Sneak Peek at Dystopian Short Story

A word of caution to readers: This is a departure from the usual genre that appears on this blog and represents an inspired short centred on a dystopian world, a look at what it means to be human or otherwise. 

After Human


Little Ariane sat by herself, watching the raindrops as they pelted and then slid down the glass panes of the dirty window. The nursery, if you could call it one, stood empty, bereft of its usual occupants. The little monsters who screamed, yelled and threw tantrums before smiling up through teary eyes at those hoping to purchase peace with a little bribe of candy. It was empty. Desolate and cold. Exactly what she felt inside.

“Well, at least you’re not dead.”

The echo of the careless words thrown at her by her aunt, one of the adult survivors, still made her cringe after all she’d seen. Her unwilling guardian was one of the few people the government felt they had a right to foist her upon, legally at least. After. After Dad had died and Mom was “quarantined”, never to be seen again. Everything was different now. There wasn’t history. No World War events to be commemorated, no Independence to be celebrated. All there was was before the outbreak and after. Anyone who knew what after meant was a survivor.


Those who had fallen, those who had lost themselves in the frenzy of cannibalistic gore and were “transformed” by their fellow sufferers, were “quarantined”. Except when the numbers got too big and survival was threatened, they were “euthanised”. Herded into “facilities” and put down like dogs. Except dogs didn’t get reduced to dust, at least not before the outbreak. After meant you survived, your humanity intact. Or at least that was the way it seemed. Or what the government and media wanted you to believe. Ariane had wondered if that was true at the beginning. After three years of isolation, tests and interrogation by the very people who were supposed to help, she knew better. After all, weren’t they all behaving the way those soldiers did at the station? When the final train with survivors onboard pulled away from the station, pulled out from the capital where chaos had broken out, she’d seen fellow passengers retreat in fear while desperate escapees banged on the glass windows and doors of the receding train as the transformed leapt on them one by one, biting them. Before the train had fully pulled away, there were no humans left on the train platform, only the transformed.

                   I do not own the rights to this picture and have reposted it from Pinterest.