After all the panic, the mindsweeping horror of it all, and after the tension of waiting for days in darkness, and after the first, numbing shock of seeing the world bereft of life, and after the grief had started seeping through to us, as all the losses began to pile up, what we found was that there wasn't a lot to do. There was no society, nothing to work for and nothing to distract us; there was no electricity, and there were no people.
     But we found guitars, and some of us knew how to play, and that's how we'd spend the time; sitting, lying on our backs in the bare remains of rooms we sheltered in. Jamming. We'd sit in a half-lit haze of loss and half-remembered tunes, not music but ghosts, snatches of songs creeping into everything we tried to play. Nothing we played was new, but nothing was right, nothing was how it used to be. We couldn't remember the names of the songs or the artists, but the meaning hovered close around us, contaminated. And that was all that was left behind, that and a civillisation of rot and plastic. In our own minds, our memories, everything had faded and frozen; there was nothing but the present, and that wasn't much. We were worn down, though, worn past any desire to get more from life. We'd had as much as we could take.
     Time became irrelevant and immeasurable. We never saw the sun; the moon. Romance was another lost memory. Love songs became just songs. Meaningless. We sang songs about lovers walking in the moonlight, but we couldn't remember love; we couldn't remember moonlit strolls. We lived in a haze. A swamp of cluelessness; an emotional amnesia. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, who knows, who cares; they probably all passed us at some point. At some point, we forgot our names. At some point, some girl killed herself. She'd had as much as she could take. Who knows, who cares.
     Sometimes, some of us ventured out of our rooms. To the outside. We'd have hoped for something new, but we'd forgotten hope long ago. If we'd hoped for anything, we'd have been disappointed, but we'd forgotten disappointment long ago. The streets were empty and dusty. They all seemed identical. We might have said they were boring, but we'd forgotten boredom long ago. One day or night, we watched the stream flow beneath a bridge, leaning on the rusty railings. One of us fell and died. Bled. He'd have felt pain; we'd have felt sad; but we'd forgotten how.
     We carried his body to where we'd buried the other one. We buried them side by side. We'd have imagined a grassy cemetery, like a meadow, on a hot summer morning, blue skies above. We'd have had a funeral service, all standing around the two graves, dressed in black, weeping. The priest would have said prayers, we'd have talked about their lives. The good times, the bad times. Instead, we stood around, guitars in hand, and sang old love songs. We'd have hoped that someone, somewhere, saw some symbolism in this gesture, but we'd forgotten hope. We walked back to the bridge to watch the sun rise, but it never rose.