The Streets of Boston - Chapter 1: The Apocalypse

• Posted by Teineeva March 3, 2016 - 1,638 views

  May 15, 2135
  

  Time always seemed to slow whenever I decided it was time for some music. I lit my last cigar and inserted the worn holotape into the holoplayer. I had been rationing my cigars for years now, the last one I had smoked had been in july, I believe. It was hard to tell the time in here.
  

  Cold empty bed, springs hard as lead

  Pains in my head, feel like old Ned

  What did I do to be so black and blue?
  

  No joys for me, no company

  Even the mouse ran from my house

  All my life through I've been so black and blue
  

  The voice of armstrong and his trumpet resounded through my shelter. Black and Blue, another jazz title from my collection. A song about colours and solitude, ah, the things one ponders after the end of the world, I thought, taking another sip at my cigar. I had been trying to keep it for a special occasion until I realised that in my peculiar position that was probably not going to happen. It sat down on the sofa, damn this thing was starting to be worn out quite a bit. It was still more comfortable than the chairs in the kitchen area.
  

  I had spent most of my days lying on this very same spot devouring my books, over and over. By now one could imagine I could start giving philosophy classes or something, but I doubt I would be able to find any public in here. I should have given a bit of the serum to one of the stupidly young broads down in the bar, have her with me for company or something… Ah well, it’s a big waste of time to think about that now. I would do better to just enjoy my cigar.
  

  September 23, 2148
  

  Well there went my last bottle of Bordeaux, I felt like some french music for this occasion would fit. So I dug up an old tape and picked up the corkscrew from the kitchen. I heard something knock on the door yesterday, if you could call it knocking. But well, I decided to finish that bottle of Beaulieu so I might just have been drunk.
  

  I’ve been emptying my wine racks a bottle a day these last few months. A man has to find something to do after all. I looked at the empty cigar box placed upon the small table next to the holoplayer in regret. It had been over ten years… Would I ever have a smoke again?
  

  Anyway, I looked at the selection I had prepared for tonight, let’s start with some Edith Piaf, Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien was a great song. And very appropriate for an old shark like myself.
  

  “Je me fous du passé” I mumbled as the song started. I do not care about the past. If only it was that simple. At least the title was appropriate, as most people in my line of business, I did not regret a thing I had done, except maybe for outliving mankind alone. Fire had devoured the world and now here I was, drinking wine, listening to old french tapes, thinking about the good old times… Oh how I missed smoking, this would be the best moment to do so.
  

  By now I didn’t even get dressed in the morning, if I would put on a bathrobe it would already be a show of motivation. It was not that I had lost hope, I had just given up on leaving this hole in the near future. If my geiger counter was correct I wouldn’t be able to leave this place for at least another twenty years. I took another sip of wine and enjoyed the rich aroma fill my mouth. I preferred french wines. Probably yet another artefact of my heritage. I wondered if Paris still stood, after all the europeans would have been mad to participate in this armageddon. If I could ever see the Eiffel tower again...
  

  I was definitely getting tipsy, I thought as I waltzed across the room. As the words “Je repars à zero” echoed in my head. Soon I would indeed start all over again, this time without Eddy bloody Winter or that nosy government looking into my affairs, Boston, if not the entire world, would be at my feet.
  

  October 23, 2177
  

  Well it has been a century, If I would have any wine or bourbon left, I would drink some right now. What I would do for a bottle of Dom pérignon and a good cigar… I have grown tired of most of my music but when I stopped listening to it on a daily basis, I felt like I was losing myself. The silence was unbearable, so I rebooted the old holoplayer and reread some of my books. Right now, it was a track from Glen Miller; Moonlight Serenade.
  

  If only I could serenade the moon. I have started missing even the most stupid things about the old world. Damnit I would even enjoy hearing Eddy’s annoying voice again. I would probably profit from the situation to shoot his sorry arse in the back, but more than that I would like to have old Mrs Lafoy with me again.
  

  I know that if armageddon hadn’t préceded me, I would have shot her in her sleep and bound her to a couple of concrete blocks before throwing her into the lake near Sanctuary Hills, but well I have been deprived from a womanly touch for an entire century by now and even though she wasn’t the person I would like to spend eternity with she was a great old pleasure in bed. She had a nice pair of everything important. I underestimated how long and how lonely I would be in here. I could at least have kept her for the first years, wait for her to grow old, then kill her as planned.
  

  I would have had to find a place to put the body though…
  

  Anyway, for now she would be remembered by the diamond necklace I had hung on the wall. I remembered meeting her on that bridge in Paris, I swept her off her feet and brought her to Boston with me, I replaced my father in our family business and she went on to teach french for a high school class. And for all that time she believed I owned a small and very profitable business, the legal kind. If only she knew.
  

  The music stopped, and the silence soon set back into the room. Oh how I had grown to hate it. So I stood back up again, I had put on a suit for once, it felt nice but was a lot less comfortable than my usual attire, and walked towards the holoplayer when my eye fell upon that old tape from Edith Piaf.
  

  I had certainly started to regret certain things, oh how I missed the old world.
  

  December 25, 2200
  

  It’s christmas in hell. I have been in here for nearly a hundred and twenty years and my geiger counter still displays a dangerous amount of radiation outside my little vault. In the meantime I think to the rhythm of big band and walk along the verses of long dead poets. Today was my lucky day though, I was cleaning up and found an old cigar hidden underneath the sofa. My own personal shitty christmas gift. The new world better be worth the wait goddamnit.
  

  And so it happened that on this particular december evening I found myself listening to Snowfall from Enoch Light and the Light brigade. I would have to do my best not to come up with such a stupid name for my new crew, if there was going to be one at all. The cigar in my mouth wasn’t even lit, my lighter ran out of fuel a long time ago, and the book on my torso was driving me to kill myself, that’s how often I had read it already.
  

  I had moved from my bedroom to the sofa, this small room contained everything I now held dear. And happened to be the only room where I could play music all day long. Long live fusion powered holoplayers! I would go mad without it. None of my suits looked as nice and slick as they used to but without a dry cleaner, that wasn’t that impressive a feat. At least I could still wash my bathrobe and my undergarments. My razor was still intact if not a tidbit blunt, so at least my facial hair still looked fine. I would have to find a hairstylist as soon as this whole debacle was done with.

  
  The days were slower and slower now that the only things I had left were my sanity, my boring books and my music. At least tonight I would pretend to have a smoke. And as I lay there I wondered how the world was doing outside, would it have restored itself to it’s former glory, adapted to the new conditions or would it still be the same wasteland I left behind?