[John 6:29]

I was working on this for school. The goal was to experiment with your writing style, it could be any length. So I wrote a really short story about a picture I found of "The Road." In case you were wondering what I was doing with my writing style, it's building suspense and telling a story about the picture. The setting is the same as "The Road" and it's based on "The Road" so if you see similarities, that's why. It's not labeled triggering, but it may be.



A Pale Man and a Child

The picture has a dark motionless background, as if gray snow began pouring down on a bleak lifeless graveyard. There's not much visible. If depression had a picture, this would be it.
Two beings are side-by-side as they walk out from the ashy apocalyptic background: a pale-faced bearded man and a child. The grim 40-something-year-old man is wrapped in an army green Eskimo-like jacket. The child is about ten years old, and dressed similar to the man, but with a dull sand-colored beanie.
The two are weary from not sleeping for days. Restless nights are all these two get anymore. How can they sleep when they must defend against the others who survived? The child graces the other survivors with the name “bad guys,” a nickname that is too kind. After all, the others are savaged cannibals eating anything they can get their filthy hands on. The man carries a revolver for protection, it looks like one a cowboy would carry. But this man is no cowboy.
The two continue on their trip, rarely making stops. The child really has to use the restroom, but he forces himself to hold it in. It's too cold to go outside and sanitary restrooms are scarce. Most of them are filled with corpses and cockroaches. Some even have feces all over the walls with messages from people looking for lost family members. Eventually, the child can wait no longer to use the restroom. The two begin searching an abandon school for a restroom. Images of children playing on the playground entertain the man as he remembers the days of old. Children are scarce these days. Most theorize it's due to the starving cannibals. The two find a restroom and the child enters it.

Alone.

The man takes a swig of whiskey from some old rusted canteen. He wonders what day it is. No one ever remembers the exact date anymore. Time has been lost since the first day of Armageddon. But the gloom... the gloom these two have been experiencing seems like an eternity. The man looks into the barrel of revolver as thoughts of his wife's death cross his mind. His eyes mark defeat. He can't take it anymore. Living has become death. His finger is on the trigger.

The child walks out from the restroom...
“Dad!”

The man swallows a gulp of air into his lungs as if it were his last breath. His hand with the revolver falls down to his side and his body drops lifelessly to the ground.