Alone at the Very End of the World (Revised Edition)

By Damien Joseph

A survival masterpiece!

It all happened when I was a child.

Everything used to be nice, everything was pleasant, until it wasn't. When we were hit with the virus, it was all over for us; our way of life was now dead. Many died, my friends, my family, strangers; died in an instant. Those that did survive, we had to find a new way of life. We needed to find a new way to survive.

Alone, at the Very End of the World is a science fiction novel that takes place in a bleak present day.

Be transported in this coming of age story told in the first person of a boy that survived a deadly virus. Venture through the hardships and enjoy the happiness he experiences throughout his life as he tells his story to son.

Alone, at the Very End of the World - Revised Edition, is the 2nd edition to the 2012 novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Damien Joseph
• Release date: Jul 19, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005954826

Damien Joseph

Here's my biography it's not the prettiest, so bare with me on that. I'm an okay artist. I post artwork on my Instagram quite often. https://www.instagram.com/damienjoseph84/I love to write, do art, blog (journal), and occasionally mess with the camera.I've published 2 novels and one comic. I am currently working on a sequel to Alone at the Very End of the World and finishing up book one of the graphic novel Surviving Crete.If you like my style, which would be pretty neat, check out my other work.

Book preview

Alone, at the Very End of the World

REVISED EDITION

Damien Joseph

Copyright © 2012 Damien Joseph

Yellow Edition - Copyright © 2019 Damien Joseph

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Death is a requirement to life and for us all to know that we will one day experience death is a tragedy. My dedication is not to a person but to a thing that we cannot explain, it is to life. Without life we may never experience death.

I present to you all, the Yellow Version of Alone at the Very End of the World.

CHAPTER 1

I love you, those exact words, they were the last thing I would hear out of my mother’s lips. I was there as the sound of her voice came together to form her last words. Each day that I survived, her words echoed within me, brightening that very moment of my haunting nightmare that is my current reality.

My story began like any other.

You see Bryan I was a child with loving parents and good friends, I had a childhood most would want and I was happy to have had it, I said

Bryan laid in his bed, he always looked up before he went to sleep. His fascination with all small non-relevant things reminded me of her; his mother. I sat on the hard cold bed that used to be my bed. The bed was next to where Bryan was laying down.

It all began when I was a child no older than seven years of age. I lived in a townhouse, not the prettiest house, but I was happy. I was too young to care about how the house looked. My mother on the other hand did not appreciate my same regards for the home, I said.

Bryan hated laying in his bed, he said laying in his bed was very uncomfortable. His bed was made of a sheet, and a blanket on a concrete floor. The sheets were bland and stained, it didn’t age well.

I continued, She would scream at the neighbor on the other side of the wall; her anger at the man next door always started with her knocking on the wall. Then the knocking would turn to her yelling, and then she would turn it to screaming and banging on the wall.

Bryan moved around his bed, he would wiggle his toes in his socks. The socks he wore grey and holey. The socks were passed down from me when I was a child. Bryan adored that pair of socks, it was his only pair.

Her small hands would hit against that wall over and over again. It did not feel right when she went a day or two without banging against the wall. You see Bryan, she did it on a daily basis, there wasn’t a day that went on where she didn’t do it. I was never sure what she was doing until I was old enough to realize it. As a child I was not the most observant person, I never cared much for the details until I was older. I never could figure out what the neighbor did to make her angry. I wish I knew what she was going through, I wish I had asked her why she was doing it. Remember Bryan, if there is something you do not understand, please ask before it will be too late, I said.

I opened my mouth and took in a deep breath which followed with a yawn. My eyes felt heavy, I could feel the need to go to sleep and continue this story another time, but when I look at him and see that smile on his I just have to keep going. Somehow, Bryan looks more awake than I do, I guess I’ll just finish the story.

I said, There was not much I knew about my mother, I do not have the best memory of her before the incident. I wish that it would be different; that I could remember her and my father with me together before the incident occurred. Now that I am older, it means everything to me to tell you my story before I forget. My memory is slipping every day and I wish not to waste my life not telling you what my life was like and what I experienced as a child. My father told me stories too, his stories are an important part of my will to live.

Bryan interrupted, Dad, was grandpa just like you? His face glowed bright, just like the woman that I love; his eagerness to ask questions reminded me nothing of myself but that of his mother. I miss her very much!

I replied to Bryan’s question, I want…I so desperately wanted to be like him, but I couldn’t be him or anything like him. Your grandfather was a brave smart man.

Why can’t you dad? asked Bryan.

I just cannot; it’s not that I have not tried. I have tried. I’m not like him, I’m not smart like him. My father, he was a biochemist, a very smart man. He dedicated most of his time in his work; that he was never home; my mother hated that about him. She knew how brilliant he was but never from what I can remember insisted on him being home more often. She never wanted him to waste his brilliance. I knew this from my father, he had told me many times that my mother was a very patient woman, that she was one of the most uplifting people he had ever met. Even though they loved each other very much, they fought often, I said.

The room got darker as the sunlight outside started to go away. There was not any electricity anywhere around. The room that Bryan was in was barren, just the essentials: blanket, sheet, and pillow.

My father said that he was poison in the early stages of their marriage. He was bitten early in his marriage with jealousy; he said that his jealousy was unwarranted and undeserved. He never got over his jealousy when they were married, my father once told me before he died that he regretted nothing about his life, everything in his life was done the way he wanted it to be done, I said as I got up from the hard cold bed.

Is that it? asked Bryan.

No, I just had to stand for a bit, I replied.

Oh okay, said Bryan as he gave a big smile on his face.

I continued the story, The night the madness happened, it happened…it happened. The virus, or what they later called it, the Volvuvirus, a name that I do not care too much for, so I just refer to it as virus. I am not claiming in any way to be an educated person, my father was smart, your mother was intelligent, and I am just me. Do not ask me questions about the virus. I don’t know anything about it, all I know is that it killed a lot of people.

The virus is still alive? asked Bryan as he sat up in his bed.

I answered, I don’t know Bryan, I think it is.

Bryan had a confused look on his face. I know he wants to go outside, that he wants to see what the world is like outside. My answer probably crushed whatever hope he had to see the outside world.

"When the virus hit I was seven, a boy and not a man, I was unaware of what was