There is remarkably little dirt, even compared to before. Nothing like I might have expected from an Apocalypse, if I'd ever thought beyond scenarios in movies or Australian children's TV dramas where the kids end up living in gangs in the mall and making sure to look after the younger ones. (Who really thinks much about that kind of thing anyway?) But then it had been a remarkably quick and clean Apocalypse, though that isn't the full story. We'd always wanted to know everything, from which C-list celebrity is dropping their knickers for which ex-footballer to just what is in the other 96% of the universe and what is the deal with antimatter anyway. I guess we were making too much noise because something opened the door and let in the light and now there is no need for curiosity. Everyone is rapt in knowledge. Except me, of course. I'm the one dark stain in this brilliant new world. I didn't even know what had happened for months.
I felt something like static electricity when it happened. I didn't recognise the significance at first but I've been feeling it ever since if I stay in one place too long. It feels like whatever is out there wants to burn into me too. It tingles at my edges and then increases to pain if I stick around more than a day or so. So I keep moving. There are a few more reasons for that. Anyway, apart from that initial reaction, at first I hadn't realised anything was different. On the train home, I'd noticed the usual preoccupied faces that pretend to be contemplating anything but you, the person opposite, while you do the same back. It wasn't until it was my stop that I'd gotten the idea that people were failing to see me. Yeah, I know that is a pretty weak description but that is how it looked to me. I'd been rooting through my bag for my ticket to swipe out of the station and walked into the back of a guy in a suit. I'd winced and prepared for him to turn and glare, apologise for being in the wrong place or even swear at me. It should be obvious by now that that didn't happen.
Everyone appeared to continue as if this were normal except me. I lasted half an hour in the office being creeped out by nobody talking to each other before walking out. No bad jokes, lost tempers or gossip and scandal. I started to test the limits of what was wrong. I tried shouting in people's ears, tugging at their coats, deliberately trying to walk into them, even taking a cake from a woman's plate in a café. They would just shrug me off without acknowledgement or not even register my presence. They didn't pay much attention to each other either. I saw a child fall and skin her knee but she didn't even whimper and nobody picked her up. I went to a pub in the hope that maybe there people would let go a bit, but after only a moment of watching disconnected men and women mechanically lift pints to their lips and swallow, the very same abstract commuter look on their faces, I ran out and sat on the edge of the pavement, shaking. Any pedestrians just walked around me as if I were street furniture. I even followed one of my neighbours as he went into his house. I stood there as he and his family ate their dinner in passive silence until eventually the children went to bed and the parents went upstairs, got into bed with each other and had silent, mechanical sex. I threw up on their bedroom floor. That’s another reason I don’t stay in one place. I can’t stand to see too much of the others’ non-lives.
The final reason is the most important one. I’ve found I can bring people back. The first time, it was someone I knew. An ex, in fact. By that point, I'd worked out how to survive. It is pretty easy to steal food and clothes when nobody pays you any attention. It is just as easy to sleep in their spare rooms, borrow their clothes and use their shower if you can get over the guilt of stealing and the unsettling sensation of sharing space with animated mannequins, so I was clean, well fed and had plenty of leisure time. Maybe I should have thought that enough of a utopia for me too. Night-by-night I was working my way through a block of luxury apartments down by the river bank, watching other people's DVDs and reading their books and magazines while they were out. It turns out one of them was where Simon lived. I hadn't kept in contact with him since the break-up. Tempestuous doesn't begin to describe our relationship at its best and our parting was less than amicable, so watching him enter his living room and not even see me made my stomach turn to ice.
It was some form of grief that made me stay, made me watch him undress, climb into bed and pull the covers up to his chin. With his eyes closed and his chest slowly rising and falling, I could remember back to when I used to watch him as he slept, angry with him for whatever we had just fought about. It was something between nostalgia and loneliness that made me lean over and gently touch his lips with mine. They were cold and dry and as unresponsive as if he were dead. It felt like a final betrayal but instead of standing up and walking out, I clutched his hair and bit down on his bottom lip as if I could somehow wake him. Well, whether it was anger and love, or just blood and spit, he did open his eyes and at the same time a sharp, painful shock knocked me to the floor. When I picked myself up onto my elbows, I could see Simon curled up into a ball, rocking gently back and forth. He turned to me, eyes harsh with pain and pleaded with me to let him have the knowledge back. I only stuck around a day or two after that. I couldn't stay and watch Simon as he babbled and refused to leave the bed, to wash or to eat.
I can't bring everyone back. Sometimes nothing happens at all. I think maybe I don't feel enough for those ones. Sometimes they are only back for a moment or two before they turn away, preoccupied. I have some bruises from the ones that fight back, but these are the ones that help me continue. Too many are like Simon. They make me doubt I am doing the right thing. I leave them all, and move on to spread my message. I like to believe that in time, maybe some of them will follow me and understand. To each of them, at the moment of their return, I give my name.
Hope.