I think the world has mostly ended because the cities we wander through are as rotten as we are. Buildings have collapsed. Rusted cars clog the streets. Most glass is shattered and the wind drifting through the hollow high-rises moans like an animal left to die. I don't know what happened. Disease? War? Social collapse? Or was it just us? The Dead replacing the Living? I guess it's not so important. Once you're arrived at the end of the world, it hardly matters which road you took.

Everything you see, you might be seeing for the last time.

...thinking all this maximalism would somehow generate happiness?

I notice faint scars on her wrists and forearms, thin lines too symmetrical to be accidents.

Last winter, when so many Living joined the Dead and our prey became scarce, I watched some of my friends become full-dead. The transition was undramatic. They just slowed down, then stopped, and after a while I realised they were corpses. It disquieted me at first, but it’s against etiquette to notice when one of us dies. I distracted myself with some groaning.

I feel the flatline of my existence disrupting, forming heartbeat hills and valleys

We will cry and bleed and lust and love, and we will cure death. We will be the cure. Because we want it.