FICTION
The Last Human in the Milky Way — 11
Excerpt from Chapter 11
(…)
He walked out of the Sanders family’s garden. He carefully closed the gate behind him and walked a few meters up towards his own house. Then he stopped, and stood for a few seconds outside the neighbour’s entrance.
He decided to take a closer look at the house of the nearest neighbour, the Rutherford family, Elisa and Kevin, whom he had had as a neighbour for the past two years. The doors were locked, so he peeked into the window next to the door. He saw that the same was true here. They had not taken the furniture with them. They had just left and it was not very tidy in there, something that could indicate that it had happened at full speed.
He felt uneasy, without being able to put the feeling into words. He felt chills on his back, because here it was clear that something had happened that he had not perceived. He had been completely buried in his own thoughts, in his own feelings, in his own longings for something he could not accurately define for himself. It was vague, in the sense that he did not quite know what words to put on it.
Now it had happened, something had happened to the world, and he could not understand what it was. It was something he had not been able to catch.
He thought back to Sara and himself. They had lost each other. He had lost her and she had lost him. They no longer saw each other; they had stopped talking to each other. Suddenly, one day he got overwhelmed by the feeling: “It’s over.”
He had shut himself in with his work, had decided to put everything of himself, all his creative power and energy, in the work. And thus, he had chosen her away, it was that simple, she would probably have said, if he knew her right.
He saw it clearly now, this which he had not seen then. She had left and he had stayed. And he had not been informed of anything. He knew nothing about where he was in life, or what he was going to do next. He was lost.
He went into his house and locked the door. Afterwards he thought that he did not know exactly why he acted as he did.
(…)
The author is currently reviewing, rewriting, and editing the manuscript for the novel The Last Human in the Milky Way. Excerpts from selected chapters will be published as previews on Medium.
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