This story is the first I ever completed. I wrote it well over 20 years ago. It is dark and melancholy, as were most of the things I wrote back then. I am not sure why everything I wrote seemed so depressing. I was happy. Lol. Once I got to university my propensity for darkness was reinforced by the study of works like James Thomson's The City of Dreadful Night and Blake's tales of Theotormon and the rest of his gods and demons. Enjoy!
These are apocalyptic times. The four horsemen run amok and death reigns supreme. Everywhere I go I feel the breath of his pale steed on my neck. Snorting and blowing it’s foul, pestilent snot all over my back. The Sun has yet to darken and the plagues have just begun; but how long before the dragon rears it’s ugly heads?
Liberty kneels dejected, her head bowed, the shattered remnants of her long extinguished torch, lie scattered on the oceans floor. The once brilliant towers of glass, steel and concrete are now merely shells of their former selves. The glass is strewn about the pavement at their feet and the re-bar juts aggressively out from crumbling concrete. Like the corpse of a man, the once beautiful skin has been removed leaving only blood stained bones.
I see disfigured children, dressed in rags, darting expectantly from darkened alley ways, as if expecting food and parents; but being met only by the bullets fired from startled passers-by. Mothers lie in the gutters cursing their children and men, sores leaking puss on their once beautiful faces. Desperate for release, they seek only death; but death is just a watcher now. She provides no relief.
Standing on the oil and filth soaked beach, I await the final eclipse. The ocean is filled with the bodies of long dead fish. Rotting in the last rays of sun. The stench is unbearable, it stings my nose and burns my eyes, still I stay. The sun is high in the heavens and already I see the shadow of the moon inching across it’s brilliance. How long is a thousand years? My mind cannot even comprehend. The sun is now half blocked out. Is there any escape from this infamy? Like a giant black silk veil, darkness falls, bringing with it suffocation.
There is illumination. The sky is a pale red. Perhaps the fire and brimstone reflect off the atmosphere. The devil reigns now. Death is at his side. Still just watching. I see Death looking down from the building tops. Tears stream down her face. She didn’t want to witness this. Her heart is kind and wants nothing more than to end the suffering of her children. Her hands are tied and the pain of this decay is unbearable. Now I see angels on all the building tops. They are all weeping. I watch the tears fall down, like liquid crystals, the only untainted substance left on this earth; only to be swallowed up by the muck and filth that lines the streets.
One thousand years! A minute seems a day in this crimson glow. With no sun to separate the days, I can’t begin to imagine how long it’s been. It feels like a million years have passed already. Madness is a bed pal of eternity and she sleeps with many of my fellow sinners. One hundred years would have made me mad in life. Here in death I have at least nine hundred more to endure. With mutilated bodies carrying their own detached limbs walking before you, the mind cannot stay sound. I see people rambling incoherently already, how will they fare in the next hundred years?
I begin to walk. I move north at first for the air is unpleasantly warm (Although I see people shivering, as if freezing to death.) There is no escape from the heat though. It is as constant as the desperate pleas for death. Still I walk, on a quest for heaven; the one quest that can never be realized; the one quest that might keep me sane.
I slashed my wrists today. With a shard of glass found in a baby carriage. A child’s cries drove me to it. What are the children doing here? There’s no reason for their suffering. Are they damned simply because no priest had time to sprinkle water on their innocent heads, or are they merely phantoms placed here to add to the grief of us sinners?
I’ve seen men with gaping holes in their skulls. Blood and brain oozing out endlessly. The mashed remains of their heads carried cradled in their arms. There is no way out. A man cut himself in two I heard. His pain is doubled now. So I walk bleeding and why not? If I am to suffer so be it. An endless streak of blood marks my passing. It reveals my travels to all, including myself.
I saw a man on foot today. This surprised me, as most of the souls are immobile now. It’s been so long. They’ve all tried to find a way out knowing full well there is none. Ultimately, they all just increased their suffering. As the man approached I found myself at a loss for words. Strange, all this time I have longed for someone to speak to and now the words escape me. It didn’t matter anyway he refused to talk. He just counted. 57, 58, 59, 60 and he placed a tick in his giant book. He’d been counting since the beginning. Five hundred years. I saw the number through the back of the previous page. Written hard. There were many ticks after that, maybe another fifty years, little more. I couldn’t bear the sound of that man’s incessant counting. Watching the clock never made it move faster. I went down the road away from him.
Years ago I tried the wilderness. An attempt to lose myself amongst the trees. Of course the trees are all gone, as are the animals, with the exception of the bloodthirsty rats. I always hated rats. The earth is just barren wasteland now, dirt, ash and blood an awful mix.
