Chocolate and Nietzsche at the end of the world

The following is the re-telling of history as only the witnesses can tell it.

Humans became putrid in these lands and died in droves. Doctors failed to diagnose the peculiar disease and died within days of contact with a sick individual. Some were spared, though without reason.

The sick contracted what survivors call “the bleeding disease.”

Individuals developed pustules around the body which would burst and bleed without clotting – they died from losing blood.

Animals fled and aggregated the farthest from the contaminated creatures. Some have come to refer to this period as the bleeding.

Governing authorities died from this mysterious, unbiased disease and governments collapsed. Anarchy ensued, murder became commonplace.

The suburbs were looted, cities were overrun with criminals — New York and LA were burned to the ground.

“God has left us. Nietzsche was right,” was left written on billboards across a barren landscape that was once the United States.

Alice turned 35, three years after the initial collapse – she lived those three years in constant movement and without a purpose beyond survival.

As a gift, Isaac wrote down an excerpt from Nietzsche’s “Parable of The Madman” on the back of a chocolate bar wrapper and she carried it with her through all their travels.

The pair had shared the chocolate while warming their limbs over a fire in the wilderness and after consuming the sweet treat, the pair was convinced that there was no more chocolate left on earth.

Neither party knew which state they had found themselves in after they had broken away from their caravan of survivors. The stars at night bore no characteristic of whether they were in Texas or Maine, as neither Alice nor Isaac could read the stars.

“Where is the north star?” Alice asked Isaac once they were on their own.

“That one, I believe,” Isaac said, pointing to a cluster of stars.

Alice squinted.

“Are you sure, Isaac?”

Isaac sighed.

“I think so…”

Alice shrugged and petted Isaac on the shoulder.

“That’s good enough for me,” she said. “Let’s get moving.”

Alice and Isaac were on a journey to find a mythical sanctuary city, which members of their previous caravan had spoken of frequently, though they alluded to the place with a narrative cloaked in Garden-of-Eden-mysticism.

The pair’s previous caravan had quickly turned to cannibalism, so a myth sounded better than their reality.

After weeks of wandering, Alice and Isaac found themselves in an environment which suggested they were in the midwest – ample lakes, ranging forests, and the bluest skies imaginable.

“That is a white pine,” Isaac said, stopping for a moment to point up at the tree, one day.

Alice stopped to observe the tree. She calculated a math equation in her head to figure out why Isaac found this tree so interesting – as it was just a humble tree, in her opinion.

Isaac snapped off a handful of needles and smiled.

“We can boil the needles for tea,” he said. “Might help with your cough, darlin’.”

Alice smiled.

“I don’t have a cough, though.”

“Yes, you do,” he said, pulling off more needles and shoving them in his pocket. “You cough in your sleep.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.”

Alice rubbed her nose and swallowed, taking note of how dry her throat suddenly was.

“Are we going to keep walking or should we make camp?” she asked.

Isaac rubbed away residue from the needles and walked into the middle of the path they had found themselves on. He shielded his eyes from the setting sun and frowned.

“We should make camp.”

“In the middle of the woods?” Alice asked, looking behind them where the woods seemed darker and more ominous.

She noticed how trees on either side of the path curled inwards at their peaks, creating a canopy. Though vehicles had been absent from most of their travels, ruts from years of travel on those trails provided reminders of the recent past, before Earth was turned upside down and shaken.

“I will protect you,” Isaac said, reaching and touching Alice’s chin. “The woods are much safer than where we came from, darlin’.”

Alice smiled, though her sigh betrayed herself.

“I will protect you,” he said again, pulling the straps off his backpack and laying the pack on the ground.

Alice and Isaac made camp.

Isaac boiled water in a pot the pair had stolen from their caravan before they had left. They roasted a squirrel and both sucked on the tiny bones for as many calories as they could get.

“What food do you miss most, Isaac?” Alice asked, rolling a bone around her mouth.

Alice keenly noticed in that moment how the light from the fire illuminated Isaac’s cheekbones and the whites of his eyes against the darkness of the night.

“I don’t think about the past,” he said, snapping a bone and licking the ends. “The past doesn’t matter anymore.”

Alice frowned.

“I miss hamburgers,” she said, almost to herself. “Do you think there will be hamburgers at the sanctuary city?”

