Communal Sin

The fever spread through the village so quickly, everyone was sick before the first child died. The wise one said they'd been forsaken by the gods. No one listened. They were too busy dying.

In an earlier age, the epidemic, though tragic, would have passed quietly. The village would have been swallowed by the forest and forgotten. But these days, the village sat next to a gold mine, and many of the workers had come to the village for sex, then carried the fever back to the city. Soon the entire world was infected. Sin can no longer be contained.

The Clowns

When the clowns first appeared, the media tried to downplay it and sensationalize it at the same time. "When will the clowns strike your home, tonight at eleven!" contradicted with studies that claimed the clowns were simply a result of too many clown schools churning out too many clowns. Where would the clowns find work? It was an epidemic of clowns, but they were mostly harmless.

We eventually got used to them. A few families were killed, but based on how many clowns there are now, a few of them are bound to be bad. Mostly, we just ignore them.

The Plague

No one noticed as the epidemic became incipient. Even as people started dying from the new strain of bacteria, the entire society was oblivious.

I was the only one who could see what was happening and nobody would listen to me.

You might think I'm crazy and when the story ends it will turn out I'm inside the locked cell of an insane asylum. I wish that were the case.

Instead, I'm the last man on Earth.

I did some research after the plague. The most aggressive characteristic of the disease is that it shuts down a person's mind so they are unaware of being sick. I was the only person to have an immunity.

Unfortunately for the bacteria, it evolved too well and now there are no more hosts for it. It's as extinct as the human race will be after my death.

This is no solace for me.

Today's story deviates in that it is exactly 150 words instead of 100. It's something of an epic.