Grammy can’t make it to your graduation. All my love, forever.

It was then that the severity of it all slammed in Eli.

Heaving on his hands and knees for several minutes, Eli squeezed his eyes shut. Angry confusion rolled tumultuously in his gut. What had happened? Why had all these people simply died? His hands curled into fists on the asphalt. Why Mitchell Hunter?

Leaning against the warm silver car, Eli closed his eyes.

At this hour, the sun had begun to creep lower and the body of the car provided the barest hint of respite from the heat. A small shadow covered his fevered skin.

Eli waited.

No sirens blared in the distance. No other cars stumbled across the wreckage. Futility is an emotion best engaged in alone, his father once said. After finding the Miata at mile three and subsequently suffering the empty hopelessness swarming like flies around the convertible, Eli hardly agreed.

He stared at the dust covering the tip of his shoes until a low growl rumbled in his stomach. Keeping Mitchell’s wallet for no other purpose other than sentimentality, Eli looked back at the car and the peacefully sleeping driver one last time before he waved goodbye and trudged the last two miles to the off-ramp.

He did not look into any other cars.

The exit off the freeway eventually came into view as the sun disappeared beneath a line of trees off to the West. At its base was another Johnson Enterprises truck tipped onto its side. Eli sneered up at the pale trailer. His father wasn’t going to help him now and neither was his inventory.

He turned his attention back to the steeply inclined ramp. At the very top of the hill, he could barely make out what looked like a pink pig with a hat, waving to him. Squinting, he failed to read the sign. Confused and questioning whether or not he was hallucinating, Eli trudged up the ramp.

“Mr. Ham’s Grocery and Gas,” Eli said, breaching the top of the hill.

The happy little pig was waving down to him with a toothy grin and a chef’s hat serving as a strange palm tree in an even stranger oasis. Eli picked his way around the wreckage of rusted pick-ups, never allowing his eyes to stray from the pink pig plastered atop the tall pole sign. The strangest protector he had ever seen, the pig guided Eli through the vapours of gasoline, oil, and blood to Mr. Ham’s Grocery and Gas.

It was run-down but absolutely beautiful.

Normal.

A flutter of joy lifted in his chest despite the carnage still strangling his mind. This was what he had wanted in the first place, a small, semblance of normal living. He blinked hard as he stared at the hours of operation sign taped to the front door. Open until ten p.m.

Opting to scout around the building first, Eli made a small loop around the market. Besides some vines and cracked asphalt with colonies of grass growing in them, nothing was there. Only one faded red Cadillac dinged on the hood. Eli landed back on the welcome mat with worry filling his lungs like smoke.

It was too quiet even for the country.

Opening the door to a cheery ding, Eli stepped inside. It smelled of sunscreen, jerky, and gasoline. Of summer smiles with his mother before she had died.

“Hello?”

Silence greeted him.

Eli took a few more hesitant steps. The flickering fluorescents hummed with nervous memories.

“Come on, Eli,” his mother whispered, stooping low to re-velcro his light-up sneakers. “We’ll miss the donut rush.”

“Donut rush?”

“Six a.m. Every gas station in the country puts out fresh donuts. And every everyman knows it.”

Eli frowned. “Daddy said-”

“Oh, fooey. Ignore what Daddy said.” Her blue eyes twinkled with barely restrained mirth as she righted his polo. “The best things in life are the normal ones, Eli.”

“Hello?” he asked again more loudly.

Only the buzzing lights responded.

Eli looked down at his feet. There was no one here. No cars at the pumps, no smokers lighting up nearby, no small bickering families in the parking slots. He looked over to the nearly empty glass case to his right.

“No fresh donuts.”

He moved through the store quickly, grabbing various drinks, snacks, and bandaids for the blisters around his ankles while carefully tallying the total. Some cheap clothes in his size were hung upon a small rack, small pricetags fluttering in the air-conditioned breeze. Eli found a rather sturdy-looking bag to shove everything in and even managed to swap his hard leather shoes for a soft pair of sub-par sneakers. Halfway through his rounds, he tried a phone only to find no number he called answering. Not his father’s. Not emergency services.

Eli was alone.

Heavy sack looped over his shoulders, he approached the counter.

