Here

“Why else would I come here?”

He would have paced rapidly around the room asking himself the same question, over and over. But, as there was no room to pace around in, so he settled for asking questions to himself while staring ahead, hands clutching the battered steering wheel.

“Why else would I come here?”

At this point, he didn’t really know where “here” was. “Here” kept changing for him; at one point it was his bedroom, which concealed his secret journal. At another, the lake house. Still another time, “here” took the form of the living room.

And now, the closest he could get to “here” was his worn pickup, gliding over the country road. There was a somewhat unnatural feel in the air, like something was out of place. He struggled with this concept for quite a while, but soon figured it was the truck itself, and it’s ability to ride smoothly without breaking down. Ever since he inherited the vehicle, it was causing him trouble.

There’s a first for everything.

Still, the thought of “here” troubled him. “Here” was constantly shifting, flowing with the cracked and dilapidated asphalt.

The fact of the matter remained the same; “here” was once a home, and now, it was no longer. “Here” was the only thing that contained any substance, any meaning to life. But those luxuries were long gone.

The road ahead was calling him forward, forward, forward, but all he wanted was to go back. But of course he couldn’t, he reminded himself once again, there was no “back” just “here” and the future.

Funny, “back” was now an association, a place. More specifically, all the past “here”s.

He hummed a few bars of an old Bob Dylan song, a friendly voice from “Back”;

Oh, the times, they are a-changin’

 

 “Here” was a prison when it used to be a haven. “Here” kept him from happiness. Yet he could not fight anything “Here”.

He remembered that it was then that “Back” had been his room, and that it had been the safest room in the world.

He could get away from his parents’ fights, from the strong smell of smoke, from the wiry haired neighbors who’d sleep on the couches, and even from himself.

Here was the point where Back could go no further. Back was the point before the missiles started firing and the masses started running under buildings and school desks.

Here was the place where he was slowly dying of radiation poisoning.

And so he drove onward, because Back was gone forever, and there was only Here. 

The present creates such a marvelous trap; simply place a being harboring desires to live, and they cannot escape. Time grabs hold of them and pulls them down by their wants, their needs, and their desires. Anyone outside of time could just watch their prey struggle to make themselves last, to be remembered.

That’s probably why the missiles were fired in the first place; to defeat time. He could imagine the Generals (generals now, they’re not all that important now that they’re dead) smiling and boasting in their last few seconds before obliteration about how all they had to do the whole time was flick a switch and humanity could triumph over Einstein’s laws, with the small sacrifice of one planet.

And so he drove onward, because Back was gone forever, and there was only Here, and the baggage Here brought with it, Time. Or, what was left of Time, at least.

            He was jolted out of his thoughts by the ping of a bird hitting the windshield. “That’s funny,” he thought “I thought they were all gone.”

            He pulled to the side of the road, parked the truck, and got out, not bothering to lock the doors.

            For he was the Last Man on Earth, and he could do whatever he damned well pleased.

            The bird was battered and bruised by the time he got to it, but still barely alive.