It is nearly Halloween and the ghosts are running about. Ghosts frighten the living, but in reality they are easily scared themselves. So we tell scary stories at this time in order to make the ghosts stay away.
Here is a very short story for Halloween.
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All human beings on the face of the Earth have died in a terrible plague, except for one – you! Imagine yourself sitting on the sofa in your little apartment in your vast, empty city. It is oddly quiet, with no trains running and no traffic rumbling. How do you feel on the third day on your own? You are eating a packet of crisps raided from the local convenience store, and staring at the wall. You try not to remember the faces of the bodies you saw when you went to pick up the packets of food. What will life be like as the last human on Earth?
You sink back deeper into your sofa, then you sit up sharply at a sudden noise. It is a knock at your door...
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This is based on an even shorter story by Fredric Brown, written in 1949. His short, short story is, “The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door...”
Be careful of ghosts this week, and stay safe. Think carefully before you answer the door. Who knows what will be there?
Vocabulary:
a plague – a terrible infectious disease
vast – huge; very large
to rumble – to make a continuous deep sound, such as thunder
to raid something – to suddenly or quickly steal something, especially from a business
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