How it happened

A man sits alone on an empty earth. But how did it happen, and was it his fault?

Now

 

I am alone now.

Everyone else is dead, and it’s my fault. I did it.

I never meant it to be like this.

 

 

How it Happened

 

I was in Brazil, on a month-long holiday in the summer break. My friend Patrick and I had booked some last minute cheap flights and gone in search of some excitement and cheap drugs.  We asked around the backpacker hostels and had been told to find a guide called Andre, who took travellers into the Amazon and who sold drugs to tourists. We were after the distilled juice of a particular forest vine that was said to give you intense and mystical visions. The native indians took it to speak with their gods, to ask them favours and have wishes granted. We wanted to take it because we thought it would be a laugh.

After two days of hot, sweaty trekking through narrow jungle paths, we reached a small clearing. Andre told us, in his excellent English, that we would camp here, and that Pat and I should put up our tents while he went to find the vine. Then he wandered off into the forest. We set up our tents and sat outside, leaning against our packs, and smoked a joint of the thick, sticky Brazilian marijuana. After about an hour Andre reappeared, a large grin on his handsome face, clutching a meter long section of a dark green vine and a bundle of sticks. He built a small fire and chopped the vine, he squeezed the juice out and put the pieces, along with the juice and some water into a condensing pan which went on the fire.

"It will take about an hour to cook." he told us. Patrick rolled another joint and we smoked, leaning back, meditatively watching the contents of the pan roll and boil. I closed my eyes, listening to the forest quiet.  I fell asleep.

 I was woken by Patrick sitting up next to me.

"It's ready dude." he said, and grinned.

Andre was ladling the now greenish black fluid from the pan into three cups. He passed us one each. I caught Patrick's eye and we smiled at each other nervously. Andre raised his cup.

"Cheers, guys." he said happily, we raised ours too, and drank. It tasted astringent, acid green, and dried my mouth and burned my throat. Pat choked, coughed and muttered "Jesus" to himself. I rubbed my tongue on my palate, trying to work up some saliva.

"That truly tasted like s**t." said Pat.

"Yes" agreed Andre, "It tastes like s**t, but soon you'll see gods and angels"

"I'm an atheist," pointed out Patrick "does that mean I'm not gonna see anything?"

"You'll see stuff." Andre assured him.

How right he was.

About half an hour after we drank the brew we were lying as before, leaning on our packs and looking up into the canopy. A light flashed in the corner of my eye, almost out of sight. I started, sat up and looked around sharply. Andre laughed.

"It's starting." he said

"What did you see, dude?" asked Patrick.

"Nothing, just some lights." I muttered, now feeling decidedly dizzy and disorientated. I lay back down. Lights continued to flash across my vision, getting stronger and more frequent.

"I'm fucked." announced Patrick, five minutes later. "I'm seeing f*****g dragons and s**t in the sky man, I am totally fucked."

I opened my mouth to answer and everything went black.

I awoke floating, spinning in blackness. I breathed in deeply, feeling my lungs stretch and expand, tasting every molecule of air.

"I feel great!" I shouted, a tide of euphoria and happiness sweeping me along. I rested and lay, feeling the happiness all around me. It was liberation.  Then it turned bad. A terrible fear gripped my heart and every muscle in my body tensed.  Waves of icy panic and fear washed over me and I broke down and sobbed. I felt an indefinable sadness, as though all the heartbreak in the world was mine. Then, as suddenly again it changed and there was peace, and a beautiful stillness.

"What do you want?" a voice asked out of the blackness.

"I want to see peace on earth, man" I replied, and laughed, because it's such a cliché.

BANG, and I'm back in the forest, lying on my back and the last of the sunlight is filtering through the trees. I sit up and I'm dizzy, with a pounding headache and a dry mouth. Pat's lying next to me with his eyes open, starring at nothing, his fingers twitching as if he's playing an invisible piano. Andre's behind a tree, taking a piss.

"You ok?" he asks when he emerges, zipping up his jeans. "You were out for like two hours."

"Felt like five minutes" I reply, "I got a f****n' headache man."

"Drink some water. I guess Patrick will wake up soon now too. That was a strong vine, I haven't had anything that powerful for a while now."

Andre sits across the fire from me and we smoke cigarettes in companionable silence. After maybe twenty minutes Patrick sits up with a gasp, like he's surfacing from underwater. He looks around, dazed.

"That was like, some seriously weird s**t man." he says. "Give me some water." I hand him my canteen, he gulps half of my water and hands it back. He lies back down. "Man, that was f****n' crazy."

