Gloomy November

Word count: 1193
Genre: Romance/ horror

         Time came to a crashing halt, and before I realized what was happening, my world went black.
         It was a gloomy Saturday in November when Gregory awoke from his coma. Immediately after he realized he was in a hospital, the memories came back like a deluge of information, and none of it was wanted. He remembered the fateful crash that landed him in this horrid blank room, and the bottles of Guinness that led to the collision. Of course, after Brigid had been forced to leave him, he no longer wanted to live, but he expected to die rather than suffer in an uncomfortable, gray room.
         Greg started crying, since the pain of Brigid’s father forbidding their relationship was just multiplied by the broken bones in his left arm. Once he regained his composure, Greg started to examine his unpleasant surroundings. He realized there was dust covering almost everything in the room, except for him.          Considering his height, this was quite a feat, and one that required someone’s assistance. He also noticed there was no noise coming from the hallways, no machines beeping or people walking or patients shouting. 
         Once he swung his legs off of the bed, Greg started walking out of the room when he literally ran into a nurse. He began to apologize before he realized that he passed right through her. On second look, the nurse didn’t seem as solid as he thought he appeared. After reaching the hallway, Greg saw that there were people everywhere, doing their regular business, but he couldn’t interact with them.
         “HEY!”
         No response from anyone.
         Greg tried slamming books, throwing chairs, and tossing papers around the lobby, but to no avail. Being a fan of fantasy fiction, he realized that it must be that he was actually dead, trapped in Limbo until Judgment Day. Deciding that there must be someone else here in his situation, Greg started to search the building for some other accursed soul.
         He wandered from floor to floor, looking for anyone at all, when he heard footsteps running up the stairs behind him. At that point, he wondered if he wanted to find out who, or what, was behind. Deciding he didn’t want to know yet, Greg jogged up the stairs and went down another hall.
         Unfortunately, he couldn’t run for long after having been comatose for some unknown time. Surrendering to fate, Greg turned to the source of the noise, and was overjoyed by what he saw: another human, a female. When she got closer, he realized that it was Brigid, his love.
         “What are you doing here? I was afraid I’d never see you again… Are we dead?”
         “Oh, I’m so happy you’re alive. I thought you wouldn’t wake up. Of course I paid no attention to my father, and once I heard you were in a crash, I came immediately to the hospital. I’ve been here almost the whole time, but I’ve had to leave sometimes this past week. And no, we’re not dead. But I’ll get to that later.”
So together they walked back to the room next to Greg’s, where Brigid had a sort of kitchenette set up. She fixed some Earl Grey tea while explaining what had happened since Greg slipped into a coma.
         “I take that back. I’ll answer the dead question first. You asked if we were dead. If you haven’t guessed, we’re not.  It’s the others that are dead. Their spirits just continue about what they would usually do, but never notice that they never accomplish anything. They look like some ethereal tape recording, repeating the same actions hour after hour. I hope they can get rest one day soon.”
         “Of course they will. Otherwise, everyone that had died would still float around.”
         “Now I’ll enlighten you on the rest of the lot that’s happened while you’ve been “asleep.” In case you don’t know, you’ve been unconscious for around three weeks. Once I found out and got here, you’d already been in intensive care around two days and they were ready to downgrade you to a standard room. I stayed here night and day, praying that you would wake up and then we could go back to our apartment together. At the beginning of your second week, there was some alarming news… oh!”
         The whistling teapot interrupted her explanation, so she stopped to fix two mugs of tea.
         “Here, let me get that,’ Greg said. “You’ve done more than enough.”
         After they got their tea and honey, Greg started to walk down the hallway while she continued her story.
         “I hope the tea’s good. The honey tasted a little old. Well, back to the tale. There at the second week, a breaking news story on CNN described a new virus, similar to Hantavirus but at a 99% death rate within one day. It was also spreading at an exponential rate. The newscast was on Sunday. By Wednesday, it had spread from a little island near Venezuela to Western Europe and had killed almost a billion people. By that Saturday, it had spread around the world and had decimated the population. At the time CNN went off the air, it was estimated around one half of a billion people were still alive, scattered across the globe, and that only 200 million would be left when the virus finished.”
         “Then why are we still alive?”
         “All that I can guess is we’re living right, considering we are two of the so-called lucky ones that are immune to the horrifying disease.”
         Brigid stopped at a window to look out at the forest, and to wipe away tears. Greg stood at her side, holding her hand, and wiping away his own tears with his partially-healed arm. After a few minutes, they continued on their walk, hand in hand.
         “So, I’m guessing we don’t know anyone else that survived?”
Brigid’s silence was far more than enough of an answer. She embarked on a new path, this time towards the door, but never letting go of Greg’s hand.
         “That’s why I had to leave this week; I couldn’t stand knowing whether or not our families had….” She stopped talking again but continued to walk towards the outside.
         “Well, you can guess what I found at the houses. It wasn’t a pleasant memory.”
         “At least we have each other.”
         “Yes, there is that.” Brigid pulled Greg’s hand so he would stop and, and then she stood on the tips of her toes to kiss him. Greg ran his hand through her long dark brown hair before she started to speak again.  “We’ll always have each other.”
         “Always? Won’t we perish one day?”
         “No, no we won’t. There’s one other thing that I’ve found out. This event was the big finale, the apocalypse. We’re part of the new Eden, the New Jerusalem, whatever your Bible translation says. We did good. I saw Christ return. We’ve got eternity to spend with each other.”
         “That’s the best thing I’ve heard all day.”
         Together they walked out into a beautiful November day, without a cloud in the sky. Hand in hand, they headed out towards a new life, as one forever.