Day Thirty-Two

My cell phone rang today. It has rung every day for the past few weeks.

As always, the screen displayed my wife’s picture and name. I stare at it, knowing it isn’t her on the other end. It’s the Silence calling, as it’s done before. It’s always the Silence. Calling to taunt me, to drive the last bit of sanity from my mind. I don’t know what it wants, and I no longer care. I wish it would just… leave me alone.

I wish I wasn’t such a coward—too terrified to end my own suffering. I’m still clinging to the stupid hope that all this is a dream. Or a figment of my own warped imagination. Perhaps the projections of a fever induced coma.

But I know it’s not.

As much as I hate the Silence mocking me, I can’t bring myself to turn off the phone. It’s nice just to read my wife’s name, see the picture I took of her while we were on vacation at the beach last year, hear the phone play the ringtone of “our song.”

I miss her. Her and my sons.

But there’s no one left. The world is an empty husk, and I am its last parasite. A parasite that can no longer bring itself to get out of bed. What’s the point?

I just lie here, dreaming that the next time I fall asleep I will be carried away like the rest of the world was, and I won’t be burdened with waking up to this reality anymore.