I haven’t seen a soul in years. I still hear babies crying continuously, but can never find them. What possessed their mothers to leave them? Did their fathers try the high dive along with so many other people? Fools, I ignore their pleas as I step over the bloody pulps that used to be their bodies. I don’t think there are many like me. The souls of man are weak in the midst of an eternity of suffering. Still I walk, bleeding from my wrists, laughing at the women in the gutters that try desperately to reattach their heads; the heads they themselves cut off. Funny, it would appear that the most painful sufferings are all self-inflicted.
I found myself before the ocean again, waiting for the sun to rise. The fish seem to smell worse now, which isn’t surprising I guess. It seems the earth absorbs no waste anymore. The streets are filled with rivers of piss and shit. Knee deep in filth I walk through them, looking up to the building tops, hoping to see angels and their pity. They’re there. I see their tears and try to catch them on my tongue. Like chasing snowflakes as a child I run amongst the shattered buildings; my head back and my tongue extended. I can never catch them though.
I tried to cross the ocean a couple of weeks ago. Was it weeks? A thousand years. The pain of drowning is too much though and I turned back. Besides the water is foul, like swimming in a cesspool. So still I wander the Americas. I hope to see the counter again. I wonder how long it has been. It seems so long. One thousand years. I imagine he is like the rest. Mangled beyond recognition. Lying in a puddle of his own puss, praying for forgiveness.
I refuse to pray. I was only doing what my instincts told me. The instincts my god gave me. I felt guilt enough for the things I did wrong. I suffered enough in life for my sins. Now, one thousand years and for what? A fight when I raged. A fuck when I desired it. Food for the taste. A drink when I needed it and another when I didn’t. I was a tool of my emotions; not altogether helpless, but not quite in control. I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I didn’t want to hurt myself. I won’t ask. He should ask for my forgiveness. One thousand years of torment for acting the way I was designed to act.
How long has it been now? I haven’t seen a soul for so long I couldn’t imagine what a man looked like. I would look at my reflection but I’d find no man there. I walk back to the oceanfront. The same place where I watched the beginning. My endless goal seems pointless now. Why stay sane in a world gone mad? If you can’t beat them, join them. Why not? Perhaps I’m the one who has really strayed from reason. Why hold sanity so dear in the face of madness?
I’m there, at the oceanfront. The angels seem pleased, they smile down at the mangled corpses on the pavement. I’ve decided against joining them. They look pathetic on their knees begging for forgiveness. Their eyes are filled with defeat. They gave up long ago. When the angels look at me they cry. Why? I cry for them. They are servants to an unjust god, the fools.
The counter is coming. He counts loud. When he reaches sixty, he screams. “The day of judgment is upon us.” He seems excited. Why? What is this judgment he speaks of? Have we not been judged already? Guilty, on all counts, punishment one thousand years. Now simply give me my peace, I have no remorse, but my time has been served.
A thousand years passed quickly now that I look back. I see people coming up the streets. Most of them drag butchered bodies. Only the counter is in as good of shape as me. Only we had the strength to endure. The two of us, with our endless quests. I see the glow of the sun as it reveals itself from behind the moon. It is so bright it hurts my eyes. Those that can, bow down before it. I flee. Every inch it rises I burn more. I can’t take it. I run for shadows. I see angels lifting disfigured and dismembered torsos. They carry them to god’s judgment. When they see me they cry. Fools. I find shelter in a cave, cut deep into the face of a mountain. In its depths I find peace. My skin still aches from the burns I’ve already sustained but it doesn’t get worse.
I wait. It seems like days; but I know how the mind can play tricks. After a long period I find something I haven’t found in a thousand years. Sleep. It is the most blissful thing in the world, the absence of thought.
I awaken. The day is done; I can feel it. I leave the cave but am confronted by only darkness. Can it be another eclipse? No, there is no crimson glow. What then? The air smells new, fresh. I’ve escaped God’s judgment. It is only night.
When the day comes I set out. The filth has been replaced with good clean soil. There is grass. Where once loomed shells of forgotten cities now stand trees. Birds chirp in the sky and the wind blows gently on my face. Fools, they burned before god and here I sit in Eden. Why is it that all paradise is devoid of man?
I see a man and a woman. My paradise lost. They approach but don’t seem to see me. “Over here!” I scream. I jump and yell and finally get a response. They look at me with fear.
The woman looks to the man, “God says we are not to speak to the serpent.”
“Then we won’t.” Says the man.
“But there’s so much I have to tell you!”
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