Last Days

by Adam L.G. Nevill

Because she was as damned as a ghost on the last day of its occupation. A wraith with little to haunt besides the empty rooms of an unpeopled existence. A shade watching the world from another place, half in this world and half in another, listening to the sound of all the bright, clear voices, but never offering up her own.

She had endured when others had gone under.

Into her came a sudden invasion of regret, and its attendant hopelessness. Living with the consequences of actions committed before reason and experience had much say i...

Those muffled thumps of feet and sudden shrieks and bursts of laughter from strangers that served no greater purpose than a reminder of her disengagement from life, while keeping her awake.

We were here to be cleansed of our pasts, our woes … responsibilities, disappointments … our attachments to anything but her. Everything. Memories even. She wanted everything. All of it. Out of us. Everything that makes us people. Makes us unique. Anything that was a barrier between us and her.

We were witchy, darling.

And Kyle was reminded again, after so many years of being friends, just how much he enjoyed the sound of Dan’s wheezy chuckle.

After millions of years of evolution, we start stupid cults of celebrity and feed the egos of maniacs until they take our money, fuck us in the arse, and then cut our throats. We should be cutting their throats!’

‘You know, in the airport, coming over, I watched the people around us.’ Kyle shook his head where he lay on the floor, staring at the polystyrene ceiling tiles. ‘So many of them thought they had an audience. They were performing. Because everyone thinks they’re on stage these days. The Show Of Me, mate. Facebook. Twitter. Twitter my arse. Mobile phones? Eh? They’re not for communicating, they’re for broadcasting. Broadcasting The Show Of Me. We are an audience to every shithead with an iPhone. I can’t turn on the telly without some silly bitch with big teeth showing off.’

It was the thrust, the constant thrust of other personalities, the desperate need for attention, for their own reality drama, for their own public relations rituals to be seen, heard, remembered. A white noise of self-interest. Sister Katherine was just one endgame in an age of pathology.

Scepticism was a luxury for the unaffected.

‘All who seek old friends find out things they wish they did not know.’