“Hello! Anyone here?” He rang the small service bell several times before shouting, “I’m leaving now! Thank you!”

The folded bills in his pocket made their final appearance as he placed them gingerly on the glass counter underneath a well-loved stress ball.

The pale face of President Jackson and his twin stared up at Eli.

“I’m going,” he whispered. “No need to judge.”

Hamilton joined the crew, emptying Eli's pockets.

Turning on his heel, he shuffled out of the small store with sadness in his stomach. The jerky didn’t do anything for it. He finished the bag within minutes.

A tanned old man with tufts of white hair caught Eli’s eye a mile down the road. Pinned to his chest was a small badge with a pig that read: Tim. Typed clearly above it in gold was the word “Manager”.

Eli closed his eyes before walking back to the store, grabbing the money, and slipping it into Tim’s pocket.

“You drive a hard bargain, Tim,” he said, unpinning the nametag and snagging his driver’s license. “But this jerky is the best I’ve had. Well worth it.” Eli swallowed around a lump in his throat. “Thanks.”

He continued northward, his shadow caught in the blazing red sunset.

Somewhere a fire burned.

The shadow stepped around a car seat, its fisted hand clenching around a nametag as it followed green signs to more desolation. More emptiness. More loneliness.

By the time Eli arrived at the rather battered motel, night had begun crouching on the horizon like a leper.

There were no cars here either, only a pickup resting on blocks without its wheels as it slept tucked underneath the branches of an oak. When Eli approached it, a skunk waddled out with a hiss and a stomp.

“Alright. Occupied. Sorry, ma’am,” he said, holding his hands up.

The skunk gave him a pointed look before waddling off. The ghost of a smile flickered across his face. Something else was alive.

But still not someone else.

In the coming days, Eli would donate half of all his finds to the skunk. Lettuce, tomatoes, and a handful of old eggs from a recently busted refrigerator all ended up as offerings to the truck and its skunk.

A spider crawled across the glass and Eli shuffled back to the entrance.

No one was there. This time it didn’t Eli didn’t check around back. He didn’t bother scouting the road. Instead, he assumed the mess of a flower dress being picked at by a mass of screeching feathers he had passed on the way in must have been the hostess and walked behind the desk to grab a free key. Almost all of them remained. Only two slots were empty.

A strange sense of wrongness dimmed the already feeble light of the reception area. Keys were supposed to be handed off with a smile, a curt nod of the head, and well wishes for a good night’s sleep.

But there was no one.

Eli lifted number nine from its hook and left.

The walk to his room was several paces too long to be considered short. The stench of his sweat followed him like a sick dog. By the time he reached the door, his own smell had caught up to him.

Scratches littered the door and the frame was warped, making the door stick like the ones at his grandmother’s house in the heat of summer. The lock was hardly any better. Fighting against the mechanism hidden behind a face of rust, Eli played with pressure until the key slid home and turned fluidly.

The door opened to the smell of incense and the sight of a large bed waiting, it seemed, for his tired body.

He stepped past the threshold and into his new life.

It was a fully-furnished room complete even with a small TV. Flicking it on, he frowned. Static where porcelain newscasters ought to have been. It crackled in his eyes. He left it on, anything to combat the silence as he went for a shower and sleep.

When he woke mid-way through the night sticky with heat, he understood acutely his father’s insistence on owning only silk sheets. Melancholy seized him suddenly, jolted him from the bed, and lurched him in a staggering half-awake stupor over to the phone where he punched in the number to all of his father’s phones.

Voicemail. Voicemail. Voicemail.

The last one shattered something in him as his father’s cool voice said, “Hello, you’ve reached Michael Johnson. If you have this number, I must love you.” A warm laugh echoed through the line. It was the number he reserved for Eli and his mother. Just the two of them. “Daddy’s sorry he can’t come to the phone. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you soon. Sooner than the rest at least!”

The laugh echoed through the line. Hollow. Unalive. Sweat trickled down Eli's neck.

“Dad? It’s, uh, it’s Eli.” He clenched his eyes closed. “Elijah. You might not wanna talk to me, I know, but I’m…I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to run off. I didn’t mean to burn the estate. Well, I did but I felt…” Silence stretched its long legs. “...trapped. Your offer was great, really, but I’m not ready yet. I’m not ready to start my own ventures. I wanted to marry my own wife that I picked.”

