He first started to hear echoes when he was only seventeen. When no one talked, the sounds would fill the quiet spaces in between. He was examined many times, but all the doctors said was that the echoes were just funny things only heard inside his head. He learned how he could live with them - he even thought of them as friends. But they say, "the rest is silence," and that's how my story ends. One morning he awoke to a strange and quiet dawn. He got dressed and walked outside to find every living thing but him was gone...

(I watched too much Twilight Zone as a kid.)