A short story about existential horror. Criticism is welcomed.

The Walkman

“Alexis,” said the Man in Red. “Alexis,” he said. He was trying to remember her smile.

A scorched road stretched many miles behind the Man in Red. His path was beneath an ashen sky. Blasted cars littered the road- remnants of the Old World. The sun never shined on this road.

Ashes crumbled beneath his boots. His world stank of burnt hair and tasted just as foul. But he still grinned.

Sunflowers, clanging to life in the cold, were crowding the sides of the highway. They watched him with their big, brown eyes. Heads swayed. How sweet they were. Did they know they were the heirs of mankind? They would never tell.

Nothing would ever break this Great Silence.

That was the law of the world, an eternal quiet. The only noise was made by him. He the lawbreaker. Even the wind ceased to blow. It's why he kept his ear-phones in. It made everything feel normal.

His ears were plugged. Sounds were dulled. It's just the way things should be.

The man looked ahead, where the city of embers rested. The grave of society. What year it was didn’t matter. The clock was stopped at five minutes past midnight, and now humanity was a memory of a memory.

He looked at the white cremation jar he carried. “We’re almost there, Alexis,” he said. “Just a mile left to go…”

He was a beacon. In the world of blue-grey, he was the light. He straightened his red coat as he passed a scorched car. Why hide? He crushed the Old World beneath his glossy, crimson shoes. He wanted to be seen after all. Let all the people that survive witness him. Witness this red man. Come to him. Talk.

Come one, come all, he thought as he passed every leafless bush.

He pushed his baseball cap up to let the air run through his knotted beard. He pulled his curls to resemble an ashen Santa Claus. He was a good man. There was nothing to fear from him, nothing at all. He extended his hands and waved any on-looker towards him. He was a good man, who you needn’t fear. Just like Santa. He just wanted to help someone… Anyone.

Please come and talk.  

He looked to his right. There a skeleton of an RV lay. Upon the rusted facade were the faint outlines of people. Shadows. Shadows of a family trapped when the clock hit midnight.

His hands fell to his side. He fell to his knees and covered his face with his jar. He waited. God it was so, so quiet.  

He leapt to his feet and returned to his journey. He bore a smirk. A twitchy, fading one. He kept a rhythm in the stagnant world. He started smoking. He whistled with a melody. When he’d stop, his foot would keep tapping.

But it was only him making all this noise.

So, he clicked the play button of his Walkman. The mix tape spun up. Oh, he loved this Walkman. It was his true companion. His one break from the Great Silence.

The first song was The Man Who Sold the World covered by Midge Ure. His favorite.

He smiled and pulled down his cap. “Alexis, we’re finally home.” He stopped at the entrance to this city. Detroit. A name only he remembered.

****

The city was lost. The shadows of thousands still march across the facades of blasted buildings. Nameless. They were but a trace upon the concrete. Features lost. Identities blasted to cinders. Personalities unwoven an atom at a time.

God, it sickened him to not know their names. Nobody should die unremembered.  

His eyes traced the crooked skyline. He remembered when everything was taller. He recalled the time. Two hundred years ago… This was the fourth time he made a round-trip of the States.

He was immortal. But he didn’t know how. He suffered no injury and required neither substance nor respite. He was unbreakable. He’d racked his brain over that. No answers.

Once, he'd thought to find them in the house of God. Then he came to realize divinity was just a word. Immortality, the Holy Cross, Buddha, the Quran. They were names. And names were defined by the people who remembered them, spoke them. He was never a holy man. But that ill-fated venture helped realize something.

Without humanity the whole world went to hell.  

The man in red traveled to his goal- a sagging building of stained marble with a floor of crushed glass. This was his radio base. It was a part of a county-wide chain. His ultimate plan. Give a man a hundred years to brainstorm and he'd either weaponize nuclear fission or go insane. Likely both. The man in red designed salvation instead.

He used them to broadcast across the planet. To find humanity. It also gave him an excuse to blare We Didn't Start the Fire across the wasteland. You needed a good laugh every now and then.  

