Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #19 October 2015 | Page 55

THE LAST MAN ON

death lurking at the end of the fall.

EARTH
By Claire Davon
The last man on Earth stood on Mount Everest.
Shaking his fist at the sky, he cursed.
It had taken weeks to climb the mountain.
He had slipped and fallen several times into chasms
so deep a fall would kill anything. He had seen bits
and pieces of other humans and luckless mammals
entombed, arms or claws sticking above the permanent ice. Each time he would fight his way out of the
crevasse, knowing that no matter what happened, he
would not die.

Boring. There was only so many times he
could feel the wind in his hair, his skin flapping back
off his cheeks, and the weightlessness that occurred
right before he went splat on the ground before it became routine.
Robbery gave him no buzz, although he did
it to keep himself in cash. If caught, he made sure he
was shot to death. That way he could wake up in the
morgue, slip back to his hiding place, and retrieve his
goods. It didn’t matter that he fenced the bounty for
far less than its value. There was always more to get.

Once there, he ignored the howling wind, returning to his colourful invective. He had no idea what
he was actually cursing, even after all this time. He
had never known what had given him this ultimate,
endless nightmare. This nightmare that persisted, even
after all else was gone.

He had to be careful not to be seen, however,
because his face could not be changed. He had tried
plastic surgery, only to find that the flesh reverted to its
old form within minutes. He had actually been sorry
he had to kill the plastic surgeon, but it could not be
helped. It was disconcerting knowing that he could not
escape the way he looked if he needed to. He would
have to make do with fake h