The Last Man on Earth

By Peter Bowden



The last man wandered the skeletal remains of the city, where trees grew through windows and the wind played long-forgotten songs on rusted swing sets. He moved like a ghost with a beating heart, brushing dust from doorframes, straightening toppled mailboxes, whispering apologies to broken things. Each step was a liturgy for the world that had been.

He carried a weathered notebook bound with twine, and in it he wrote memories like spells: the taste of cold lemonade, the sharp joy of catching fireflies, the way a lover once said his name in a whisper just before sleep. He wrote not to remember, but to keep something warm in the windblown hollows of his soul. At times he believed the city breathed with him—shadows curled in ways too gentle for coincidence.

On the hundredth morning of his wandering, he found a candle flickering in the basement of a collapsed museum. A small circle of warmth in all that ruin. A girl sat near it, watching him like a ghost might. He said nothing at first, just dropped his notebook beside her. She opened it slowly. And for the first time in what felt like forever, he heard a sound not made by wind: a quiet, fragile laugh.


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