Alone with Sin

Sin truly believed that nobody understood her the way he did.

The others seemed like simple creatures, little jackets of skin with warm flesh and strange ideas. They were simplistic and dangerous.

Not her…

Her pale, porcelain skin haunting all of the moments of all of his days. She had a dimpled nose and large blue eyes, framed by the luminance of her dark chocolate hair with a natural straight wave down to her bust.

Sin had noticed a red shimmer that would reflect brightly through her hair sometimes. Just a few select strands would illuminate when the sunlight touched them. Sin was sure he was the only one to truly pay attention to those small inconspicuous details, something he thought a human would never gift to her.

Sin had excellent eyesight, even if it were impossible to see the multiple tiny eyes spread across his forehead. He had a permanently drawn expression, an elongated head shape, with a mouth that was tucked out of sight while not in use, leaving only the impression of his nostrils for direct view. His unnaturally long stature created an obstacle for humans to see his features clearly anyhow. His entire body was incredibly slender and difficult to differentiate from the crowded trees.

He was the last of his kind in the thick woodlands of Queensland. He had travelled aimlessly since the beginning of the virus through the harsh bush landscape, seeking shelter with the remaining few of his people.

If he could find any.

He had wandered aimlessly to each territory, only to watch them become sick and die too. He was immune and alone.

He walked slowly and carefully through the land, heaving his light and limber legs up and over the scrub beneath him. The careful nature of his people entailed living in groups within the wilderness. Their skin impenetrable to insects, the moonlight a source of energy, and their telekinetic abilities ensured a tight social bond between them without noise or physical interaction.

Sin felt like nothing without his family, their slow deaths still painfully evident in his heart as he wandered through the darkness by night and stood in rest during the day. He had strayed far from the boundaries of his family’s land and continued to search knowing he was unlikely to find anyone at all, let alone his own kind.

Sin had been at a point in his journey where he had no need to deliberate the dangers of the human zones. The danger was the virus, and the death of all of his family.

It had come, taken its toll, and left again long ago. When he did find humans gathered in a house by a clearing, he knew his family would have deemed it a dead zone and restricted any activity by it.

Something broken in Sin disagreed.

He often stood by the tree line of the dead zone, during his daytime rest, and watched the small group of ten potter away at their gardens. They still had their beloved electricity and wireless communication on all of their strange little devices.

Sin would telekinetically connect with their devices, observing in wonder about the way their minds worked. They had strange habits, curious minds, and an excellent talent at wasting their precious time together by searching for other humans to gather amongst. Sin wondered why they wouldn’t realise they were the only ones left.

He had first noticed her separately from the group when nightfall came on his first day near the dead zone. They had gathered by the fire. Their strings of small lights assembled over a wooden frame where they drank and laughed. She had seemed less interested in the social event, looking into the darkness of the trees behind the group, where Sin stood. He was camouflaged by his long body and lack of features. His light complexion reflected like a tall paperbark tree whenever someone did look across to him.

He could see a lot better than Natasha could, and knew she was simply staring into nothing. Her brain burning with thoughts he couldn’t see.

She would constantly be on a device, flicking her heart shaped locket on a long gold chain for hours while she browsed. Still, she did not ever express much at all of who she was or what she thought on any webpage or chat. All that Sin had ever learnt from Natasha’s online browsing was that she was lonely too. Unlike Sins situation, she had all the components she needed to be content. Things like a home, people, and purpose, but she never seemed to be pleased with them.

Natasha stood from the group by the fire and wandered toward the darkness she had been staring into. Sin, for the first time in hours, moved closer to meet the tree line. He didn’t care much about being caught, as the dead zone was surrounded by thick natural coverage. He could seep away into the night seamlessly, forcing people to convince themselves it was simply a trick of the light.

Natasha perched herself on a large rock by the edge of the clearing. The large house they shared was a few meters away, dark windows indicating everyone was either asleep or by the fire on the other side. She pulled a small device from her pocket and began to tap away.

Sin came just a few trees far from her position, able to see the detail of her face more vividly with the tiny speckles of eyes on his face. That is when he noted her features for the first time, her square and small head shape, how her eyes were so blue that they showed even in the darkness of night.

Sin leant closer to a large tree by him and flattened his long thin hand along its side, tuning into the energy waves of Natasha’s device through its own life-energy. He could see that she had opened several tabs on current news, death tolls, funny videos and more. She had flicked through each page hoping to find some sort of entertainment or distraction.