But something had changed. There was sound. He ripped out his ear-plugs He listened. He heard it. His radio was on...

****

He sprinted through the musty halls. His boots shattered the tile-floors. He caught the corner of the corridor.    

The entrance to his radio room was creaked open. The wood around the lock splintered. Opened? How?

It took him a moment to realize. Then he dropped to his knees and held Alexis close to him. "I did it, honey," he told her. He wiped away a tear. "I did it. I fucking did it!"

The sound bounced between the walls. Walls lined with shadows. Watching him.

"Okay... Maybe I'm a little overexcited," he opened the jar and took a pinch of ashes from it. "Give me some luck, dear," he said. Then he patted his red shirt with them.

He stood and marched into his radio room. He straightened his ashy beard, brushed the dirt from his hazel brows, and focused his blue eyes. Now was the moment to be confident. He caught the doorknob and pushed it open.

An elderly, fat man was hanging from a rope.

A chair lay overturned. The man in red stared. He gazed at the furs the dead man wore. His bloated, purple tongue. That tired, forlorn look. Bloodshot eyes. In them, the man in red saw himself. Just wanting to sleep.

He walked over to his radio and turned it off.

He flipped the chair onto its feet. He sat down and watched. He listened.

Silence.  

He patted his ears. They weren't there. They were hanging at his belt.

He started snapping his fingers. He wanted to hear noise, even if it was just him making it.

"I'd forgotten how different they can be Alexis," he said. "I only remember you now," he kept snapping his fingers, "Blonde, blue eyed, with a birth-mark on your shoulder. That's a human. Now I see him. I was too late to get his name. Shame nobody remembers it--"

At the hanging man’s feet. There was a bundle of dried flowers. Dead sunflowers. He rose and circled this pile- he needed to balance himself due to the shock. He’d never seen a new grave in the Great Silence. It’s why he, in the darkest hours, he’d admit that humanity is dead. We buried our dead. With no new burials... It begged the question if anyone was around to bury.

Thank God he was wrong.

He moved to his radio. Maybe there was something left? It was a faint hope, but he knew Alexis would've convinced him to try. He sat Alexis on the table and shoved his earphones in.

The man sat his Walkman on the table. He hit the play-button. The song was Hurt- covered by Johnny Cash. It was better than the original in every way. But… Well, the 'empire of dirt' line hit too close to home at the moment.

"I'll find them," he told Alexis. "This is just like when you lost my credit card at that bar. I spent all night trying to find it, remember?" he saw tracks from the radio. Someone with narrow feet was here. "Pissed off a biker. Guy broke my nose and went to town on me in the parking lot, heh, till you broke a pool cue over his head." he paused and looked over to the jar.

"Yea, I remember." Alexis said, "Your nose is still angled weird. Still so cute."

He lost his smile.

"I want you to remember something," she said. "One time, in my restless dreams you held me close. And when you did, you said you'd take me to our special spot. When the surgery was a success. It was. Well, why haven't we gone to that special spot?"

He was silent after that.

He traced the room for more signs of survival. He counted only two sets of faded prints in the dirt- one broad-footed and the other smaller. It didn't take a detective here. The man had traveled with someone here. The suicide left a survivor. Someone lost and afraid in the Quiet.  

Even if he was crazy, he was still immortal. He remembered the Old World before the nukes. He knew how to help someone like that.

The tracks lead outside the room. The owner had fallen. He could see the bloody outline of elbows and knees in the glass. But nothing else.

Outside, the city was a concrete jungle. Where this person went, he couldn't tell.

He was failing. He couldn't let this opportunity fall away. This is why he walked. He needed to find humanity, wherever it was. But they eluded him.

Someway, we always survive- it’s just obvious...

But looking for someone in the city? Impossible.

He returned to his radio room. His fingers toyed with the tuning dial. More out of frustrated boredom than anything else.

He caught a ghost in the static. Words? He stopped. His fingers were trembling. He pulled the dial back, slowly. It creaked and the static started to clear as his heart continued to race.

"Tease lp. beaear Bumder-pike."

He staggered out of his chair. It was a woman. She might've been the grave-maker here.

