This is how horror movies start - walking alone through desolate fields in the middle of the night during the week. Brushing aside branches and trudging through the long grass noisily in the dozing silence of a town that slumbers after 10 p.m. is just asking for trouble. It's an invitation for some mutated monster, some lumbering human hybrid, some malevolent extra-terrestrial, some mythological beast, or some reanimated corpse to feed upon me. At least, that's what the television has shown me.
In the distance, I can hear the owls and the coyotes breaking up the eerie calm as I march along home from my brother's dwelling. It's a mild winter in northern Illinois. The temperature is around 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the breeze is light - mostly still. And here I am, pushing through the trees and walking alongside a country backroad now - the last man on Earth.
Fear always slithers in and coils tightly around my nerves every time I walk home at a late hour. I don't work Fridays, so the temptation to stay up late is heightened. Everyone else works Friday apparently. All the doors are shut and the lights of the nearby buildings are blinked out of existence. The only guide is the moon, the one illumination highlighting the sole source of life to any lurking werewolf lingering nearby.I feel like Vincent Price as I listen to the only sound loud and rhythmic enough to dull the silence - the crunching of my shoes in grass. As I near the edge of civilization where I live, it morphs into the thudding sound of my shoes on pavement, echoing loud and clear off the buildings nearby. Purely residential. Purely cold and boarded up.
My overactive mind tells my eyes to watch for shadows encroaching my own. It's an order from the same mind that hallucinates gangly, ghastly figures when I am awoken during the night and the same mind that catches things constantly out of the corners of my eyes during all waking hours, be it midday or midnight. Sometimes when I write, my creations are actualized before me in a day dream, re-enacting scenes long committed to paper or taunting me with the perilous, ravenous smiles they were commanded to terrorize my heroes with. Irrational fear from a brain constantly on the go - a brain cursed with life.
Yet, I don't fear anything rational. I don't fear muggers or thieves, murderers or gangs of thugs roaming the countryside. There aren't enough people here, and the economic depression hasn't hit this community as hard as many other areas. Beyond that, I lift weights regularly. I press my body to the ultimatum on frequent runs and other muscle-building activities. I prepare. Train. Ready myself in preparation to the inevitable showdown with a civilization on the brink of self-destruction. The thugs won't stand a chance, I tell myself. I'm Bane. Master strategist and trained fighter.
But again, these preparations aren't performed from fears. No. My fears are only the "what-ifs" - the impossibilities of science experiments gone wrong or the legendary suddenly entering my reality. The Last Man on Earth scenarios where I am the solitary roaming human, risking travel under the cover of darkness to find solace in my dwelling, like I am now.
Each step I take gives away my location as I march away from the still countryside. I walk down side streets now, between dead buildings that do nothing but block my vision and show me the life that once was, when people still lived here. Hell, for all I know they could still be here, peering from windows or crouching behind dumpsters.
I see no gnarled, skeletal fingers probing at curtains. I see no movement emanating from my blind spots. I hear nothing but the thudding of my own shoes against pavement. And a plastic bag, trapped in a tree but wriggling to escape.
Winter to many people means snow. By that definition, this area does not embody that season. By my definition, winter means death, and in that manner, I feel the winter season tightening my spine. That bag is no help. It just solidifies the emptiness, reminds me that I, too, am trapped, revealing my own location with every attempt at movement.
The worst part of any trek home is punching in the code to get into the building. There are only four digits, but to see the pad I have to turn my back to the world - to the mysterious neighborhood I know not during the day. In sunlight hours, it bustles with life and activity. Children play. Neighbors talk. Cars drive by. Now, it's the opening scene of Day of the Dead. If I so much as utter a word, they'll descend and devour me alive. I'll beg to lose consciousness before the Grim Reaper will finally take me, pleading not to watch my own limbs and skin ripped and torn by decaying fingers caked in grime and diseases. The thought turns my stomach and leaves a salty, gritty taste in my mouth. Code entered.
Once inside, I can feign the sensation of safety. I can pretend the walls will shelter me from the lurkers outside, but my heart tells me they could be inside too, waiting for a solitary man to lower his guard in the comfort of his own bedroom. It happens in so many nonsense stories flashing across electronic screens on a daily basis. Single person comes home. Dies from the wounds inflicted by a vengeful spirit. Nothing found by strange bloodstain. Somewhere, a woman who loved him mourns quietly.
Irrational fears.
I think I'll turn the television on before I sleep.