Isaac smiled and threw shards of bone into the fire. He wrapped his arms around his knees.

“For your sake, darlin’, I sure hope there are piles of hamburgers.”

Alice giggled and threw her bone shards into the fire. The flames sparked.

“I have gotten skinny, haven’t I, Isaac?”

“You are as beautiful as the day I met you.”

Alice involuntarily rubbed her gaunt cheekbones.

“I smell, don’t I.”

Isaac threw his head back and laughed.

“Don’t laugh!” Alice shouted.

“We both stink worse than hogs, darlin’!”

Alice smiled and laughed alongside her lover.

“I suppose we both do.”

Isaac shook his head and dug in his pocket for the pine needles. He sprinkled them in the boiling water, stirred the needles slowly with a stick, and began humming. The sun had left the traveling pair long ago and the moon was their only other companion for the night — the only other observer to witness Isaac’s humble song.

He stopped stirring and curled his arms around his knees again. The brightness in his face faded and he bit his bottom lip.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“Can you read the words?”

Alice simply nodded and pulled out the wrinkled chocolate bar wrapper out from her backpack.

“We have killed him—you and I,” she read, squinting to see the words with only the pale firelight to give her guidance. “All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this—”

The wind picked up and stole the wrapper from Alice’s hands.

“No!”

Alice’s stomach turned cold and the darkness turned darker. Isaac’s gift was not only gone to her now, but to the world, as well.

She lunged toward the disappearing wrapper, her fear of the forest displaced, desperate to preserve its inscription.

“Alice, stop! Don’t go in there by yourself!” Isaac shouted.

He dropped the stick in the pot of boiling tea and ran after his lover. The two chased the wrapper in the breeze through the thick woods, tripping over roots, shrubbery, and decaying logs. The lustful scent of moss engrossed the pair and Isaac believed he might want to have a child with Alice one day.

“But she must stop running,” he thought, struggling to catch Alice before the pair lost their way.

Alice watched the wrapper whip around the trunk of a tree and disappear into the blackness of the night.

“Ah!” she cried, falling to her knees.

She crawled around the tree, sure that she’d find the wrapper laying amongst the dead grasses – but it was not there.

“It’s gone, Isaac!” she yelled, burying her face into her hands. “My gift! It’s gone.”

She sat back on her heels and wept into the night, letting her head fall backwards so she could chastise the sky — to curse God with her tears.

“What have you done to us!”

Isaac finally reached Alice, grabbing her by the shoulders to pull her upwards.

“Darlin’, it is just a wrapper … come back to camp,” he said, grunting as Alice fought back her lover.

“My gift! I lost my gift, Isaac,” she cried, running fingers through her hair.

“I will get you a new gift.”

“There is nothing left,” Alice whispered, her breath catching with her sobs. “Everything is rancid. The horsemen are here…”

“Horsemen?” Isaac asked, sticking his arms under Alice’s armpits to pull her to her feet.

“The bible, Isaac!”

“The bible?” he asked. “I don’t follow—”

Alice slapped Isaac with the back of her hand and wailed.

“We are dead!”

“Stop it, Alice!” he shouted, pulling her up and walking her like a puppet, limp in his arms and barely moving.

“It’s gone, Isaac …” she cried.

“You are unraveling, darlin’,” Isaac said, his own voice failing from anguish. “We are alive and fine.”

With every step Isaac took, he drugged one of Alice’s feet with him. Slowly but surely, they made their way back to camp.

“Let’s just get back to the fire,” Isaac said, feeling the darkness press in closer to Alice and him.

He finally saw the flickering of the fire through the trees and carried Alice back to camp. Once by the fire, Isaac dropped to the ground with Alice and cradled her in his arms, rocking her back and forth like an infant.

“It’s gone,” Alice said, spitting as she spoke. “It's all gone…”

“Go to sleep,” Isaac said, humming. “All will be better in the morning.”

Alice whimpered and wrapped her fingers around Isaac’s wrist.

“Why has this happened? What if there is no sanctuary city?”

Isaac sighed and wiped tears from Alice’s cheek.

“We will keep heading north,” he said, weakly.

Alice buried her forehead into Isaac’s chest and prayed, though she wasn’t sure who would hear her.

“Will God still hear my prayers if he has left us?” she asked her lover.

Isaac pulled Alice closer.

“If he doesn’t listen, tell your prayers to me.”