My son Robert and I may be the only surviving humans among all the billions of people in the world.

The plague came suddenly to the island where I lived with my husband and Robert. My husband died as did all the hundreds of people who lived on the island. Except for Robert and me. Perhaps we had a rare gene that protected us. I was 32 at the time of the plague; Robert was 12.

Communication with the mainland ceased. I could only assume that everyone there was also dead. We had to survive on our own. We scavenged food and equipment from the homes and businesses of our dead neighbors and the village on the island. Scavenging, we knew, would only provide us with a living for a few years. For the long run, I established a vegetable garden and a fruit orchard and we kept horses, cattle, pigs, and chickens for work and food. Increasingly we survived on what we could grow or gather or butcher.

Initially we found all the gasoline we needed to operate machinery and drive automobiles, but after a couple of years gasoline turned to gelatin and now we relied only on our muscles and horses. Bicycles were still usable, but tires and tubes that had not rotted were hard to find.

As Robert grew into a sturdy young man, he took over many of the heavy duties on our farm. He was tall and good looking. We lived together as closely and as intimately as two people do who are constantly together. I was a teacher and a boss to him. I was so heartbroken from the loss of my husband and my friends and so preoccupied with the task of survival that I had little time to think about being a mother. I dropped into bed every night exhausted.

Robert’s 18^th birthday was the occasion to relax and pass on more of my responsibilities to him. We celebrated his birthday on a warm July evening with a cake made from flour made from wheat we grew, sweetened with scavenged sugar, and topped with raspberries from our berry patch. We had also scavenged a large supply of liquor and I allowed Robert to join me in a glass of wine. I had forbidden him to drink alcohol until then but now, over a second glass of wine, I gave him a temperance lecture. “Drink moderately, if at all,” I told him. “We must retain our wits if we are to continue our lonely lives. Perhaps someday.” I added, “We will encounter another human being and establish a society larger than the two of us.”

Robert and I were both in pensive moods. Between sips of wine we shared long silences. With the second glass of wine, he looked at me with an odd expression on his face. I was wearing a sun dress with a square cut front and narrow spaghetti straps over my shoulders. In the instinctive reaction of a woman being watched and evaluated, I closed my legs tighter, pulled up a strap which had slipped over a shoulder, and pushed a loose strand of hair away from my forehead. Suddenly I was aware that I wasn’t wearing a bra or panties and that in my sun dress my breasts were visible when I leaned over – as I did dozens of times a day working in the garden or the house. I didn’t wear a bra during the warm days of summer. It was cooler without one and my small tits don’t need the support. During my periods I wore panties beneath my dresses, work pants, and shorts, although my supply of them was diminishing as they became tattered and torn.

Our skimpy clothing in summer became ever skimpier as our clothing became thread-bare. Neither of us was overly modest around the other, but now he was looking at me as more of a woman and less of a mother. That disturbed – and aroused me.

“He’s become a man,” I thought to myself. “I should start treating him as one. A man in the house – not a boy.” Rob soon announced that he was going to bed and left me alone in our living room, now as dark from the night as a grave.

After Rob left, I poured myself a third glass of wine – breaking my rule never to have more than two drinks a day – and sipped it slowly. I was a little drunk when I picked up a flashlight to light my way to my bedroom. We still used alkaline and LED batteries for light although their shelf life was nearly over and we would soon be without any source of artificial light.

In my bedroom I paused to look at myself in the full-length mirror beside my bed. I didn’t do that often. I had become indifferent to my appearance. Day to day worries and the strain of hard work possessed me.

In the beam of the flashlight, I saw in the mirror the face of an attractive woman but a careworn one who might look older than her 38 years. My brow was wrinkled and crows-feet extended out from the corners of my eyes. The skin on my face was browned and roughened by the sun, but it was still a pretty face with large eyes, a straight nose, wide lips, and dimples when I attempted a smile. I thought to myself that I should start using facial cream to preserve my skin. Perhaps I could find some in what remained in the abandoned drug store in the village a few hundred paces away. My hair was light-brown, long and unkept, streaming down over my shoulders to my breasts. I usually tied it up in a bun during the day when I was working.

I pulled my dress over my head and looked at my body with the flashlight. My breasts were firm and small with upright brown and wrinkled nipples. The skin on my chest was pale as it was rarely touched by the sun, but my neck and shoulders were brown and freckled. My stomach was flat and muscled. My long, slender legs were tanned up to near the whiteness of my crotch.

I looked at my buttocks. “Buns of steel,” I joked to myself. “Well toned.” The triangle of hair covering my crotch looked black in the beam of the flashlight. I put a finger into the hair and felt the slit beneath it. I pushed my finger into the slit, felt the hard knot of my clitoris, and then sought out my vagina and inserted the finger. I had not done that for a long time. I thought of my husband. He had encouraged me to shave my pussy and frequently brought me to climax with his tongue and mouth. “Oh, how he fucked me!” I pushed my finger deeper within myself. “We always cummed together in one glorious rush of pleasure.”

“I’m going to make myself cum,” I thought. “I’m drunk; I need to fuck and I’m sad that I don’t have my husband – or any man – and I need to cum.” The image of my son crept into my head and I quickly erased it to focus my thoughts on an imaginary man stroking inside me, bringing me to the tingling sensation, the tightening muscles of my vagina, and the throbbing of my clitoris just before an orgasm. I rocked my hips back and forth, my finger serving as a penis, my thumb massaging my clitoris. “Oh, shit,” I said, “that feels good” as my finger increased its speed in and out of me and my hips sought out the finger and clinched onto it, and then I was climaxing, standing, my knees buckling beneath me, and I fell back onto my bed, my legs spread widely, as I quivered in ecstasy,

As my breathing quieted and my body stilled, I had a worried thought. “I hope Rob didn’t hear me.” Our bedrooms were separated only by a thin wall. “Poor Rob, he needs a woman – and there’s nobody for him. I’m the only woman in his world. Maybe the only woman in the world.” My train of thought continued. “I need to discuss this with him.” What I needed to discuss with him wasn’t quite clear to me.

