The Last Two People On Earth, With Only A Box Of Fireworks Each To Find Each Other

A shorty-short story about a ridiculous scenario and a tribute to the heartless man who's wishing it into existence bill after bill. Happy 4th, everyone.

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The Last Two People On Earth, With Only A Box Of Fireworks Each To Find Each Other

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I spent the precious days after I emerged from the dust forging straight ahead across the wastes of the world, marching until the night hours when my artificial stars would shine the brightest. 


With each passing rotation of the smog-ridden suggestion of the sun I'd rest more. There was nothing to eat, nothing to drink, nothing to see during the day. Usually, walking with my eyes shut was more interesting, and at the very least, less of a reminder of my absurd circumstance.


Nightfall brought with it fits of laughter and tears endlessly pure against the desolation, nearly as pure as the hues of the man-made constellations I'd launch with rabid excitement. The dust in the atmosphere built a stage uninhibited by the stars or the moon, casting angelic halos of light around every pin-prick of color. If the people of yesterday could experience such majesty and spectacle, if artists could be inspired by it, politicians moved by it, soldiers brought to their knees...


I had to beat myself to the ground every sunrise to keep some ammunition for the next night. The only thoughts I held during the day were the damage that had been done to my arsenal and the mysterious Other figure below the horizon. Of course, I had only them to blame for my consumption, cursing their very existence with the same fire with which I burned every fuse. 


When I do find the Other, however, I imagine both of us will find some relief in knowing we can give the earth another chance at creation, or at the very least grant it the formality of an epilogue. The dust will settle, the buried seeds will sprout, and life will return, somehow, because it does, and it can’t not, that’s life, etc. But I could only try not to think of the absence of it all, how I was probably the tallest thing for tens of thousands of miles in every direction. 


I write about my predicament only because it is all there is to write about. Believe me if there were bugs burrowing through the dust below me, or hills on the horizon, or specks of mold on the wind, I would give each a name and a lively, legendary story to remember them by, but there really is nothing. I refrain from writing history—I'm sure the dust and smoke is quite happy with itself. There’s nothing useful to that history. And I’m sure the Other is writing it for me, anyway.


It was today, the fourth day, that I finally stopped walking. For one, I can't bring my legs to carry my fireworks any further, and for another, I can't leave the fireworks behind. Any trace of the Other will wash away in showers of lithium and gunpowder. I'll wait out my final minutes here, as will the Other when they realize that it’s all dust on the wind by the time they find this place, and I'm only alive in the world that was. I’ll light the fuse and let my memories spin in reverse as my eyes fill with color one last time. The final rocket is red, and only red, the final red, the red that soaks the great dust ball, and the red that created it. 


Only after my finale did a coda play on the horizon, the coda I begged for, yet the coda that made me wish I’d saved a rocket for myself.


We spoke only briefly before we parted. Our fireworks were spent, there was nothing to do but let the past become future.


The only comfort I found at the end of the world was knowing they weren't searching for me, either. 

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