My name is Johnathan Andrew Smith, and I long for the company of others. If you are reading this, you probably have no clue what that feels like. More than likely, you have friends, people whom you are constantly around, and you really are oblivious to what being alone really is. My story started out with me feeling exactly the opposite of the way I do now.
For years I longed for isolation. I hated people, and I hated everything that they did. In my own time, all alone, I read books, and I laughed at the silly things that human beings did to each other. Wars, disease, murder, thievery, you know, the little necessities of life that seem to keep the world turning. Yet, I made it a point to live alone.
This continued for years. I wished, and I wished for absolute solitude. It felt almost quintessential that I was alone. I didn't just want to be rid of human contact, I needed to be rid of human contact. However, it was silly. As much as I wanted to be rid of you all, I knew it couldn't happen. Deep down, that made me feel depressed. I never got the things that I wanted, and once I gave up on them, my mind turned to the on thing I always knew I couldn't have: a world all to my lonesome.
So imagine my surprise when I wake up, and find you all gone.
No children making noise in the street.
The sounds of cars are non existent.
The Television yields nothing but static.
The internet is down.
And in this world without anyone in it, a tear appears in my eye when I hear the one thing I've longed to hear for years: Silence.
How glorious it seemed to me. I was thrilled, ecstatic, finally I had gotten what I wanted. Solitude, sweet, sweet solitude. For the first time in my life I truly was in the center of euphoria.
My days at that point were filled with books, and exploration. I walked to the local library and I lost myself in the mountains upon mountains of books. Verne, King, Lovecraft, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Doyle, I read them all. I finally had the time, I finally had the silence. Needless to say, I didn't have a care in the world as to where humanity went. They were all gone, and I was happy.
If I wasn't reading, I was going inside of buildings I've never seen before. I wanted to see them, see everything, and explore places I could never have gone. The world was finally an open book, and I wanted to read every last word.
In my searches, I found a kitten. A tiny little thing, it was orange and white. I named it Tom, after the cat from the old cartoon show, despite the kitten looking nothing like him. I fed the kitten my food, and I took care of it as a Mother would take care of her newborn baby. Tom followed me everywhere, and I couldn't have ever asked for a better companion.
Every night when I went to sleep, Tom would curl up next to me, and fall asleep along with me. When I would wake up, Tom would meow like cats typically did, and I would make him breakfast, as I made mine. When I read, Tom would curl up in my lap, and I would read out loud. Even if I knew he couldn't understand the words, I would like to think he could. Maybe it was comforting him, as much as it was comforting me.
This continued for years. The same routine, over and over again. I would make my food, which I would rummage through others houses, and supermarkets, and I would read. Long after the electricity stopped working, long after I drained more than my fair share of gas stations for the gasoline, and long after I had realized that there wasn't a book in the downtown library that I hadn't read, I felt something that I hadn't felt since the people went away. I was bored.
I went back to the library with Tom on multiple occasions, and looked for new books that I may have missed to no avail. It saddened me that it had really been that long. How many years had passed since that fateful day? I didn't know, foolishly, I never kept a calender. I never counted the days that I had spent in my own wonderland.
Walking back home I came to the realization that there wasn't a place in this city I hadn't explored yet. I had been there, I had seen what I wanted to see. Boredom crept his head upon me again. This time, it seemed that he wouldn't go away.
So I began to write, only to realize that I couldn't. I was quite awful at writing. Laughing at my own attempts, I stopped a few weeks in. Besides, what point was there? There was no one around to read my work. Even as I type this letter to you, Dear Reader, I realize that you don't exist. You're gone, just as I wished it to be. For that, I'm truly sorry.
I wonder what life you would have lived, Dear Reader, if you had continued to exist? Would you and I become friends? What would your profession be? I could think of many questions that will never be answered, but that would be redundant.
What truly made me long for people once more is when I woke up one day, and Tom didn't. I woke up and I didn't hear that familiar meow next to me as I turned to face him. Tom, my orange and white cat, my best friend, had passed. I took him out back, and I buried him in a wooden box that I had made one day out of pure boredom. I never thought I would have to use it.
I placed ten roses on his grave, and I put my face in my hands and cried. I didn't go back inside for hours, maybe even days. It was funny, I never once cried at the death of a family member, yet I cried like a newborn baby at the death of Tom.
I still had a habit of making Tom's breakfast, even though he was gone. I guess it was force of habit, or maybe I was still under the illusion that Tom would wake up, walk to the table and jump on top if it as I ate along side him. Every time I would look up and see him not there, a part of me seemed like it fell away.
After the death of Tom, I never was quite the same. I had no one to talk to, no one to joke with, no one that cared. Suddenly, everything that made being alone so great, was now so wrong. I no longer had books to read, I no longer had places to explore, and with Tom gone, I didn't have a friend in the world.
So I write this to you, Dear Reader, in hopes that maybe you won't think of me as a bad man. I'm sorry that I wished you all away, I truly am. Hopefully, you and I could have been friends. Maybe you could have been the person that made me realize just how much of an idiot I was. I'm so very sorry that you no longer exist. Once you find this note, and my body, please bury me next to Tom. I would like to think that if there is an afterlife, Tom would be in it, as well as you.
