Rebel, Rebel

         It had been days before he realized it had happened, and weeks before he allowed himself to label it for what it was. Here now, marching his way across the endless expanse of the city, navigating it’s serpentine maze of reeking alleyways and rusting thoroughfares, he knew he was the last living opinion on the matter, and liked to think that this left no room for doubt. The words of the last man are the inevitable truth, and the only truth. Until, of course, he dies, and all truths die with him.

         Despite the disheartening nature of his existence, he found comfort in his kingdom, though he was it’s only subject, and took it upon himself to govern as he saw fit. He saw himself as a sort of anti-Adam, living to the flat-iron garden in which he had been imprisoned. He, of course, despised Adam. For, unlike himself, Adam had living animals to look after, a garden of unending green, and a sky of unwavering blue.

         Lifting his beard to the breeze, the man closed his eyes and imagined the deep, dark forests of his childhood. He had always found solace in nature, choosing often to be alone in the quiet of the woods in the long, quiet afternoons of autumn. As the forest lay dormant, just before the fall of snow, before the air become to brisk to breath deeply, he felt the world was at it’s purest. Taking in great lungfuls of clean, unscented forest air, he had smiled, believing he was in heaven.

         The pets were the first to die, always blessed with affection, but never independence. Those that had escaped the confines of their apartments and townhouses had been held captive by the concrete dungeon of the city. Their corpses lined the alleys and gutters, their bright, nylon collars striping across matted fur and decaying flesh.

         “I suppose… All dogs don’t go to heaven,” he had thought to himself, smiling for a moment, then laughing outright. Laughter had been something new to him lately. In years since his move to the city, he had preferred the alleyways, looking down at his feet as he walked, trying to remain, as nearly as he could manage, invisible to the world. But recently he had realized something very important. He was the world.

         And this made him laugh. Made him dance and sing through the street, clapping his hands as he walked, praising all of creation. And what a creation it was, he often thought to himself. He may have been the last man alive, but the men looking down at him from an downtown underwear add would surely last longer. They were encased in glass. He was encased in mud, and hair, and sweat.

         He loved being dirty. He had never appreciated deodorant, shampoo, or bodywashes, least of all in the summertime. The smell of his body and the oil of his hair and his skin had often comforted him, making him feel somehow more human. His beard had been growing long before the end of civilization, and delighted in the thought of growing it much longer now, without the hindrance of keeping up workplace appearances.

         Suddenly, depression attacked, grabbing hold of his heart and twisting it upside down. He felt ill and leaned against a splintered telephone pole. He had thought of her. Her. For some reason, she had crept into his consciousness, for just a moment, for just long enough for him to want to die. He lifted his hand to his diaphragm, gently following the rise and fall of his shallow, anxious breaths.

In all her juvenile, blind-faith wisdom, she had seen this coming, and there was a time in which she had tried to convince him. But she gave up, and he never gave in. Why hadn’t he? Why hadn’t he listened to her? He had loved her dearly, obsessed over her endlessly, sought her out long after they had parted ways, but he had never listened to her. Was it principal? Or was it spite? Vengeance for his love unrequited.

         It really didn’t matter. She was dead. Or gone. He really wasn’t sure which was the proper term. With a push from his elbow, he left the telephone pole and continued down the street, stepping over a lifeless retriever, it’s leash wrapped around a bike rack.

         The sun would soon set and he’d head indoors, looking for a warm place to eat and sleep. Food had become something he rather enjoyed, especially when he had the energy to start a fire. Had anyone known the joys, he often thought, of cooking over an open flame, 35 stories up?

         After he’d eaten, he’d find some new clothes and go to bed. Then, lying in the all-enveloping darkness of the city, he’d try to pray. He often wished he knew the reason he was left behind. It wasn’t as if he could pretend that at any point he didn’t believe in God. He had been raised in the church, and up to certain point he had accepted it. But after his one and only love had turned her back on him, but not God, he had taken it upon himself to hate God.

         He had tried to stop, but the hatred was so tempting. As he closed his eyes for the night, draped in the folds of a large sundress he had found in the lobby, he hoped there was some great plan for him. He prayed that God had some all-important task for him to complete, just so that he could hate it, and tear it apart with his hatred.

         He thought again of the forest of his youth, and how he would never see it again. He had been walking for days and hadn’t found the edge of the city, and more high-rises loomed in the distance. Had he known he’d never see the trees again, he probably would’ve burned them down. He laughed at the thought, long and loud.