Only Death Remains: A Short Story

Genesis II: In The End

No one knows when it started, only that it is ending.

I, however, remember the beginning. There was nothing; silence and emptiness stretched out for eons. It filled the valleys of the universe and built mountains of solitude towards the heavens. Time, or what existed before time, seemed to run together as there was no day or night to guide the hands of the clock that had yet to be created.

I remember the first words I ever heard spoken.

"Let there be light."

It rang out from all around, coming from deep within the nothingness, and the void opened before me. A piercing visual that I had never seen – a brightness so unreal, so divine – I could only stare in awestruck wonder. As the light bathed my surroundings in its brilliance, I recoiled. I remained in the shadows. A darkness in this new world. Flowers wilted beneath my touch; the trees lost their color under my breath; man lost their life through my kiss.

The end has been coming since the beginning. With its first steps into the universe, this world began to die. Several times has the end been started but never quite finished. The Ice Age, the Black Plague, global warming – all of these, baby steps. However, the largest threat to all was the Creators' own children. His divine power was never a match for the weapons created out of science, and his omniscience could have never foreseen the destruction leveled in the Final War.

Not even I could have wrought such annihilation. Waves upon waves of bodies crashed into the earth, soaking its soil with blood and tears. In the true end, it looked as though the orbiting rock itself was wounded and crying, dripping with the essence of billions. The flowers had long wilted away – the trees were broken, bent, colorless – and man stood victorious.

If only for a moment.

The last words of this human race were spoken to me three days ago. It was through the graveled voice of an old man. His eyes were sunken and hollow, only a sliver of green left in their milky orbs. I stared into the color, remembering the days of leaves and grass, only to be interrupted as the man blinked.

"Who are you?" He whispered, through broken teeth and cracked lips. His gray hair was long and stringy, falling across his naked chest as he lay on the floor of what used to be a home; its broken walls surrounding us, glass from the windows sparkled in the dying sunlight.

"I am Death." I said, kneeling beside his frail form.

The man did not shrink away in fear but closed his eyes as a blissful smile crossed his wrinkled face.

"Finally." He sighed, the words seeming to pull the very life out of him. "Where have you been?"

"I have been everywhere and yet, nowhere." I answered, seeing his soul rise to the surface of his skin. It was a holy white, without shadows or stains. So few souls of this color remained in this eon, but it was refreshing to see such brilliance again. It had been so long.

"Why have you come now?" The old man asked, opening his eyes to stare in my direction.

"I am bringing the end. All things must die." I stated, laying my hand on his chest. He shivered against the cold and whispered, "Even God?"

"Oh yes." I whispered back. "God, too, will die."

He opened his eyes. Whether to ask another question or out of shock, I know not. I laid my lips upon his forehead and pulled his soul from his chest.