text: [Themes: fan fiction, serious, post-apocalyptic]
  
  You are a mid-twenties human being in Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. When the world ended countless years ago, you were old enough to possess memories of your old life but too young to yet be set in the ways of the old world. Because of this, you had the upper hand both physically and mentally during the first few dreadful years after the apocalypse, but the real credit goes to your older brother. He taught you everything you needed to know about surviving on the road, and he always had your back. You don't travel with him anymore. In fact, you can't even recall when you last saw him, or where he went. You never try to remember though—your brain repressed that memory for a reason, and you don't care to find out why.
  
  You're bundled up tightly in a shirt, jacket, snow pants, and hiking boots. You've tied a cloth around your face to keep the ashes out of your lungs. You used to have a fair amount of supplies, but a close call with a band of marauders several days ago forced you to leave most of them behind. What did you decide to take with you?
  
  > Your backpack, three cans of food, an extra jacket, a tarp, and a canteen of water.
  The wind is noticeably colder today than it was yesterday. Already, you can feel the brutal winter creeping up behind you, taunting you by sending fatal, frozen ashstorms your way. As you trudge further south along the crack-laden road, your back hunched from the weight of the pack on your shoulders, the darkness that you've come to recognize as day begins to fade. You know that it would be reckless to keep moving in the black of night, so you resolve to camp out, eat some supper, and try your luck at sleep. Where do you settle down for the night?
  
  > sleep in the road. If you were to get caught in a snowstorm out there, you'd never find your way back.
  With confidence that you've made the right decision, you set your backpack down and hurriedly collect firewood, staying as close to the road as possible. You arrange the twigs into a teepee and spend what feels like forever rubbing two rocks together, willing a spark to ignite the tinder and rescue you from the cold. It's already dark by the time the wood catches, and you wrap yourself in your extra jacket and lean forwards to feel the pulsating warmth of the fire. Pulling out a rusty can of peaches, you quickly scarf down your dinner and observe your hands. Rotten and calloused, with frostbite eating away at your black fingertips and oozing sores around your knuckles. You recall observing your hands like this before when you were much younger, but you can't for the life of you remember what they looked like. Not that it matters, anyway. You can't afford to look back on a past that will never return.
  
  You know this, and yet you fall asleep, curled up by the fire, with the tarp draped over you, staring at your bony hands.
  
  > Next.
  You awake to the dull light—if it could even be called light—of morning. Your fire had died long ago, and as you look about you, it appears that everything is just as you had left it previously. You don't see this as a success on your part so much as a stroke of sheer luck that no one crossed your path. Gathering up your provisions, you swing your pack over your shoulders and begin on your way south.
  
  After having walked almost five miles, you come across what used to be a bridge spanning a wide river. The rapids may have raced along the channel at one point in time, but now the thick sludge only creeps slowly over the rocks. It would be slow going, but the water is shallow enough that you think you'd be able to cross. (After all, the shattered bridge will be of no use to you.) What do you do?
  
  > attempt to cross. The longer you stay moving south, the better.
  You step hastily into the water—and immediately recoil your foot. It's so freezing that you feel your foot instantly go numb. You take a deep breath and hesitantly step back in, bracing yourself for the brutal cold, and this time you manage to endure it enough to move your other foot into the river. With a great deal of effort, you begin steadily working your way across, with the water up to your knees, and then, to your waist. It feels like a week has passed by the time you make it to the other side. Climbing onto the shore, you collapse to your knees and struggle to catch your breath, and after a few minutes, you force yourself to your feet and look ahead. The road spans before of you further than you can see. With a deep breath, you continue on your way.
  
  > Next.
  Grey snow begins to fall as you make your way slowly along the road. You're not sure how long it's been. Days? Weeks? It couldn't have been months, you think, otherwise it would be getting warmer by now. At least, that's what you hope is true, for there would be no meaning in migrating south every winter if summer only grew colder. You amuse yourself with thoughts like these in an attempt to forget the twisting, empty feeling in your stomach. Impulsively, you remove your canteen from your pack and take a quick drink to quell the swelling of your throat.
  
  Later in the evening, you come across an abandoned gas station—actually, why do you even refer to it as abandoned? Everything in this world is abandoned and decaying, isn't it? ...There goes your brain again. You can't let it get to you. You have to hold on to the hope of survival, because without it, life isn't worth living.
  
  You take a deep breath and force yourself to enter the gas station. As you expected, all of the shelves have been ravaged and there's hardly anything worth keeping. You pay no mind to the open cash register and instead begin fumbling about through the mess in search of something, anything worth eating. You ran out of canned food long ago, and your stomach has been protesting its neglect by twisting about in knots with every breath. You peer into one of the broken refrigerators and spot a sealed packet of some sort of lunch meat, hidden away in the corner. You open the door and pull it out, staring longingly at the pale hunk of long-expired, browning flesh. What do you do?
  
  > eat it. If you're going to survive the rest of this journey, you NEED to eat something!
  With an intense hunger welling up inside, you tear open the packet and scarf down every last slice of meat, licking your fingers and the plastic once you're done. It's starting to get dark, so you hurry outside with a newfound, perhaps imaginary, stamina and bring firewood back into the building. As you set up the fire, you feel an uneasiness in the pit of your stomach and have to rush into the corner of the store to vomit. This persists for most of the night, eventually causing diarrhea and such a spike in temperature that you can hardly move. Curled up on the floor and highly delirious, you pass into an agitated sleep.
  
  For the first time in a very long time, your dreams are pleasant. You find yourself to be a child again, playing on a playground swing set. You dig your feet into the mulch and push yourself in circles until the chains are wound so tightly that they send you spinning around and around. You let out a laugh. The dizziness makes you want to throw up, but you just keep laughing.
  
  Death takes you in the morning.