quote:Waiting for the last contaminants of the plague to pass, I had sat in my underground bunker, surrounded by 55-gallon plastic drums of distilled water and mountains of canned vegetables with peeling paper labels. I had scribbled the days and weeks and years onto the wall like a prisoner marking time in solitary.
And that's exactly what I was: a prisoner. Except I hadn't been forced into a cell for crimes against society; I had gone down there alone, voluntarily, to escape death.
If only I had known quite how thoroughly I would accomplish my goal . . .
You see, until yesterday I had been alone, waiting, lingering, without seeing another living being in exactly two-hundred-fourteen years, eight months, and three days. But I was still here, still young, still healthy. Still exactly the same.
I was having a little trouble dying.
Edmund R. Schubert is the author the novel, Dreaming Creek, and some 40+ short stories, about half of which are in his collection, The Trouble with Eating Clouds. Most recent publications include "A Little Trouble Dying" in IGMS (March 2014) and "Feels Like Justice To Me" in the forthcoming anthology Big Bad 2 (summer 2014). He can be found online at: www.EdmundRSchubert.com.