Idle Sparks .................. *

Fuckin' house won’t stay lit. I throw the Molotov cocktails through the living room window but the floors must be damp and it’s pissing me off. The whole place must be flooded pretty bad. Always did have problems with the plumbing, being on a sloping block. Couple of times the water got to within a few inches of the back door and we had to keep sweeping through the night to keep it at bay. It was one of those nights that make a great story to later recollect with friends at parties. But recollections are exactly what I didn't want and it is why I am here. I curse myself again for dredging up unwanted nostalgia. Facts are I am the last man alive. I have been without human contact for over two years now. I came here to make an end to that past. I came to make a bonfire of my memories.

I had figured it was going to be an easy task when I finally plucked up the courage to do it. Two hours tops and the dreams would never dare return. I had picked up a dozen bottles from a 7-11 and siphoned petrol into each one. I found a uniform in the back storage room to tear into strips and a fresh lighter from the counter. I didn’t have the guts to walk inside the house first, just stood on the balcony looking in to the living room for ages. I waited for the anger to come, the tears, anything, but there was nothing. Nothing like this city, these suburbs, shit, this planet for all I know. My heart has become as empty as the streets I have wandered alone for the past two years. I wedged the strips of cloth into each bottle, ensuring there was minimal leaking during its flight. The first one went through the glass with an ear splitting crash. No matter how often I have performed acts of needless destruction it still makes me look around guiltily. Those deeply ingrained social canons are hard to ignore. The smashed contents landed in the middle of the lounge room but didn’t catch. I threw a second one that smashed against the wall dividing the lounge from the kitchen; the flames ran down to the couch below, barely eking out a smoky existence on the dusty fabric. Frustrated, I flung another four in quick succession, but none of them hit anything flammable enough to really take. This was not going as expected. I wanted destruction, quick, absolute destruction. An end to my memories, burnt along with the house that contained them. I raised my fists to the sky and shrieked wordless sentiments to the emptiness above. Grabbing the box containing the remaining bottles I approached the door and kicked it in with the sum of all my rage, and pushed through into the lounge room. One at a time I smashed the bottles on the ground screaming “WHY. WON’T. YOU. FUCKING. DIE.”, each smash a punctuation point. I grabbed the coffee table and raised it above my head, then smashed it onto the ground, the petrol soaking into the splintered pieces. I pulled the tattered curtains from their hooks and threw it on the pile, then lit a strip of cloth and let it fall into the spreading fuel. I hurried back out of the house, all the more furious because I never wanted to set foot in the God damned house. This time the flames took and it had soon spread up the walls and into the roof. I sat in the middle of the road and watched my past become ash.

The walls eventually crashed in on themselves and thus prevented the fire from spreading to the neighbours houses, not that it mattered. I stayed there all night watching underneath a blanket until the embers became smoke, too afraid to sleep for fear the dreams would still be there waiting. Next morning the mists veiled the ruins of the house, leaving me with my thoughts, which were not much clearer. I concluded or rather talked myself into believing I had done the right thing. Knowing it was gone meant that I could move on, forget about it, forget about everything. The house was the last link to a life I no longer lived, or had a chance of living again.

It’s not like my life now is that unhappy. I have my routines and my pleasures. I love to randomly enter a house and by looking at their possessions, work out what sort of people they were. It’s amazing how detailed you can get. I often return to the families that I like most, catching up on their news and telling them about my travels. Not that I ever stray too far from Melbourne, what’s the point? One empty street looks much the same as another. Plus Mother Nature is doing a fine job of destroying the roads. Hell, I’ll be traveling most places on foot soon. The gap between the trains running on time and the end of civilisation is a bloody small one considering how much learning and effort it took us to get there. But to Mother Nature it’s the blink of an eye, or more aptly a zit on her face. And zits clear up in no time at all. The city itself is where I set up base camp early on once I left home for good. I hunker down in first floors of hotels, anything above that scares the shit out of me. I went to the top floors of tall buildings only twice, once to retrieve some personal belongings from my old office on the 30th floor and the second time to take a look from the observatory on the Rialto. That was only weeks into my time of isolation. I had a torch with me both times but it made little difference in the eternal darkness of those staircases. Worst of all was the echoes, which would turn my footsteps into an army of dead office workers stalking me from the ruinous heights and depths. My ragged breaths returning one hundred fold from beyond the torchlight, like a hellish choir. There was a moment of terror when I returned to the bottom of the Rialto and the door would not open on the ground floor. I cursed my stupidity at not bringing a crow bar and began slamming myself against the door again and again, screaming with panic. With great effort I calmed myself and thought of the basement entrance. I hurried recklessly down the remaining steps three at a time and flung myself at the door, which opened out onto a car park. I wept with relief, my hands shaking uncontrollably. I ran down the ramp and back out onto the street, breathing in the fresh air in heaving gulps, then heading directly to the nearest pub to once again kneel before the Alter of oblivion.

The New Release section will never be updated again, which for some reason plays on my mind more than anything else. The city and its contents are frozen in time, and I am like a demented Dr Who, traveling without purpose to infinite numbers of worlds, all empty. I wander around the desolate streets, which are like scars now instead of arteries, ducking into shops for canned food, reading material or just to forage. I walked into a sporting goods store a few months back and found a massive hunting bow, a Browning F5 Tornado with a draw length of 30 inches. I took it along with all the arrows I could find. I then went to the library and found some books on how to shoot it. I’m improving now that the arm muscles are handling the strength required to draw such a powerful weapon, and can hit a mark 25 metres away dead centre. My hunting instincts will never be improved upon as there is nothing to hunt; however just knowing I can shoot well gives me a sense of power and purpose. On hot days I walk the streets naked; the soles of my feet have become as leathery as the people who walked here when the city was still bushland. I even started playing the banjo; plucking away clawhammer style to some old folk songs I found sheet music for, the kinds of stuff Pete Seeger made popular. The best acoustics are found in alley ways and train stations, I pretend I am a busker and place the case in front of me with a few coins tossed in to motivate the audience to do likewise. I have never been anything less than captivating, the greatest show in town, come one come all. Boredom has yet to be a problem, there are always plenty of things to keep me occupied. This sort of loneliness would test most people’s sanity after a while, but me? I have always welcomed periods of isolation. Now that I am God’s last lab rat, I should feel guilty at how well I get along. Almost like I have called his bluff. All those people, strangers and friends alike, have been cleansed from my mind like an etch-a-sketch, to think of them would be like sowing the seeds of madness and adding water. Eric Clapton once said in a song – “All our past times should be forgotten. All our past times should be erased”. Who am I to contradict him?

I get up off the road, fling my blanket into the back seat of my Holden HQ, start the engine and drive off without looking back at the remains of what was once my home when the world was still alive. But home is a term that no longer applies to my existence. I have made certain of that by my actions today. My only sense of control in these circumstances is the dominion over my own mind, and the dreams were making that impossible. I burnt down my house as a defence against those dreams. I mean to be done with my past completely, or as completely as I can without making an end to myself.

Neither looking back nor looking forward.

Each second that passes is lost, never to be recollected upon again.

I am the last Phoenix rising for the last time from the ashes of a dead world.

As I turn the corner and head for the freeway back to town, I start singing Clapton’s song. But when I get to the part “As long as I can see your face again”, I begin to mumble the words, pretending I have forgotten the line.