His father had only wanted what was best for Eli. A safe, secure future where he wouldn’t have to suffer.

“I wanted to know what it’s like to be just normal. A normal person. But now…” His hand trembled on the receiver. “Oh my God. Now, I think it’s too late. Dad. Dad,” his voice broke. “Please call back. Something terrible happened and I can’t get through anywhere else. I’m…I’m scared.”

The small clock in the corner read a quarter past three in the morning.

“Please, call me. I’m at the Devil’s Lake Motel. I’ll be here a while.” He glanced back at the clock. The second hand jerked steadily forward.

Forward. He hadn’t managed to connect to a single living person.

Forward. His father who never neglected a ringing phone was silent.

Forward. Was this what it meant to be human? To stress and fret and panic all alone?

“I love you, Dad. Call me.”

The call ended with a dissatisfying click.

He banged the receiver on his head twice in an effort to stop the tears. His father never failed to answer. And he wasn't going to call back. He banged the receiver against his forehead again with a sniffling whimper before setting the phone back where it belonged.

Eli stood caught in a ray of starlight streaming through the flimsy curtains. A spider spun its web by a lopsided, broken radiator under Eli’s vacant stare. His bare chest covered in pale gold curls rose and fell slowly. The phone was heavy in his hand and cool against the exposed skin of his thigh. The boxers he had picked up from Mr. Ham’s gas and grocery hung low on his hips, threatening to fall off.

The spider ran under the radiator.

Eli blinked at its sudden absence and padded outside.

Cool, damp cement pressed up against his bare feet. A delicate breeze ruffled his fine blond hair, knocking some into his eyes. They jumped from star to star, wondering where the moon had gone. Without its bright white light, Eli couldn’t fight off the deep sense of loneliness stirring within himself. His arms slunk around his middle as he sat down on the concrete.

Where had everyone gone? The silence was deafening, screaming. Without the stifling, humid heat of the day to distract him Eli was faced with the sudden enormity of what he had seen. Dead faces. Burst lives. Emptiness.

He dropped his cheek to his drawn-up knees, gazing over at the edge of the forest.

In the depths of the night, he could feel the approach of autumn. It whispered sweet nothings against the still-green leaves and tickled the hairs on the back of Eli’s neck. He hugged his knees more tightly. The sky was so empty. The forest, so dark.

The night’s eye had closed.

“Miss you, Moon,” he mumbled against his skin.

He didn’t want to be alone.

*********************************************************************

Michael Johnson, the man who was once prescribed distance from his phone, never returned the voicemail. Not the first. And not the following thirteen.

Eli was alone.

The first few days beneath the obliterating summer heat had kept him quarantined to the motel and the small forest surrounding it. Any venture toward civilization ended in the vomit-inducing stench of rot and blood. The hum of feasting flies overrode the static of nature’s silence.

Eli couldn’t stand it.

Those early nights, only a sliver of a pale smile grinned down at him. Nearly mocking in its casual friendship. Where had it been when the world imploded? How could it look at him now with its twinkling happiness after its absence? After it left him alone? Eli’s rage flowered, died, and disintegrated into grief. The moon looked on, a half-full bowl of soup.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Humans, people, reduced to melting within their hot box cars. Memories slipping as slimy as pond scum between leather seats stained the carpet. Humanity shrivelling. Dreams fizzed and popped as bacteria took its rightful place as king.

He had seen the quick cut to the throat of humankind.

How quickly they bled out.

Eli had managed to get his uncalloused hands on a bike. Riding around the first day, he had discovered the carnage spanned further than he anticipated. The collective human experience was draining into sewers and pooling with oil sheens on asphalts.

Eli didn’t have the stomach for it.

He retreated to the forest, perusing the undergrowth and placing his clammy palms against the rough bark of the trees. He slouched against the maples while the birches watched with piqued interest as his shoulders shook with the force of his cries. It was too empty. The collective pressure of humanity had lifted, leaving in its place an emptiness that Eli could not remedy. His own words rattled around the air like loose ping pong balls, floating off on the breeze never to be heard.

