There is a chasm between me and the world outside of me. A gap so wide my feelings can't cross it. By the time my screams reach the other side, they have dwindled into groans.

I can’t seem to make myself care about anything to the right or left of the present.

I'm watching her talk. Watching her jaw move and collecting her words one by one as they spill from her lips. I don't deserve them. Her warm memories. I'd like to paint them over the bare plaster walls of my soul, but everything I paint seems to peel.

You know things are moving. You're changing, you fellow Dead are changing, the world is ready for something miraculous. What are we waiting for?

Just... ate," M says, frowning at me a little. "Two days...ago." I grab my stomach again. "Feel empty. Feel... dead." He nods. "Marr...iage.

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.

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.