“Hello” a PM popped, just as she was about to give up on the device.

“Who is this” she replied. Sin noted she had not used a question mark, a common sign of distrust. He wondered which stranger he could be as he formulated his next sentence.

“A friend, maybe.”

Her expression narrowed in confusion. Natasha stood from the rock and wandered over to the corner of the large house to peer out to the group by the fire before she typed back, “Oh yeah, called what?”

She stared at the group, waiting for someone to grab their phone and reply in her sight.

Sin snickered silently and continued, “I’m not by the fire”.

Natasha clearly froze as she read the reply, knowing not a single person had opportunity to type the message while she watched the group. A cold shiver trickled along her spine as she whipped her head back to the darkness of the trees where she had sat by just moments before. She hadn’t known that she was staring directly where Sin was standing.

“Do you want to be my friend?” He wrote, unsure what human fear looked like, he was attempting to understand her reaction.

Natasha read the words once, twice, three times, before lowering the device and taking another hard squint into the trees.

“Are you worried I will come near you? Because that is not what I want” Sin attempted again.

The words seemed to calm her.

“Where are you?” She typed back quickly, hugging her arms in discomfort, and desperately scanning the area around her. She had known in her gut that someone was close. She just wasn’t sure if she really wanted to know who.

Before Sin could act, Natasha had sensed that whoever it was, planned to come forward. The darkness surrounding her, and her obviously vulnerable state as a physically small human, became her only concern quickly and her body moved to act before her mind caught the notion. Natasha ran around the side of the house to the front, where the fire had brightened the walls. She ran quickly but carefully up the small set of stairs at the entrance and into the home.

She listened to the laughter of her friends by the fire and dared not to look at her phone for a long time while she tried to force herself to sleep and forget the strange moment. Unfortunately, not a single ounce of fatigue hit her. Before the virus came to wipe the world clean, she had insomnia from anxiety. She feared people and situations where she would be humiliated. Now, none of those things mattered. She knew just ten people.

But the anxiety hadn’t left. Natasha was still scared but she never knew why. It made her feel like something bad was constantly pending, waiting to fall onto her.

Everything that had mattered to her was gone.

Still, the anxiety stuck like a stain.

She was tucked into her double bed in the room alone. A heavy feeling loomed that something was outside, inspiring her to leave the lights off to hide herself. This had also triggered her to be petrified of what could be in the room with her as well. Her bed sat hard against the wall that had the only window. She felt safer there than anywhere else in the house.

“Will you sleep now?” Her phone chimed.

Sin stood in the same position, holding the tree to connect the messages through, knowing humans usually slept once in the bedrooms of the house.

Natasha stared at the message, the light from her phone burning her squinting eyes.

“Are you alone?” She typed, probing who it was, in denial again.

“Yes, are you?” He asked.

“I am with nine other people” she wrote, her patience growing thin.

“Are you alone?” Sin repeated.

“Did you read my last message?”

“Yes. Are you alone?”

She exhaled. The conversation was insane to her. Natasha was scared out of her mind but focused and strangely invested. Nothing good had happened for years, nothing bad either. She had gone from a pre-virus life of feeling everything pressuring her into a vacuum, she worked at avoiding life and people, suffering in the distaste. Then everyone started dying, nothing left to do. Unlimited resources to collect and unlimited time on her hands. She finally realised the problem after all of this time.

She was bored shitless.

She didn’t care about the people who had died anymore, or the world that was lost. She was just so unbelievably, incredibly, bored.

In that, she was alone.

“Yes. I’m alone.”

“Look out the window.” He replied, releasing his hand from the tree, and carefully stepping out from the clearing.

Natasha paused for a moment before she started to scuffle up from the bed and onto her knees, peering down to the area she had been sitting before she ran into the house.

The fire illuminated an orange light ever so slightly around the corner of the building to reveal where the slender, tall, man stood. Natasha ducked out of sight below the window as soon as she saw him, her heart pounding in her chest. A whimper escaped her lips as she hyperventilated lightly.

She wasn’t sure if she was scared or excited.

Her whole life she had been stuck in an ordinary world with ordinary people. This strange man was the most amazing thing she had ever witnessed. Natasha was astounded he was communicating with her, that he existed.

She felt special for the first time in her life.

“You aren’t alone anymore “she typed. Sitting back up on her knees.

Natasha stared at Sin through the window and smiled.

Sin’s mouth twisted awkwardly upward, one side at a time.

A shudder ran up Natasha’s body in response.

She was in love.