Weird Stories From A Weird Person

Layla (Dystopian/Science Fic.)

A/N Heyyy! this is my first time writing something like this, so feedback is appreciated!

I know who Layla is. Ever since the pandemic started 23 years ago, she and I quickly became the only survivors on the planet. She's been there for me, ever since I ventured out into the outside world once my parents died. I was five then, and I didn't understand the situation I had been put in. Now I'm 27, and she's 30. She had jogged up to me, examining me to check for disease. She had stuck out her hand, smiling bright. "I'm Layla. And I'm here to help." Ever since then, it's been the two of us, trying to survive in a broken, lonely world. Sometimes I would feel lonely, or I would miss my parents, and Layla would always be there with a chocolate muffin and a comforting word. Sometimes we would feel depressed, and we would comfort each other in our own misery. It was perfect. Or as perfect as a desolated planet could get.

Just a few days ago, I noticed she was feeling lonelier than usual. I put on my specialized mask, strapping it up behind my head so I could head out and get a cookie or something to make her feel better. I ran through the wreckage of buildings and festering green ooze that was once a dying human. The way this pandemic worked, first the human would start feeling delusions. Then, they would come down with a fever, and ultimately melt down into green ooze and die. It was, in all, a very painful death. And the specialty of this sickness, it was highly contagious. Even if you were on floor 37 of your office building and the sick person was on floor 2, you would catch it. Everyone did.

I slowed to a jog at the abandoned bakery, rooting through the dumpster to find anything the rats didn't get to first. I hummed a song while I worked. It calmed me. I looked up, garbage grease on my face, my blood running cold at the sight I saw. A sign had been bolted up onto the wall in front of me, with plain black block letters printed onto the gigantic poster paper:

Are you sick?

Symptoms:

Fever

Excessive Interior Bleeding

Green Spots

Imagining companions.

If you have any one of these, make sure to isolate yourself- and start writing your will.

My blood ran cold. Imaginary companions. But- Layla couldn't possibly be fake! Could she?

I ran all the way back to my base, expecting to see Layla lying on the makeshift couch. But she wasn't there. It was like she had just...ceased to exist.

If you are reading this, know that this is the last thing I ever wrote before I died. As I write this very sentence, I lie in bed with green spots dotting my shaking hands. And if you are reading this, I am happy humanity survived to your very generation. I don't know how, and I don't know where, but there must have been a way if a human like you is reading this very paragraph. All I know is that even if Layla was a figment of my imagination, she is sitting here with me in my last breaths. Human imagination can be more real than reality. Layla was always realer than the whole situation I was in.