It was closer to English than anything else he heard. He made a mental note of which frequency that was. But he couldn’t remember where it was broadcasting. He'd setup networks like this across Seattle, Los Angeles, and here in Detroit.

He tapped his Walkman, thinking about his nonexistence maps. He was under pressure. It's not like he imagined this would happen today.

"Som ista. Tease. T-Tease."

His hand was shaking as he grabbed the transmitter. "Tease," he replied.

Silence answered.

"Tease," he repeated. "Where?"

She started sobbing. "T-Tease lp."

"I tease. I will. Where?"

Silence. There was too much silence.

"Where?”

“Tease lp…”

“I’m coming. Stay where you are.” He wondered if he should’ve bothered with that. He hung up the transmitter. He recalled a rough estimate of where the frequency came from. She was in one of four spots. Any were hours away.

He’d find her.

****

The man was sitting on a pile of black rubble listening to Heron Blue. The song made him paranoid. The sort of paranoia where he imagined all the shadows following him. Arms reaching at his legs.

He'd failed. The first two locations were empty. The woman still broadcasted but his transmitters were broken. She was singing something to herself in that strange language. A lullaby. Oh, he wished he could've stayed to hear it.

The third radio room. She was crying. Transmitter broken again.

The fourth? Well, he went there, and she was still crying. He flipped every table in rage and shouted impotently at the woman to tell him where she was. But there was nothing to transmit that frustration. Failure.

He stared at a pair on the wall. One shorter the other taller. Parent and child. “Why!” his scream echoed back to him.

“Why! Why me?"

He heard the echo.

He caught his hair and pulled. "I don't deserve this. We didn't deserve this. I didn't strike the match. I didn't pick the spots on the map or tried to justify it. All of us were just trying to enjoy life. Nobody deserved this."

He sat in silence. He slid from spot and toppled onto the asphalt. He smelt burnt hair. He relived his awakening.

When he opened his eyes, he saw the jar of Alexis' ashes. “I did something to deserve this, Alexis…” he said.

“Nobody knows why they suffer," Alexis replied. "The universe is chaos. The order of our nightmares isn’t predetermined. Like nightmares, everything makes little sense. Some of us die too young, others live too long. All of us are helpless to chance, and yet we still try to find blame. Reason. There is none. Given enough time, one can justify any atrocity, especially in a vacuum. But it's just you lying to yourself. Kill off all of humanity and the word and concept of 'deserving' loses all meaning. But did it ever have any on a cosmic scale? Think about it, honey. For me."

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He traveled. Aimless. But he decided to head east. He relived memories of driving down this road. He was anxious now, sick to the stomach. He hit the play button on his Walkman but only heard static. It didn’t bother him. He needed something to take his mind off the past. The quiet. Whenever he came here, he got a headache. It was the only time he ever felt pain.

When he found the grave-maker, he’d have to tell her how he was immortal. But how? How can you explain the impossible?

All he remembered was a flash. He figured that’s what everyone else saw. A light turned on and then you became cinders. Either way he was immortal now.

On the brink, he chose to wander. Time began to pass differently to him. The days were shorter. His old cellphone died long ago and in the end it helped him realize that hours to him felt like minutes. The longer he began to wander, the more time seemed to slip from him. Days passed to nights when he blinked. He’d stop by farms and enter storm-shelters to check for survivors. When he’d leave, moss and vines would’ve grown over the doors.

He wondered if nukes were even used. After all, the cities still stood. Trees- dead ones- remained. Animals were left too. Were. He met a dog along the road- one that didn’t run away. It was a boxer with worn-down teeth, which meant his tongue was always out. He needed company. The dog followed him and wasted away.

He wanted to believe all that post-apocalyptic fiction. The nukes were a reset button. Humanity would live on and society would be barbaric. A new order would raise to replace the old corrupt one. Sure, it would be transparent in its violence and suited only for the fittest, but we would live on. It was only right.

Someone, save me.

He stopped. He felt a rumbling nostalgia in his gut. He looked around. He knew why he  remembered this area of the city. To his right it was there.

Her shadow.