We rolled yet another joint, smoke it and crawl into our tents, tired, drug hungover and feeling a little washed out. We slept.

 

 

 

In Tanzania, a man returns home to his village, carrying his heavy plough. He tilled his small plot of land today under the burning African sun and now his head is heavy and his legs are weak. Reaching the cool of his hut he sits on the mat on the floor, tucking his legs under him. His hands shake as he plays with his youngest child while his wife prepares the cassava for dinner. At dusk his head still hurts and he is feverish, trembling and weak. Tomorrow, if he is not better, his wife will walk the fifteen kilometres to the nearest pharmacy to buy Chloroquine tablets and Asprin. She thinks her husband  has malaria.

 

 

In Japan, a weary student rides her bicycle home. She started school at eight in the morning, finished at four and had extra tuition and revision from five until eight in the evening. She is preparing for her all important high-school leaving exams. At home she picks listlessly at her dinner and her mother sends her to bed at ten, worrying that the stress is getting to her daughter. She looks pale and ill and her mother looks forward to the end of her exams when her daughter can relax and have fun again.

 

In Russia, a journalist drinks coffee with some friends. She is feeling tired and weak and wonders if she hasn't quite got over the influenza she had last week. She doesn't have enough work and needs to find stories. She makes her excuses and leaves early.

 

In Australia, a surfer takes a knock on the back of the head when his board escapes him. He blames this when, hours later, he feeling sick and dizzy, and like his legs belong to someone else.

 

In Mexico, a tailor picks himself with a dirty needle. He thinks he may have a little blood poisoning.

 

In Italy, it's a bank manager, who thinks she has a migraine.

 

 

 

Nobody thinks it's serious at first.

 

 

 

The next day we went on to Manaus with Andre, and a week later we caught our flight home to London. We returned to University with suntans and a lot of crazy stories to tell our friends.

We never talked about that trip in the forest, so I'll never know what Patrick asked for or if his wish was granted. By the time term started again in earnest news was beginning to emerge of a new illness in Asia. The health scare had started and people were wearing surgical masks in the street of Hong Kong and Japan. Doctors were racing to find out what the new disease was and how it could be cured. At this stage, we weren't too worried. Like Ebola, like Chicken 'flu , SARS and penicillin resistant TB we thought that this was just the latest new disease for the media and  the pandemic-theorists to get excited about. It hadn't touched us, yet. Then reports came in from Russia, Canada and Europe. Cities were quarantined. It took a while for statistics from Africa to be taken seriously, as at first the deaths were put down to a cholera epidemic, with HIV and seasonal malaria thrown in.  But it spread, and it covered the world before anyone could do anything about it. It moved too quickly, started in too many places, and it killed too fast. No-one could pin it down to find a cure, and probably there was no cure.

 

I cannot describe to you what it was like. Everyone, everywhere, dying around me. People held huge parties, feasts, when they knew they were going to die. People went looting, jumped off bridges. The pubs and bars stayed open, and when the bartenders died people just helped themselves. People were fighting, kissing and dancing in the streets. When the disease took hold and they were too weak to move they lay on the ravaged streets and watched the world through glazed eyes. Then they died. Corpses piled up everywhere and the cities stank. Some people tried to escape by fleeing to isolated cottages or mountains or islands. Those people, they died too. It was inescapable. I never tried to escape. I partied with the rest, waiting for the headache, the fever and the chills to start, waiting for sickness and death. My family died, my friends died, Patrick died at my side, shaking, pale and coughing. But it never happened to me. I thought about killing myself, about ending it before the sickness came, but I never quite had the courage. I watched the world dying without me, and I couldn't understand why.

 

Now I know.

Now, as I lie on my stomach on the soft green grass looking out over what we once called England, I understand. I understand that this was all my doing, that I wished for it and my wish was granted.

Because you see, it's peaceful now. No-one is fighting anymore. There are no wars or terrorism or bombs. There's just me, and I've no-one left to fight with.

 

Reviews

[Senseless whatever]

Very nice. Eager to see the film.

[LuluX]

This story has been made into a short film which will be up on you tube soon. I'll post a link when it goes up. The film is frikken creeeeepy I think it is much scarier then the writing.

[Tina Kline]

Your story is quite impressive! What a great idea and you spun it into a fantastic story with an ending that kinda made me want to cry. A very sad ending. I really like your story a lot. I'll say it again, impressive!