New weekly serialized fiction: Degeneration Part 1

Degeneration:
1 - A lowering of effective power, vitality, or essential quality to an enfeebled and worsened kind or state
2 - intellectual, moral, or artistic decline

We live in the future.
Right now. You and I.
There's no flying cars anywhere. Just the same pieces of shit rides that have been around since I was just a stain on my daddy's pants. No cybernetic creatures or teleportation devices. Just fancy phones that do everything but answer the one question I have: What the fuck happened?

But I don't have to tell you that. You were there living it. Just like everyone else. Only everyone else clocked out, bolted outta here, later-gater, bounced, call it what you will but they've all gone. Expired.

And I'm typing to you on this apparatus which amazingly has more life than my dead girlfriend in the other room. Somehow I find humor in that. I read somewhere that there's five stages to grieving a loved one's death. Or was it three? No matter, I'm over it. It took me less than an hour to figure out that I've become an exclusive card holding member of the last humans on earth. The illustrious group of leftovers. You get over emotions lightning fast when reality forces you to have to bury your girl, your pets, your neighbors, your mailman, the man in the corner store and some other people I don't know just so I can keep from having to smell the rot.

This is the kind of shit that nobody ever prepares you for. Not your parents, not your teachers, not your local politicians, not even your favorite bartender. We are so ill-equipped to deal with the worst-case scenario but ask me to build you a social media friendly website for your aunt's cosmetic home business and get it ranked high enough to get first page listing in a matter of a week and I'd be able to do it - in exchange for a fee, of course. There is no instructional guide, handbook, in-case of emergency break this glass - I'm afraid we're on our own. So I'm making it up as I go.

Don't push the river, it flows by itself. Some wise, dead person once said.

You wanna know the first thing I did when I woke up next to a stiff, cold, slightly smelly empty shell of a body? This is how it went down. I called all the emergency numbers and got no response. No, I didn't do CPR. She was a flatline, you dig? So after that, there was not much I can do. We are creatures of habit after all. So I took a piss, brushed my teeth, took a shower, got some clean clothes out of the dryer, put 'em on, got the leash out to walk the dog, realized the dog checked out as well, poured milk into a saucer for my cat, and made me an egg sandwich. Then I checked the usual stomps online. No fresh content since midnight. That's when I went to the main hub and typed the message that you responded to.

This thing still on? Anybody out there?

Which reminds me, it's time to dig a hole.

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