Twilight in the Wasteland

The wind whipped around Tozul and he pulled his hood tighter around his mask to keep the dust from his eyes, nose and mouth. The local star was doing its best to pierce the dark cloud cover, but it was never more than a pale twilight on a good day, and mostly darkness the rest of the time.

Tozul wandered the wasteland looking for his next meal. He wasn’t sure what he would find, if anything at all, but he was hungry. He had been hungry most of his life.

The wasteland was unkind to life of all kinds. Water was scarce, and food was much harder to find. After the disaster, one ecosystem after another collapsed with the lack of nourishing light from the local star. First the plants died, then the bugs that ate the plants, followed by the animals that ate the bugs. On and on until life on the planet was mostly gone, with only a few pockets of humanity clinging to existence.

In the distance, Tozul saw something that might prove promising as a meal. Mushrooms!

He quickened his pace and soon was standing surrounded by more mushrooms than he had seen in a very long time.

He wasted no time in kneeling down and collecting as many as he could, shoving them into his pockets, his satchel and his backpack.

As he picked the mushrooms, he caught the glint of something metal amongst the stems and caps. He reached forward carefully and from the dirt extracted a small heart-shaped locket.

It was dirty and pitted with age and the elements, but appeared to be intact with a delicate chain that was caked with dirt.

He gently opened the locket and the dust and debris contained within were caught on the ever-present wind and blew away. He expected that he had just witnessed the photos that once adorned the inside take flight.

He delicately closed the locket and rubbed the dirt from the chain as much as possible. He sat down in the little field of mushrooms and stared at the locket in his hand.

Whom had it belonged to all those years ago? A little girl with photos of her mother and father? A mother with photos of her children? What were they like? Had they survived the initial disaster only to die of starvation in the aftermath?

The disaster itself had claimed most of the lives on the planet. Tozul couldn’t even say what it was as he was born after it happened and his mother didn’t seem to know what had happened either. She had died when he was young, leaving him to fend for himself, but not before teaching him how to survive in the wasteland.

The locket made him think of her.

He smiled behind his mask at the memory of her; how they had sat in the darkness and she told stories that had filled his mind of what the world was like before. Stories of tall buildings, wide-open waters and so many people!

It was all gone now.

He pulled a mushroom cap and lifted his mask to put it in his mouth.

He chewed absently as he rubbed the dirt from the locket, his mind wandering to the things he had seen and done. He swallowed and took another bite.

His thoughts of all the death he had seen made his breath catch in his throat and he tried to swallow past it and found that he could not. His mouth was watering and he felt pain in his chest.

He pulled off his mask, grabbed a mushroom, and attempted to exam it in the failing light.

Fool! In his hunger, he had failed to examine them before eating. He knew that this variety was poisonous!

He felt himself fading fast and knew that he didn’t have much time left. He recalled his mother’s final words and muttered them himself, with nobody to hear him, “Goodbye cruel world.”

Tozul slumped and was gone, but the wind blew on.