****

Alexis was a shadow like all the others. Scorched permanently upon a nameless building. She was standing on her tip-toes, her face pointed upwards. Waiting for a kiss. It was the last scene in this three-act tragic comedy he called his life.

There was another shadow. This shadow was leaning down to kiss Alexis. It was him.

The music swells, as two lovers are supposed to embrace, finally overcoming the odds. Then someone pulls the cord on the dvd player. The screen goes black. Stays black.

The air still stank like grilled squid.

That’s salvation there. Salvation before he realized he needed it. Dying. Now, he was stuck like this. He was trying to put together the broken mirror of himself. Each piece he touched slashed his finger. His perception of himself and the world became less real. He'd already believed he was immortal. What else could be added to the fantasy?

"This is it. This is why I can't bring you to that special place," he said. "Four years of cancer. Four years of me having restless dreams that our life wouldn't be. Count those years on a four-leaf clover, they're the luckiest I had. Ever will."

He sat his jar at the foot of her shadow. "I just wanted to say, I'm jealous. I'm sorry for that. But I'd trade places with you in a moment. If that spot is in Hell it's still the room of an angel compared to this place. I know I told you I'd never think like this. I wouldn't start self-pitying. But I fucked it all up. I'm breaking, going crazy. And I think that's good."

"You think too much," Alexis said.

"I need to forget you. To help me forget myself. That's the only death I think I can have, to walk till I forget everything. You. Myself. Without my memories, wouldn't I be dead? Without my name, won't I be able to eject this shell and let some other poor bastard have it. Someone more deserving of immortality."

"I always despised that about you, David," Alexis said. "No confidence."

The man in red felt a chill as he heard his name. "This isn't real. You're just in my head."

"Hehe, maybe you're in mine," she answered. "David, do you ever remember that day we were stuck in traffic here? I was late to the chemo. You were afraid... so, so afraid I wouldn't be able to get it that day. You were freaking out. Then, I turned on the radio to get rid of all that noise. I looked over to you, and you smiled. You realized we really don't have control. Never did."

“It was 97.9,” he said.

He realized where the woman was broadcasting from.

He turned his eyes to the tower, the tallest peak in this blasted land. He could see it from miles. Within it was his first radio room, the worst of the lot. The one easily forgotten. But that's the frequency he assigned to that station.

He ran towards it. Through the pitted and warped roads. Between scorched cars. A cloud of ash trailing behind him.

In his hands he realized he was carrying Alexis. He was a fucking idiot to think he could get out of immortality like that. Forget himself? That's impossible. More so than a man being immortal. Alexis was his guiding light, and he wouldn't forget that again.

****

The door of the tower a scorched pile of timber around his boots. There was a playground behind him. The twisted swing sets were like balls of paper crumbled and tossed around the dead grass. He thought for a moment to put his ear-phones in and forget the silence. He needed to hear though.

The halls were dank, moldy blankets wrapped around him. It didn't settle his mind that every door he passed was open. He felt trapped. His throat was strangled by the ash in the air. He smelled sulfur. He could never get used to that- it kept reminding him of fire.

His fingers grasped the threshold of a door- the hall before his radio room. What lay ahead was a wide corridor with doors lining all the walls leading down to the end. Every door was closed- except the radio room. It was broken into.

He was nervous. He turned on his Walkman. The song was King's Crossing.

He came to his radio-room. The door was cracked and he heard faint static. He entered.

Her back was to him. She was in a chair with her arms resting lightly at her sides. Her head was drooped back. Smoke rising.

There was a gun on the floor. The last gun he saw was a century ago. That was a busted thing.

He picked it up- stared at it. Guns didn't work anymore. It was the apocalypse, the reset button, the Old World nightmares were supposed to be gone. But here one was, as pristine as his Walkman. The metal was polished and the grip unscratched. Every bullet glimmered. It was as new as a factory could make.

What kind of sick joke was this? How did she get this? Why did she do it so quickly?

He shot himself. Then he shot the walls in frustration. When the gun was out of ammo- he chucked it against the wall.

