One cold winter day

I wake up unhappily as I always do these days. It was quiet, impossibly quiet.  Dragging chains of sadness, I walk downstairs to take my intake of rapidly decreasing vital chemicals to replenish my supplies of energy for the day. (I used to call this breakfast, and sometimes still do). Then I flop outside feeling miserable.

Firstly, I pass the physiotherapy building, now abandoned; its wooden boards eaten by time and termites. I remember going for physiotherapy when the world was young and fruitful. Now, the only letters visible on the used-to-be gleaming title are the P, Y, the first T and the M, making the sign look like this: P Y    T        M. I then leave the rotting building to its fate, and move on down the quiet streets. Slits of yellow light begin to pop above the horizon. It is early in the morning.  There is never anyone around at this time now, due to the low employment rates. The recession continues downhill lately, so no one ever comes out in the dawn hours other than me.

I continue on down the dim, silent streets like a ghost, swiftly yet silently, floating down a corridor. Stopping before withering trees, I send out an adventurous hand to feel the rotting branches. My eyes lifted to see the air shrouded with a teary mist. The moisture in my eyes levelled to the mist I was seeing;  they brimmed with tears. Not tears of joy or laughter, but tears of great sadness. My family had died on a day like this very one, and I had seen this mist that day. It is a saddening reminder that I must now live on my own, with no one to tend to my needs. I sob lightly down the rest of the short lane, then I pull myself together and shamelessly turn 90⁰ left (once called a left turn) taking each step in a brazen fashion.  More withering bushes I see, and a cold chill wind begins to rustle the dying leaves and whistle into my ear a story of old.

As I continue my journey around the town, I see an ancient block of houses, now abandoned by its owners as was the physiotherapy building. I notice a sign hanging by its suction cup saying, "Closed due to lack of business".

A white flake collapses rather neatly into my hair. Two more flakes repeat the first's actions, and then many fall onto my ageing scalp. I upturn my face with my nose to the sky, and allow several of these white flakes (once called snow) to land on my tongue and dance upon it like a delicate ballerina. I remember doing this when I and everything was younger and livelier. The cold begins to sink in, so I dash at cheetah's (or what used to be called cheetah) speed back to my safe home. As the cold leaves, the sadness returns. I slump down into my winter-cold bed and think about what is to become of me. Winter has returned, meaning it has been over one year since the earth was wiped from all life, but me. It is looking grim for the world after me.

By Daniel Chong