Lonely Radio

The grey sands whip by tirelessly, tearing at the proud facades of concrete buildings that once housed warm beings. The asphalt street is almost covered completely, and what isn’t is scored throughout with burn marks and stretch cracks. By the side of the road, a small, battery-powered radio sits, the LED’s fading to nothing, the speakers barely vibrating. Still, if you were to put your ear close to it and strain to hear, you would catch the faint whisper of some song, Classical music.

But now the music stops, and a voice issues from the radio. It is the voice of a dying man,

“It started on May 15th,” he says. “It was the end of the world. All of mankind knew it would come, but nobody knew when or how.”

He stops to draw a breath, and it rattles in his broken lungs.

“We could not stop the end,” he says, informing an audience of ghosts. “The fires and earthquakes, the explosions of our own creations. Our demise was sure.”

The radio crackles with static, or the perhaps the batteries have come to the end of their lives. But no, the voice returns and the radio soldiers on.

“Truthfully, there was no way to stop it.” The man admits. “Mankind has tried already to turn back the hands of Time. We have never failed so badly as now,”

The radio crackles again, and, as if the man knows the last radio of the world is dying, he hurries on with his message.

“I do not think anyone else is living now,” he says. “But if there are, and if you’re listening, I’m at the base of the Empire State Building in New York City. I have food and some water, but really…we will just die together…”

He pauses a long time, and the static threatens to drown him out.

“…Or not…”

He gasps, and the drawn out breaths mingles with the harsh coughing of the radio.

Finally, it sputters, and dies.

The radio is left alone at last, able to rest after shouting nonsense to human ears for so many years. It is able to peacefully contemplate the state of the world now, but it does not.

It is a radio.

A lonely radio.