
I wrote a short story set in 2020. It’s £0.77 or $0.99 on kindle and Smashwords. This is the opening few paragraphs.
Isolation hits us slowly. It creeps through the psyche and gradually eats away; always working in the background of your day. Humans haven’t yet evolved the ability to thrive in isolation. We are built for one another and when the chaos of living on this planet takes us from one another we begin to decline in our separation.
It isn’t the being alone that gets us. Being alone is manageable; many of us crave solitude and silence. Every major world religion has solitude as a practice that elevates the soul. Isolation is not the same as solitude. There is a choice in solitude; we choose to retreat and we can choose to reenter society again in time. Isolation is not chosen and that is what kills us; the lack of an escape route. There is no way out.
When isolation comes to our door, it doesn’t knock. We don’t see it coming and we don’t invite it in. Isolation doesn’t care for our calendars or plans; it is no respecter of title or rank. Isolation does what it likes, goes where it likes and takes what it wants. It is both slow and quiet and yet it enacts violence upon every part of us. It undermines and it batters us.
Thomas Connelly had never been alone for long. That was about to change.
Read on at kindle or Smashwords.