Chapter 1: A girl at the bottom of the world

what is it like to be the last person alive?

The Eyes of March

 

Chapter 1: A girl at the bottom of the world

 

March never saw the sun; she knew it existed, but only in half-gone memories. Her suns were rows of orange lights that signalled the start of the hunt. Her world was a wet, cold and dimly lit.

 

The icy flow always sent a chill up her spine as she slumped out of her hammock to plunge into the sewage below. Nevertheless it was part of her life underground. Regular as clockwork, she’d tilt her body to wade forward through the filth, ears fixed on hisses in the distance. A turn of the corner would reveal the prey, albeit a shadow of a tail, long and spindly. Her body would tense with eyes strained, mouth-watering for food as a jaunt in the muck made the beast scramble for cover.

 

“Vermin…” she said to herself.

 

March wouldn’t accept defeat; a kind of grim resolve would take over while her body would crouch until all but her nose were submerged under water. Sooner or later one would swim by, dumb to its own cruel fate. Closer it would come, with all 8 legs in motion. And then-

 

“-Strike,” she called, arms darted like a viper. “Then twist.” Its back would split in half. “And throttle.” By then it was time to eat. It was her reminder, her mantra on how to survive.

 

Only half the battle was won. The still twitching flesh would bloat green as the air started to consume it. A growl of her stomach pitted with hunger to tug at each movement. Not one slice of Vermin passed her lips for the last two days. It smothered her thoughts and turned March around at an intersection. The ancient stone all looked the same and conspired to steal another hour as smell of the corpse grew rancid.

She spotted her hammock and knew full well the catch was half gone. Yet March still breathed a sigh of relief. “I’ve eaten worse.”

 

She inched closer to home and crawled onto a thin steel plate  where the unmistakable burble of Bertha, a thick pipe that glowed molten red, echoed beside.

 

All that effort left March too hungry to think. Her fingers wrenched the Vermin apart like it was second nature, “Another day, another kill, what do you think Bertha?” There was no answer other than a sizzle as she hocked each strip on its surface. For some reason March always expected a reply. “What about you Mary, going to cry for this one today?” A peer at another half broken pipe showed it motionless without a drop of clean water. “I guess not.”

 

Her throat ran dry. The toxic soup below would make a person violently sick if they drank it. The only option was to catch the fleshy drips from Bertha which hardened into crust the moment they struck her tongue. Still, she gagged back the lumps; just in case Mary decided to go on strike again, something that occurred far too often.

 

Seconds after the last drop, Mary sprayed to life. Rather than feel silly, March grew ecstatic, slipping off her ragged clothes to step underneath. The warm water struck the grate below and cast her reflection in the light. In it she glimpsed black knotted hair with pale bruised skin, results of living so far below.

 

That sense of cleanliness trapped her thoughts; it was the only time she could think properly. She wanted more than petty survival, the loneliness was nothing new, but it had started to wear thin with each passing day, round about the same time she started naming the pipes, she wanted a companion.

 

“Ridiculous,” March said to herself. “I’m the last one left, Humanity is a ghost.”

 

Once during a hunt, she stumbled on a piece of paper preserved in dry mud. To her it appeared as a letter of faded ink with only the last line visible, ‘Humanity is a ghost’. The scrap got eaten by the damp in minutes, but the line stuck with her. She used it as a reminder to never venture out of the sewer; after all, she was the last human alive. Nothing but death waits beyond, she thought. 

 

To her it seemed like minutes, however when the water finally stopped, her meal was in flames.

 

 “Why are you doing this to me Bertha?”

 

She tried to pull the flesh away, only to singe her own. In the end she fished a piece of steel from the sewage to pry them loose. Only two charred sticks remained, but there was no other choice, hunger had taken over.

 

The gritty texture exploded like ashes in her mouth whilst her hateful stare fixed on the remaining piece “Well at least it’s not the other way around.”

 

There was a time when March was the prey, once she was small and weak. Often the Vermin would chase her through the dark. Almost a decade later, she was the hunter, or so she thought. 

Author's Note

I always review back! and pride myself on giving real honest feedback about my reading experience :)

I'm trying to improve my own writing, this is another experiment into altering a book I finished a while ago. it was in a different tense and I'm still learning so it's not perfect but I really want your help, be brutal. even if you hate it, please say why? :) thank you

cheers for the honest suggestions from last time for those who reviewed, your awesome, lets keep the ball rolling,

Reviews

[RJ Snow]

I like your writing style so far. You don't give a lot away in this chapter so that it has a certain mysteriousness. I know that March is alone in the sewers talking to pipes whom she named, and there seems to be some type of apocalypse, which may be something I'm interested in. The whole first chapter is like a hook that has drawn me in and it makes me want to continue reading :)

[M.R Steiner]

thank you so much for the review, I still have a long way to go, actually completed and drafted this book twice already not including redrafts on the original chapter by chapter basis, clocked at 95k in the original :) Now I'm trying to adapt it to third person following advice on an earlier version I posted. I still have a long way to go though as you can see :)

your awesome for taking the time to read it, thanks again :)

[M.E.Lyle]

This is a great start. I think it's clever how your character has named the pipes. At first I wasn't sure who Bertha and Mary were, but all that was cleared up later. I am a bit concerned, however, about March. If the environment is so harsh on her prey, what affect would it have on her own flesh if she were exposed too long?
A wonderful piece of science fiction, something I rarely read, but this piece intrigued me, nah, compelled me to read on.
You are quite the writer.

[M.R Steiner]

I definitely have a long way to go, but I thank you so much for the review :)

I wish I could answer the question about the plot with March but it would reveal something later on. I've been trying to get my fiction writing down to an acceptable standard, but I will keep trying until I'm there, no matter how long it takes :)

you are most kind good sir