It was a cloudy day, one of those days when you don't wanna leave the house for any reason; still, Alexander went out for a late walk, he enjoyed these walks where he could think anything he wanted. He didn't like being alone and most of the time he was, so these small trips outside his house and outside his daily routines.
He stopped for a second, he was near a crossroad when he saw two men arguing.He was staring at the first man. Suddenly, the man started beating the other man, smashing his head against the wall with a rage that Alexander didn't see until now. He was feeling unsafe and fragile;hopeless he left the dramatic scene.
He went home - the place that he hated so much; but where can you go after you had witnessed a scene like that ?
It wasn't long until he reached his home. He had been living alone for as long as he had known himself but he didn't care, as a matter of fact, he loved being alone, for loneliness was something carved deep inside him and he didn't want anything else.
His house was the second on the left in the neighborhood of
Red Roses - there was nothing special about that, after all it was merely a name, a nice one indeed, but just a name.
After a while he reached home and his head was clear, no thoughts touched him, but in front of the door he stopped, just for a second. Something was different since the last time he wanted to get inside. He didn't know what it was, so he stayed there for a while near the house. Alexander began to scout with his eyes the surroundings, but nothing was different, everything was similar to what he had known for so many years. Maybe he was dreaming and it was one of those dreams where everything was too damn real, or maybe he wasn't dreaming at all and everything he felt was, then, unexplainable. He stood up wanting desperately to find out what was different. He started running without knowing where he was supposed to arrive to, fact which gave him courage.
He had been running for some time now, when he saw a river near a forest, a river that was new - he could have sworn it wasn't there until now - and he stopped by it, watching the smooth and calm flow of water which was not that deep. There were no fish or frogs or any other creatures in the river, and that seemed strange, after all water is the element of life, of any kind of life. He rose and started throwing some rocks in the water, to see if any action would occur.
But, alas! The water was as lifeless as the sun at night.
So he left the place deciding to trespass into the beautiful forest near the dead river. There were many trees in that forest, too many actually, but at least it was green and beautiful - nature was the first thing Alexander loved in the whole world - but with great regret, he realized that there were no animals here as well. It was impossible to think that in two of nature's most beautiful places - a river and a forest - were no creatures. He started shouting, but no answer came. Alexander was astonished, and in his amazement, he began asking himself again if he was dreaming or if all of this was real, and he was losing his mind. He stood down for a while thinking of the world and how small and insignificant everything is. He knew that all along, but now it seemed that the Earth gave him answers for every question he had. He sensed a new kind of relief, one he couldn't explain in words. He stood there for a while, low to the ground; he then began crying, whipping for mankind and all the evil human beings brought into this beautiful world. He felt weak and hopeless, he wanted to run away from all the things he knew and believed in.. But there was no place for people like him.
He said to himself – “there is nothing alive in this world anymore, people are eating people until they become walking corpses and they lose their last drop of humanity"; there is nothing in this entire Universe sadder than the living proof of it. As he stood there for a while, a song from James Newton Howard came to his mind - it was the song that helped him cope with everything, but now it seemed that the beautiful violin didn't have any effect on his soul, his wretched soul.
It was getting dark, in his heart he wanted to stay there and die in that beautiful forest, but there was something else that prevented him from doing that. He wanted to see one last thing before his inevitable death and for that, he had to get back to his town.
The day drifted away and, as night came, the sky was starless, and all those trees were now shadows of the moon, the lost shadows of the Old Earth.
Alexander's town began fading the first time he ran from it, and now it seemed it was a ghost town, as he approached the place where truth had its roots, the truth which would set him free.
He entered the second house on the left, asked for a black simple coffin, paid for it with his last few dimes, and afterwards, he began carrying it trough the deceiving night with the thoughts of all mourning people in the world and the image of our beautiful planet floating silently in space.