The Luckiest Girl On The Planet

Earth is nothing but a cold, dead rock. I am the only person left on Earth, and it is my birthday. Hooray! I have been alone for so long that I can’t even remember what someone else looks or feels like. It’s just me and the silence of this cold, dead planet. I’ve had a lonely life since everyone died, but today is going to be different. Today I get to celebrate my fiftieth birthday with myself!

I am Kaitlin King, and I have been alone on this cold windy rock for twenty-five long years.

Crazy how one little meteor can change so much, but I guess things happen that way sometimes...

So, to celebrate fifty years of life, I will sit in my armchair drinking Earl Grey tea from a delicate china tea set and eat baked beans and sardines. Then for dessert, I will have a twenty-five-year-old fruit cake that I have been saving for a special occasion.

After dinner, I am going to write a story about myself while trying not to think about why I am the only one left. Poor me, eh? In my time I have spent countless lonely days and nights watching the world disintegrate around me, while I did my best to hold on to the last pieces of civilization.

I was minding my own business, wandering around Starbucks in search of a strong coffee, when I noticed something strange. The sun had gone down earlier than usual and the sky glowed orange-pink like it does on those winter days where the sun is setting at 5:00pm. But it was only 10am!

And then, out the window, I saw an object streaking across the sky—glowing bright green from head to tail and moving swiftly enough to make me jump back in shock. It seemed to be headed right for us, but before I could get too close to see what happened next, there was this enormous explosion that shook everything so hard some people's teeth rattled loose.

There was a bright flash: white light and heat, intense enough to peel the paint off buildings and squish the Starbucks customers' brains through their eye sockets. When I came to my senses, the sun was shining brightly, and the air tasted like raspberries.

And everything was.... quiet.

That was the last day I saw anyone I knew.

Then the sky went black, and it rained rocks for a full month straight. I refused to give up. I hid in the basement of Starbucks for almost a week until those damned rocks stopped falling and the sun returned for a few hours each day.

During those long, lonely nights, I felt like I was going crazy. My mind played tricks on me, telling me I’d be fine if I listened to the whispers. But it was only the wind, wasn’t it? I didn’t need the wind to tell me it’s getting colder every day out there. I was trapped underground with the same four walls and no windows, but I was going to fight to survive.

I was afraid that I would go crazy, that I would lose my mind, that I would go insane. The sane part of me told myself that it was just the sound of my imagination playing tricks on me, but the dark place deep inside me knew better. So I ignored the whispers and did my best to live my life in the only way I knew how.

I don’t know how long ago it was that everyone else died, but as far as I can tell, it’s been around twenty-five years since they all vanished; time has never felt so uncertain before. Anyway, they’re gone, which means this place is mine by default because there’s no one else left on the planet.

People used to live here: families, kids, loved ones, and all kinds of plants and animals. On the day that they all died, they were walking around minding their own business and—poof—they vanished into thin air, as if they hadn’t been there at all, as if they were never real. They left me all alone to take care of this big blue rock, and now their empty homes are full of dust and spiders.

But, as I said, I am the last one left. So I am going to live my best life every day. I am going to wait here with the last of the human race, in this cold, windswept, grey corner of the globe of which I am the last known person.

On the bright side, there is always stuff to come back to. All kinds of stuff. I have my whole life to explore and figure out what happened on that horrible day. I’m sure there’s story to be told about that meteor that hit this place and destroyed this place...

And now I, the lone survivor of the Great Meteoric Collision of 2025, have been left to fend for myself in this cold, dark universe. I scrape the last bits of beans onto the delicate china plate. Twenty-five years of relying on others and suddenly you find yourself alone. It’s surprising how selfish I have become. I like it this way now, so it doesn’t bother me too much.

Take food, for example. I thought I would miss my favorite foods, but I have made do without it. My diet has always been about provisions and working with whatever was available. Ever since that cold, disastrous day, I have lived on canned vegetables, canned beef, canned sardines, canned soup and Spam. The world has never tasted better.

One day I realized I felt happier the more silent the world became.. I love this little home away from home. I’ve been running this planet by myself since the day the meteor hit. It’s so nice here...

Anyway, a while ago I was looking for something new to stop things from getting too monotonous and came up with the idea to live in other people’s homes for a few days or weeks at a time, it’s a bit like Airbnb except it’s free. It doesn’t matter what sort of place it is - as long as it has furniture, food and no dangerous animals lurking about.

I have just come back from doing a stint in the old lady’s place across the street. She had a lot of bookshelves full of dusty classics that no one has touched in decades, so I curled up on her couch every day for three weeks, reading until my eyes closed.

I stayed in an old Victorian manor on Larchmont Street, just off Hollywood Boulevard, and I found a beautiful heart-shaped locket hanging above one of its upstairs fireplaces. I am still wearing the locket today.

My favorite house was a small cottage on the edge of the city. It had a strange, old-fashioned, stained-glass window, and the house smelled of formaldehyde and incense. I enjoy thinking about the reasons someone would have been burning incense in the living room of that house.

Recently, I stayed in an old-fashioned English cottage in the middle of the woods. The house was dark and its roof had a deep thatch of grass, so I had a picnic on the roof every morning.

It’s fascinating to look at the photos in the houses. So many images of distant places, people and events, people you will never know or meet. I look at the photos, and I wonder about the people in them, about their names and their lives.

Yesterday, I slept in a secluded house in the suburbs. I found the key to the house under the mat in front of the main door. I felt like I was living in the movie Gone Girl.

I have decided that after I have finished my birthday celebrations, I will go out and find myself a new home to live in for a few weeks. I need somewhere to relax and indulge myself. There’s nothing more comforting than a wonderful book in times of hardship. I like the feeling of being surrounded by books.

This is my life now, and I couldn’t be happier! I can’t believe I’m still able to smile, laugh and eat food after the twenty-five years I have had!

You may think that I am being selfish, or that I am being greedy, or that I have no sense of respect. And you would probably be right. But remember, there’s no one left to care.

Sometimes, I wonder if this is a dream. It’s the kind of dream where you wake up in the morning and check your finger to make sure it’s still there.

But it’s not a dream. Obviously, I am still the last person on earth. But that rarely crosses my mind anymore. When it does, I quickly write it off as madness. Even if there were someone else alive in this world, I wouldn’t have any way of knowing. I am all alone; the only one to have seen how this world was after 2025.

I still don’t understand fully what happened that fateful day. The last person I asked about it died after three minutes, so I am the only one left to tell the story.

I am very grateful that I didn’t end up like everyone else. One day the world was perfect, green and beautiful, full of life and color and sound and fury, and the next day the world was flat and grey and dead.

Who knows when the end will come for me? I know I’ll die, but it doesn’t worry me too much. I will die with a smile on my face and food in my belly.

I have thought about it a lot, and decided that, yes, I must be the luckiest person alive today. I am the last person left alive; there is no one else. And I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to die. I want to live. I want to keep on living in whatever way I can. I love living. And I think that, as the last person alive on this planet, I deserve to live my life the way I want.

As a new author, I would appreciate it greatly if you would leave me a heart or a tip if you have enjoyed this story.