Zero

The soil was soft and sticky, the consistency of tobacco-tar.  It collected poison from the atmosphere and clung aggressively to anything it touched.  Like fly-paper.  Fly-paper earth.  The plants had stopped growing and were now in the process of being reclaimed by the fly-paper earth as they wilted and bent and eventually touched the poison itself, forever trapped.

Zero trudged in hes new boots staring mildly into the decay and the doomed plants.  They were once lovely and green.  He wished he could remember their names.  Then he realized that he really didn't care what they were called.  Just a demonstration that he no longer knew.  That was all.  Just as his own name had vanished some time after those who spoke it succumbed to the poison earth.  Now he was Zero, and not even he spoke that name.  Zero.  Remove all things from a man one by one and Zero is what you have left.  It was not a name.  Zero was a sum.  It was the sphere of the cold sun filtered through a forever-winter's haze.  It was the outline of a cold, dead planet that no longer spun, no longer supported life.  

Zero life.

First radio waves had fallen from the sky like featherless birds, land-bound.  

Zero communication.  

Then silence swelled and pushed out all sound until the thought of speaking made everyone ill.  Then something else fell from the sky.  It was invisible but held great weight, great mass.  It pulled things downward and never relented.  It brought with it an understanding and the people stopped believing in anything.

Many died that first day as faith alone had kept them moving for years.  They were not sad.  They were relieved.  They fell in place and gradually became the sticky, dead, fly-paper earth.

The rest eventually followed.

Zero did not fall.  He just slowly reduced.  And when he reached Zero he found he was still standing...so he carried on.  He tried not to dwell on it.  Where was no one to relay this solely unique feeling to.  No other experience with which to compare it.  In this, the bottom of the world, there were two things.

Zero and Nothing.

And with no way to compare, no device on which to add or subtract, no opinions to sway belief one way or the other, it was impossible to truly know which was less.

Zero or Nothing.

And so Zero arrived at his home.  It had once been painted blue.  No more.  It was losing faith slowly.  He carefully removed his new shoes using one of many clean sticks kept on the porch as not to contact the fly-paper earth.  The shoes and stick were flung into the yard, once grass-filled.  They joined countless shoes and sticks all in various states of losing faith.

He opened the door and padded barefoot to the kitchen where he unloaded the knapsack of canned foods from the store.  He, its only customer.  He opened one can and ate from it.  He did not bother to notice what food he was eating.  It simply did not matter.  Eating was like breathing, if you stopped doing it you went from Zero to Nothing.

No way of knowing what was better.

When he was full enough he plucked the small half-quart jar from the far end of the table.  He shook it slightly, side to side and it rattled tinny and high.  An enjoyable sound in a silent world.  A splendor all too extravagant for such a function-less existence. 

Zero uncapped the jar and poured its contents onto the faded wood table.  Again, the sound was stark as teeth, large and small tumbled out like gambler's dice.  He rubbed each between thumb and forefinger, calming smoothness bringing dim color to his eyes as if memory were a faint spark and no more.

Zero silently regarded each with the only names he could recall...

wife...

son...

daughter...

friend...

stranger...