By GJ Welsh

Back in 2025, one person was born every three seconds.

By 2030, it was one every 3 days.

In 2035, he was the only one born. It was the first time The Guinness Book of World Records had an entry for the Youngest Person Alive next to the oldest. The picture of him as a baby was placed next to an old Japanese lady, who was the first to live to 150 years old. There was no print edition that year; the cost of printing it outweighed the sales price.

The following year, no babies were born, nor the next, nor any year following.

Adam was not only the only child in his class, but he was also the only child in his school. The previous kid had moved to a school where he didn’t have to play catch with himself.

He had a teacher to himself, a physical education teacher, even a janitor followed him around making sure it was clean around him. And that he still had a job.

When he reached the age of fourteen, his parents sat him down, not to explain the facts of life to him, but to break the news that he would be the last one left.

On his 120th birthday, he buried his father in the backyard next to his mom. He had no way of knowing what he had passed away from. The last doctor died 10 years ago.

Adam was in perfect health; he figured he still had a good 10 years left. So he decided to start a hobby.

Every day, he tried something new to see if it would stick. He painted, he sculpted, he gardened. He baked, he tried to play guitar, and then he decided it was no use; he had no one to play guitar for.

The next day, he set off after placing a flower on each of his parents’ graves.

He walked for a whole day before he found signs of life. An old garbage tip that hadn’t been added to in close to 20 years by the looks of it. Deep in the detritus, he found an old comic book and read it to a squirrel who did not seem interested in a story read by the last man alive. He found a woman’s pink knitted hat. He put it on.

Suddenly, Adam felt like dancing. “Shall we?” He flung out one arm and glided over the trash of humanity; he imagined the woman who owned the hat. Her name was Brooke, like the river; her laughter filled his mind. She twirled as he raised his arm. Oh, how her hair glittered in the reflected light of the broken glass that shredded his bare feet. 

They danced until the sun set. Then they walked hand in hand toward an old farmhouse. She told him stories about her grandmother. They were funny stories, about how she used to throw Brooke into the air when she was little and of the cakes she baked every birthday, with sugar icing the color of her favorite hat. He had never known such joy.

Brooke made him grin, even though he no longer had teeth to show off; it felt good to stretch his gums. It had been years since he had last even thought of smiling.

That night, he made a fire from an old couch in the farmhouse and he and Brooke held each other as the flames consumed their bodies.

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GJ Welsh is a copywriter with a manuscript and a bunch of awards for his writing from the Clio Awards, Cannes Lions, Loerie Awards and more. He is from South Africa, but currently lives in Karachi, Pakistan. His work straddles the fine line between mythology and reality.