The One that Missed the Boat

I have discovered the Reedsy prompts that I am sent each week do not limit an author to only one submission. Gleefully I banged out two stories this week that I thought were really good (check out my story for both... I hope you enjoy them!) and was going for a third. The prompt "Two people who thought they were the last people left on Earth end up meeting by chance" spurred me on to create a story I titled "Alone".
I knew I had nineteen hours to finish it so thought last night I'd sleep on how I wanted to end it.

I awoke early this morning and logged on to Reedsy to see how long I had and discovered to my dismay the submission window was closed and I had missed the boat. Two submissions is better than none at all but I was hoping to have that third entry in.

Never mind, my wife reminds me regularly that if it were between the quick and the dead I'd rarely be the quick. So since I cannot post to Reedsy I think I'll post it here...

Please enjoy, Alone...

Jason winced as the image on the screen blurred and shimmered. The muscle man paused, his blond head inches from the leading lady but unable to reach. Easing his way out from the makeshift lounge of old cushions, blankets and broken pallet slats Jason waddled over to the television and gave the video player a thump with his fist. The picture leapt back into life and the movie continued. A much younger Jason finally kissed his new wife and the tapping on the champagne flutes ceased as their family and friends erupted with hoots and laughter. This was normal for Jason; this was what normal had looked like the past five years.

Jason had woken up on the morning of April 1^st in the year two thousand to find his wife’s favorite record playing the opening track, scrambled eggs half cooked on the stove. To Jason’s surprise his wife was absent, seemingly disappeared. Ringing around Jason found he could get none of his family or friends. In fact only pre-recorded TV seemed to be showing. There was no radio, only static. Jason ventured out in his navy blue dressing gown and slippers and found the paper was there but no one else was about. It was the usual news, the daily quiz and the sport section was what interested Jason the most. He took the rest of the paper upstairs and left it on the bed as he waited for his wife to return. The record played all the way through and then again as Jason finished cooking his wife her eggs. When they grew cold he reheated them in the microwave and ate them himself.

When the 1^st became the 2^nd and then the 3^rd Jason tried to call the emergency services. His worry tripled when there was no reply, nobody on the other end of the line.

“Hello! Hello!! My wife is missing!” Jason yelled down the empty line.

Desperate he left the house and knocked on neighbors’ doors. No answer. A search for a human, animal, anything else alive drove him to the next town and then the next until finally he found he was wandering lost on an empty beach.

That was two years ago, two long and lonely years. Jason found he was alone; recordings of music, movies, documentaries and cartoons were his only source of company. Jason played his all-time favorite DVDs over and over until the player died. Then he dug out the video recorder and began to repeat anything he had on VHS. The one video he watched the most surprised Jason. It was his wedding day cassette, a memory he previously only suffered through each year on the date that special day. Now he tried to watch it every night, it made him feel for the briefest that life was back to normal. Jason had seen the video that often now the tape was stretching.

From home Jason packed what few things he could fit in his car and then car hopped across the country. North to South it took Jason three months to drive from New York to the Panama and then on to San Antonio in Chile. There he acquired a boat. With nothing to lose Jason sailed across to New Zealand and wept on the Kiwi shores while there as he had no person to tell. It was touch and go as he slowly made his way across to Australia, a journey he’d never attempted before and seemingly never to be tried again. Jason fulfilled a young boyhood dream as he settled in Sydney and wondered what the rest of his strange life had in store. As the world collapsed around him Jason discovered new skills, how to harness solar power, how to repair a gas stove, how to extend the life of packaged goods like meat and bread, how to light and sustain a cooking fire. Life stretched out, long and lonesome.

*

Amelia Johnstone was tinkering in her garage on the evening of April 2^nd in the year two thousand. She was a student at the Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia. She was also highly annoyed at the noisiness of her neighbor.

Smoke on the Water thumped through her home for the third time that night and the thirtieth time that week. Her spanner swiftly secured the final screw on her device. Compact, box-like with a number of wires connecting direct to a naked motherboard the device now only awaited that Amelia flick the on switch.

“This will teach you to tell me to shove it, mate,” Amelia seethed.

The laptop motherboard flared into life and the twin fans began to whir, cooling the chip that controlled the device. It began to shimmer and then vibrate and finally it exploded. Where Smoke on the Water had cracked her garage window, Amelia’s device managed to smash it completely.

Deep Purple’s throbbing track continued to rattle the garage walls as Amelia quickly powered down the motherboard and released a homemade carbon dioxide extinguisher on the burning box. Releasing a scream at her obvious failure Amelia kicked her creation, six months of revenge driven focus. It slid off the counter and broke open across the concrete. Amelia left the mess to clean up later and stormed next door.

Bang, bang, bang! Amelia thundered on the neighbor’s door. The song finally drew to a joyous end. Amelia gave the door another few knocks before she held her breath and wait for the opening bars to painfully begin all over again. Instead there was silence, empty and utterly blissful silence. Curious, Amelia peered through the front room window. The television was still playing and there was a half-eaten supreme pizza. Amelia’s mind pondered how it was the jerk could watch Seinfeld reruns while heavy metal music pounded from his stereo.

“Hey jerk-off! Is anybody home?!” Amelia yelled.

For just over an hour she waited, nothing from the neighbor. Seinfeld became Fraser. Unsure Amelia turned away looking up and down here normally busy street. Brad, the cute guy two doors down was normally bringing in his bin then. Doris who loved her garden wasn’t watering out the front of her house and yet the hose was running freely, half on the driveway and half on the roses. Something was definitely off. A check on these neighbors too proved the street lacked people.

A twelve month search followed where Amelia widened her search parameters in her quest to discover where all the people had gone and to quash her guilty conscience which regularly hinted that the lack of people very much may have related to her black box experiment. Once she had accepted somehow she had wiped out humanity Amelia began searching for a way to reverse her error. There were memorable moments, like the time she turned her hair white and the time she managed to change genders, but none of her experiments managed to reverse the damage done. Giving in, the Tech began to use her true skills to try and reach beyond Melbourne to find out if she truly was alone.

*

Jason pressed pause on the video he had been watching. It was Bill and Ted on some sort of nonsense adventure, the image of the two characters were frozen midway through a game of charades amongst the clouds of heaven. He could have sworn he had just heard his phone ring. Checking the screen he discovered one missed call from an unknown number.

Excited Jason dialed the number.

Amelia picked up immediately.

“Hello?” asked Jason.

“I’m so sorry,” Amelia replied. “This is all my fault.”