Truthfully, I haven’t felt the same for some time now. As if it was an option. How can anyone? How can any resemblance of emotion, the slightest break from this blatant reality, command an attention long enough as to say “things will be okay?” The only commitment I can make is assuring myself that things will not be okay. They will always be wrong.

I had always feared becoming lost in my thoughts even prior to this happening. From daybreak to day’s end, I was able to present myself with enough preoccupation to avoid asking what or why. Why am I here? What is the result of everything I see, touch, taste, or feel? Where can I find Everlasting, and how can I trap it to remain under my control? Thoughts have the power to move mountains, to decide and to affect. They have the power to destroy a man or, to be more politically correct, have him force destruction upon himself. And now, here in my place, they are all I have.

How this has all happened, the most demanding question of the here and now, I cannot answer. I cannot answer because, like so many of the questions that one can produce, I do not know. I do not know the extent to which right can grow until it becomes wrong. I do not know how long someone can last before succumbing to the weaknesses that will bring about his destruction. I most certainly do not know how fiction can become fact, how imagination becomes reality, or how hell can be made apparent on a street corner. Yet, despite remaining answerless, it is all I can see.

I should consider myself fortunate. Fortunate enough to have the opportunity to write a final testament, that is. Though…what good is the written word if no one is going to read it? The world is falling into a void and my name, every instance of my life and the lives of those who have crossed paths with mine, will fade. I can hardly think of someone considering the survival of the last month as being fortunate. Then again, maybe others had hope. At least for a short while.

Because I am using this canvas to cleanse my conscience rather than create a last ditch attempt to save the memory of my character, my name will remain anonymous. It is my story that holds every relevance to you and yours. A story you have lived and will continue to live until you find yourself alone with only your thoughts to accompany you. Maybe then you will be able to understand why I have given up. Why I have chosen to allow the destruction of myself.

When it was released, I was playing the role of the overzealous scientist. Determined to lead a life worth living, one that would better the quality of life for those around me, I embraced the written word and the ideas that followed it. If I were fortunate, I would be a director of the word, an orchestrator of communication, and a conduit through which ideas would benefit mankind. Never would I have imagined that I would bring about the destruction of the species, that I would be the medium through which the idea betrays the word.

I wanted to preserve life. I looked to the rudimentary nature of humans to try and understand how one could exceed the limitations of his body. Never would I be able to possess the foresight to know what would become of my research. I sought to improve the human condition by reducing its frailty. Disease and illness are merely situational. I worked to remove the human element from that situation. I wanted to prolong life…not resurrect it.

I sit here at my desk behind a locked door inside a deep hallway as part of a dimly lit complex. Although I was never appreciative of the building’s facade, its grim presentation and layout has been the only reason I’ve been able to survive. As great as this fortress of deconstruction may hold, however, it is, of all places, still subject to the agent that has caused the dead to remain animated. My work has been manipulated and perverted into a doomsday vehicle. As much as I have considered my role to be as neutral as those it contaminates on every street and in every home, I am as guilty as those who have attempted to weaponize it and those who have led to its release.

The reality of my circumstance is that I do hold access to provisions that would allow me to remain alive. In the depths of this dungeon of a “research” structure, I have sustained myself on the rationing of stored foodstuffs that would continue well into the ensuing months. I have the means of hiding in the shadows from those who lurk in the darkest recesses of the building and its surrounding areas. I have the means, yet I do not have the desire.

I have the seen the result of my efforts, and I have grown weary of it. I no longer wish to hear the clamor of death through narrow hallways, the feeding of flesh, and the artistry of blood spatters. It is for this reason that I have decided to condemn myself. I cannot endure these thoughts any longer. I have revealed myself to those who will soon be all that is left of this world; a barren wasteland where the towering accomplishments of man lay waste to its greatest creation.

I can hear them plainly now, grunting and moaning as more and more pour into the inner-workings of the building. You see, as I have written this memoir, they have been here, separated only by a thin partition of wood which I can only imagine will splinter and break before my last word has been recorded. Banging at the door, tearing at the splinters that separate it from another victim, another meal. They will break through and destroy every part of me that is human. I will soon walk among the dead, endlessly feeding on the living until I wither away. I am the man who has killed everything you loved and held dear. For that, I cannot allow myself an easy death. I am the man who has made everything wrong. I am the man who sold the wor—