He roared and overturned his radio table, then stomped the machine into silence. He grabbed a chair and splintered it against a wall. He howled. He sobbed. He did both at once, like a beast in pain. The bear-trap around his leg was one only he see.

When he finished, he closed her eyes. Still warm. He was just minutes late. Always late.

Outside he pulled his Walkman from his belt. It was a charred piece of plastic. The tape was melted inside the housing. The sticker label was fading, but it still had 'A Little Mix of Love- xo Alexis' written across it. Flipping it over, there were no batteries.

He dropped the Walkman. "Hey Alexis," he said, "I think I'm fucking nuts...."

He held the jar up to block his sight. He saw himself in the refraction, himself two centuries and one day back. The reflection was smiling. Yet he wasn’t.

He saw her behind him. A sickly woman in her twenties. Her thin, blonde hair was frizzled, but he lied and said it was perfect that day. It's what he wanted to do. Make everything perfect.

"Hey, Alexis," he said.

"Yes?" She answered.

"Ready to go to our special place?"

She smiled for the first time since the surgery.

****

A special place. A beach. Where the waves once took her swimsuit and embarrassment kept her in the water for hours while he dived around- searching for it. He never caught that suit. The waves carried it out into open water where only the deep blue surrounded him.

He was sitting on this beach, watching the black ocean move beneath the red sky. The setting sun was on the horizon. He looked at his jar and remembered a promise he once made.

Bury me at sea

He scooped a handful of her ashes and held them to his eyes. The wind blew. Flecks of ash carried away and streams of it poured between his fingers. The world mocked him for trying to hold on.

He clenched his fist tightly, trapping the ashes. “Hang onto me," he whispered, "This is our first time repeated. Here on this beach... I don’t hear the sea. I hear music- crappy dubstep. I smell cigarette smoke instead of salt. We’re in the bayou, at some lonely country-bar. Two poor college kids, exchanging ramen recipes.” He couldn't let go. "Here, I feel our first dance. I’m so drunk that everything is a waking dream. I taste our first kiss. You were drinking whiskey straight. My lips stung, but I was fine. Never finer in my life.”

He gazed at the unmoving sun. His face was warm for once. He never felt this tired, but he knew he couldn’t sleep. He always walked. But now?

Well it was time to be a monument to the Old, Dead World.

He heard her laughter and felt her beating heart in his hand. He opened his hand and dragged her ashes across his face and beard. “Alexis, plant your roots in these cheeks, in my lips, and in this beard. They will outlast this sea, this sand, and the world we danced on.”

He dropped her jar into the sands. “We die twice. First, the natural death. And last, when our name is spoken one final time. So plant those roots. I’ll give you immortality, Alexis.”

He would stay here. Wait. See the end. He would see entropy destroy all of existence. But since he was immortal, he would persist to witness the next Big Bang and float within the newborn cosmos. Left to remember those final four years. In all the centuries yet to come he would remember a single grain of the hourglass before all the rest.

He allowed his head to droop forward.

There he saw flecks of ash nestle into the folds of his red slacks.

“Alexis,” he said. “Alexis,” he whispered. “Alexis…” he sobbed.

****

She was immortal and she didn’t know why.

She survived the blasts, and woke to see no trace of the Old World. So, she started wandering. And the world never allowed her a rest from this nightmare. Now she was here, pondering existence. Waiting for him. Though he would never come.

She pressed her face against her knees. She was silent. No tears.

Why cry?

What was left to cry about? Herself? She looked to the horizon, that unchanging horizon. The night never came, but the sun was ever-setting. Why cry?

Because I want to hear someone. Even myself.

She closed her eyes. She was tired, so, so tired. All she wanted to do was sleep, but everything was too quiet. Since she couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t think about anything but sleeping. Since she couldn’t think freely, she realized she was a prisoner of sorts. A jailor without a name for a crime she never committed.

It had been centuries since she moved.

“David,” she said.

He was a memory of a memory now. She’d forgotten her mother’s name. She’d forgotten her daughter. She didn’t want to forget him. Forgot their last kiss. The one that would never be.

“David,” she whispered.

“David.”