The forest with all its sounds of scurrying animals and chirping birds was his only respite from the madness of solitude. It was too much to be standing beneath the hot rays of sun. They burned on his skin, all their intensity seemingly focused on Eli and Eli alone.

Alone.

Every evening, he sat down to a bowl of cold chili and raw vegetables he’d harvested from a nearby farm and the all-consuming emptiness growing beside his stomach. Eli ate beside the pinned-up driver’s license of Mitchell Hunter. Some days, the peaceful face of the dead man was the only solace Eli found.

His only friend.

The eventuality of it all cracked him over the skull one night as he sat on the concrete stoop gazing up at a nearly full moon.

They were never coming back.

There would be no ceremonies to respect the dead. No famous movie star or billionaire would take the stage to call for a moment of silence after some massive clean-up operation had been organized by the remaining survivors. There was no one left besides Eli. The dead would not find their peace.

The next time the moon had gone dark, Eli wept.

It was over.

Eli was alone.

He left the motel and moved into the abandoned farm. Every week he returned with offerings for his friend the skunk. She took them gratefully, no longer stomping.

The months dragged on while the moon fattened and slimmed above, providing the only metric for the slow movement of time. His rides became obligatory. Three times each week he ventured out to pocket small collectibles to plaster to the walls of the once-abandoned home. Mitchell was taped to the bathroom mirror. Photographs of families he didn’t know decorated the wall above the fireplace and trinkets cluttered the dining room table. Metal dog collars smacked together when a breeze flew through the house.

Eli could not stand the silence.

He filled his pockets with stolen memories. Scavenged through the wreckage, a vulture hungry for connection.

He stole cans from the grocery. He worked the land to sate his clenching stomach and looked down at once polished nails now chipped, clutching dirt to their bosoms. He hunted like the men he once scoffed at. Slept uneasily. Wept every time the moon tucked itself in for the night.

Faces lined his walls but it was Mitchell Hunter with his bright blue eyes that haunted Eli’s restless nights as the years stretched into decades. Nightmares were a comfort. They became the only place he could hear voices, the only sanctuary where photographs moved and laughed. It was not enough to sustain him. It was not enough to soothe the fracturing humanity within him.

There was a chasm within him, swallowing his words and spitting out nothingness. The walls refused to speak with him. The collage of lifeless eyes decorating his home turned viscous. Rabid. They weren’t real and they couldn’t make reality disappear. He yearned for someone real, someone flesh and blood, someone as lost as him. Anyone.

As the silence roared more loudly, Eli crumbled.

One night, on the tail end of twenty-three long years, Eli fractured completely. Beneath the watching eyes of his friends, Eli began to die. Falling headlong to the floor, he made it halfway there before his arms braced him against a doorframe.

He didn’t want them anymore.

This wasn’t what it meant to be human. They weren’t alive, dreaming, reaching, fighting. They were ghosts. The bad end of a nightmare. They wanted him to die afraid, empty, alone.

The moon, he thought. The moon is full tonight.

Staggering out the door, he craned his neck to the sky. He would die looking at his greatest constant. The only force that never changed.

A blanket of black covered his eyes.

Clouds.

“No,” he choked out. “No. Not…alone.”

He collapsed into the grass, wide blue eyes full of empty terror. It should have been there. It should have been there to guide him to the stars as he passed. Black horror reflected in his eyes as trees swayed and snapped in the distance. A storm was coming.

In his chest, a disjointed rhythm beat. A panicked drum.

Alone.

No one to hold his hand, soothe the flutter of fear in his belly. No soft smiles. No legacy to leave behind. No one to see his legacy.

Alone.

A home full of memories behind him, not beside him. All dead eyes and dead ambitions. They weren’t his and they never were. They were a poor substitute for the beating heart of humankind.

Alone.

Silence. The vibrating reality of suffering the worst torment clacked his teeth together. His chest ached and his hands were cold. The burden of loneliness had finally come to crush him between its thick fingers. Unescapable destiny.

Alone.

Life slipped away.

A gentle breeze ruffled the fine blond hair as unbidden tears rolled into the dry grass. The dark cover of clouds trembled, then pulled back completely bathing Eli in the clean white light of a full moon.

But Eli died alone.