I woke up later than usual in the morning and with a hangover. I could hear Rob in our kitchen, stoking our wood stove to heat water for coffee. We still had many cans of coffee on our shelves. A life without morning coffee was difficult for me to imagine.

I dressed quickly, pulling on my panties. I searched for a bra in my chest of drawers and found one. It was old, the elastic was in tatters, and the strap that went over my shoulder was frayed. But it would serve its purpose of covering my breasts. I slipped on a pair of shorts and a button-up blouse, tied my hair into a bun, and looked at myself in the mirror. “It’ll have to do,” I thought. I opened the door and stepped into our living room-kitchen. Rob was sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of steaming coffee in front of him.

“Pour me a cup,” I said as I went out the back door and walked to the outdoor privy we had hand dug and enclosed with branches from a tree. I stepped inside, pulled my shorts down, sat on the crude bench, and peed. As I walked back to the house, I wondered whether Rob would notice I was wearing a bra – and what he would conclude from that.

We drank coffee together and ate a cereal made of boiled wheat seasoned with milk from our cow and sugar from our rapidly diminishing supply. We were both silent. Conversation was difficult. “I’m going to go into town today,” I said. “I need some new clothes. Can I look for anything for you?”

“No, but we’re out of powdered fruit juice. Maybe you can find some?”

“I’ll take the horse and load him up with food if I find any that hasn’t rotted away.” What I intended to look for was several bras in good condition and bottles of face lotion to prevent my skin from aging more than it already had. It was time, I reasoned, to take better care of my appearance. Our hard-scrabble days of building a farm and a livelihood might be over. I could relax a little. Robert was a man.

The decaying buildings and houses in the village were only a five-minute walk from our house. I looked for bras in the house of a friend who was about my size and shape. She and her husband had died in their bedroom. For months the smell of their decaying bodies had been horrific, but now only bones chewed by rats and scattered around the room remained of the couple. I searched closets and dressers and found four bras that were in good condition. I tried one on and it fit reasonably well. I bundled up all four and put them in my swag sack – as we called the bag I carried on foraging trips.

Next, I stopped in the drug store and my luck held. I found several bottles of hand and face lotion and added them to my swag sack. I also found bottles of perfume, tubes of lipstick which still seemed usable, face powder, eye liner, and other cosmetics.

Edible food in the grocery store was hard to find six years after the epidemic. In the grocery store, I found powdered soups and drinks that might still be safe and palatable and loaded them on the horse. We were soon going to be one hundred percent dependent upon the food we could grow and the animals we could raise.

Robert was in the garden hoeing weeds in the garden when I returned from the village. I noticed that the peaches were almost ripe. That would be a treat. Our corn crop was progressing nicely; potato plants were beginning to die although I knew that we had a good crop of tubers beneath the ground. Wheat was knee high. Was it worth growing wheat? Growing it was easy. Separating the wheat from the chaff was time-consuming. Corn (maize) was a more practical and productive crop.

I decided to take a bath. My hair was matted and stuck together. I smelled of sweat. A nearby pond provided fish for our diet and water for bathing during the warm months. In the winters we made do with a washtub on the floor of the kitchen and water heated on our wood stove. I grabbed a towel, a bar of soap, and a bottle of shampoo and walked from the house to the pond two hundred feet away. I waved at Robert in the garden and told him what I was going to do. He could see the pond from the garden, but it was distant enough for me not to feel exposed while I bathed.

I took off my clothes, waded into the water, sat on a rock and washed my hair with shampoo and my body with soap. I waded out of the water and put my clothes back on and returned to the house. At the house, I rubbed cream on my face and my arms and added a dusting of powder. I debated using my newly-scavenged tubes of lipstick and decided that would be too noticeable to Robert.

The main course for lunch was soup made from a chicken I had killed yesterday and with carrots, onions, and greens in the broth. I served the soup to Rob along with a slice of the heavy, unleavened bread I made from wheat flour. Desert was a bowl of berries. I was acutely aware that I was wearing a bra and that my face was both clean and dusted with powder. We were both a little uneasy, unlike our usual comfortable selves.

After lunch I spent the afternoon hoeing weeds in the garden while Rob took care of our animals. We quit work for the day when the sun was declining in the trees surrounding our patch of earth. I was sweating, especially on my chest. The bra was uncomfortably warm. I took it off before dinner and put my cool and comfortable sun dress back on, washed and powdered my face, dabbed some perfume on, and fixed dinner for Robert. He had caught a large bass in the pond and that was our dinner: fried fish served with greens and bread and with scavenged chocolates for desert. They were a bit withered but still tasty.

After dinner, as customary, we sat in our darkening living room and discussed the day and the plans for the next day. I sat in one easy chair and Robert sat in the other beside me. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of well-worn jean shorts. It was hot in the house. I was looking for a way to raise the subject on my mind, but Robert relieved me of that.

“You look good, Mom,” he said. “You’ve got something on your face.”

I laughed. “I’m glad you noticed. It’s just face powder. I’ve decided I’m going to try to look a little better.”

“You’re pretty. You smell good too.”

“Perfume. I found it in town. Thank you. You’re very sweet.”

Robert got up from his chair and walked over to me and kissed me on the cheek. He had not kissed me for a long time and I felt the stubble on his cheek. I motioned for him to sit down on the arm of the chair where I was sitting. “Rob, you’re the man of the family now. More and more you’re in charge of the farm. What do we need to talk about?”