Ryan dragged his feet down the high street. He remembered when it had been a bustling hub of interconnectedness, with people from all walks of life running for the bus, sliding in and out of shops, and strolling with friends. They were no more. No more busses, no shops, and no friends.

It was still unsettling to know that he was alone. That he alone had outlived the rest. He was the last human - the last creature - alive.

A flurry of natural disasters had plagued the Earth in one vicious month. A meteor struck the centre of Asia and Africa, earthquakes carved the Americas and Oceania was flooded. Europe was spared that initial tragedy, it had been a miracle. But the natural disasters were nothing compared to the human destruction. Instead of uniting, governments turned on one another each competing for the finite resources. Wars were triggered and nuclear destruction was incurred. Ryan didn't know that he was the last organism on the planet - no one had taken a census in the recent years - but he had wandered what remained of Scotland alone for six months. Or maybe it had been a year. Perhaps it was just a day and he was losing all semblance of sanity. Regardless, Ryan was alone.

For a while he tried to keep himself occupied, found a working television and collected whatever books he could find. But what purpose did the arts serve, what meaning could remain when there was no one left to indulge or contemplate. The pages were useless, the film a waste of material. There would be no one to discuss the works, no one to have outrageous opinions, and no one to agree with him. Ryan tried to force himself to indulge for as long as possible, he had hoped that seeing and reading about all those people would provide some kind of comfort. It only made him realise how alone he was.

There were a couple positives to being the last person in the world. There were no queues and no need to pay for groceries, or to get into different facilities - those which hadn't been destroyed. The roads were also empty so Ryan could finally enjoy the city without traffic. He could also give in to curiosities he wouldn't have dared to whilst everyone was alive. Ryan had discovered a knack for breaking and entering - he wondered if he would have been a good burglar when there were people to burgle. He had even dared to occupy some of those houses - sometimes he'd pretend there was a threat of the homeowners returning to add a spice of excitement. But no matter where he moved to, it was never grand enough to keep his interest. He'd tried quaint townhouses, spacious mansions and even Edinburgh Castle for a couple of days. Regardless of where he went, one fact followed: he was alone.

That was the killer. The loneliness. No friends, no family, no lovers and no strangers. He wandered Edinburgh streets and found no one. And it wasn't just Edinburgh; Ryan took a two month trip going as far as his car would go searching for anyone - but from Caithness to Cornwall there was nothing. So Ryan returned home. And why not? There was no access to the mainland, and even if there was, it was too dangerous given the fallout of the wars.

Ryan had never thought of himself as a particularly popular individual. He had a small friend group and occasionally had a girlfriend, but no one else. His parents had died before the apocalyptic year. But he supposed, at that moment, that he was the most popular and lonely man on Earth.

He visited all the people he had known's houses first, hoping that somehow they had made it through. But all he was met with was desolation, photographs, and memories. The cruel thing was that in exploring where they each lived he felt like he'd grown closer to each of them than he had been when they were all alive - he even found out a few secrets. But what were secrets worth when there was no one to keep them from.

Each day was a struggle. It was a struggle to wake up, a struggle to choose to eat, and a struggle to move. Ryan had contemplated the obvious solution - to meet the eternal darkness by his own hand. It would be quicker than slowly dying whilst walking amongst the graveyard of Earth. And if an afterlife did exist he would be reunited with all that had been lost. But no matter how lonely it was, Ryan couldn't. He'd prepared for it multiple times: climbed to great heights and raided pharmacists - but each time he was stopped. No matter how low he felt, he never made the final choice.

It was a perplexing choice that even Ryan couldn't wrap his head around. The greatest fear of cutting ones life short was the pain it would cause those left behind, and the fear that you would miss something great, something that would pull you out of the hole you were buried in. But those were no longer factors. There was a slim possibility that others had survived, but Ryan knew they weren't in Edinburgh - he'd set off flares at the castle and posted signs around the city for everyone to convene in one location; no one appeared.

But, despite the pure isolation Ryan could never. Perhaps it was an innate instinct, a human drive to fear death. A survival instinct which had been taken to the extreme. Ryan had gone over his options thousands of times, and almost every time he came to the same conclusion that his best chance at happiness was to reunite with all that were lost. Almost every time. Because for reasons which may always remain elusive - Ryan fought to survive. He survived wars unlike any that had ever been seen, he survived Mother Nature at her darkest. Maybe he survived for a reason.

Or maybe there was no reason. Maybe life never held one to begin with. You live, you die. But Ryan hoped for more. He hoped when hope was meaningless.

And so, he dragged his feet down Princes Street. Alive.