Sincerely, Johnathan Andrew Smith
For years I longed for isolation. I hated people, and I hated everything that they did. In my own time, all alone, I read books, and I laughed at the silly things that human beings did to each other. Wars, disease, murder, thievery, you know, the little necessities of life that seem to keep the world turning. Yet, I made it a point to live alone.
This continued for years. I wished, and I wished for absolute solitude. It felt almost quintessential that I was alone. I didn't just want to be rid of human contact, I needed to be rid of human contact. However, it was silly. As much as I wanted to be rid of you all, I knew it couldn't happen. Deep down, that made me feel depressed. I never got the things that I wanted, and once I gave up on them, my mind turned to the on thing I always knew I couldn't have: a world all to my lonesome.
So imagine my surprise when I wake up, and find you all gone.
No children making noise in the street.
The sounds of cars are non existent.
The Television yields nothing but static.
The internet is down.
And in this world without anyone in it, a tear appears in my eye when I hear the one thing I've longed to hear for years: Silence.
How glorious it seemed to me. I was thrilled, ecstatic, finally I had gotten what I wanted. Solitude, sweet, sweet solitude. For the first time in my life I truly was in the center of euphoria.
My days at that point were filled with books, and exploration. I walked to the local library and I lost myself in the mountains upon mountains of books. Verne, King, Lovecraft, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Doyle, I read them all. I finally had the time, I finally had the silence. Needless to say, I didn't have a care in the world as to where humanity went. They were all gone, and I was happy.
If I wasn't reading, I was going inside of buildings I've never seen before. I wanted to see them, see everything, and explore places I could never have gone. The world was finally an open book, and I wanted to read every last word.
In my searches, I found a kitten. A tiny little thing, it was orange and white. I named it Tom, after the cat from the old cartoon show, despite the kitten looking nothing like him. I fed the kitten my food, and I took care of it as a Mother would take care of her newborn baby. Tom followed me everywhere, and I couldn't have ever asked for a better companion.
Every night when I went to sleep, Tom would curl up next to me, and fall asleep along with me. When I would wake up, Tom would meow like cats typically did, and I would make him breakfast, as I made mine. When I read, Tom would curl up in my lap, and I would read out loud. Even if I knew he couldn't understand the words, I would like to think he could. Maybe it was comforting him, as much as it was comforting me.
This continued for years. The same routine, over and over again. I would make my food, which I would rummage through others houses, and supermarkets, and I would read. Long after the electricity stopped working, long after I drained more than my fair share of gas stations for the gasoline, and long after I had realized that there wasn't a book in the downtown library that I hadn't read, I felt something that I hadn't felt since the people went away. I was bored.
I went back to the library with Tom on multiple occasions, and looked for new books that I may have missed to no avail. It saddened me that it had really been that long. How many years had passed since that fateful day? I didn't know, foolishly, I never kept a calender. I never counted the days that I had spent in my own wonderland.
Walking back home I came to the realization that there wasn't a place in this city I hadn't explored yet. I had been there, I had seen what I wanted to see. Boredom crept his head upon me again. This time, it seemed that he wouldn't go away.
So I began to write, only to realize that I couldn't. I was quite awful at writing. Laughing at my own attempts, I stopped a few weeks in. Besides, what point was there? There was no one around to read my work. Even as I type this letter to you, Dear Reader, I realize that you don't exist. You're gone, just as I wished it to be. For that, I'm truly sorry.
I wonder what life you would have lived, Dear Reader, if you had continued to exist? Would you and I become friends? What would your profession be? I could think of many questions that will never be answered, but that would be redundant.
What truly made me long for people once more is when I woke up one day, and Tom didn't. I woke up and I didn't hear that familiar meow next to me as I turned to face him. Tom, my orange and white cat, my best friend, had passed. I took him out back, and I buried him in a wooden box that I had made one day out of pure boredom. I never thought I would have to use it.
I placed ten roses on his grave, and I put my face in my hands and cried. I didn't go back inside for hours, maybe even days. It was funny, I never once cried at the death of a family member, yet I cried like a newborn baby at the death of Tom.
I still had a habit of making Tom's breakfast, even though he was gone. I guess it was force of habit, or maybe I was still under the illusion that Tom would wake up, walk to the table and jump on top if it as I ate along side him. Every time I would look up and see him not there, a part of me seemed like it fell away.
After the death of Tom, I never was quite the same. I had no one to talk to, no one to joke with, no one that cared. Suddenly, everything that made being alone so great, was now so wrong. I no longer had books to read, I no longer had places to explore, and with Tom gone, I didn't have a friend in the world.
So I write this to you, Dear Reader, in hopes that maybe you won't think of me as a bad man. I'm sorry that I wished you all away, I truly am. Hopefully, you and I could have been friends. Maybe you could have been the person that made me realize just how much of an idiot I was. I'm so very sorry that you no longer exist. Once you find this note, and my body, please bury me next to Tom. I would like to think that if there is an afterlife, Tom would be in it, as well as you.
Sincerely, Johnathan Andrew Smith
