~Eternity~
A disturbing tale of regret
by C L Rayner
The old man’s grip tightened and he held his son’s gaze with grey watery eyes.
‘I regret such loss of time, my son. So much I have not seen…not done…so many places... Years have run by and been lost like rain into the sea… So many words unspoken.’ His eyes were pained; they drifted. ‘I have lived too brief a time…to experience life.’
Then he died.
The son shed tears.
I must not look back on an empty life as my father has. Not feel his pain. I must experience the world for him. Experience all there is…for him. But my life is ebbing. There is not time…I would give everything to live an eternity. I would give the world.
They had fallen sick around him. Only a few at first - too few to cause concern. Until they began to die.
The first fell with fever and respiration problems – then there was vomiting, bleeding and death.
He prepared, consumed with hollowing grief, to bury his wife and children. But the bodies were taken away, robbing him even of that small closure.
So he waited for his turn.
People tried to flee in panic and desperation. The military set up a quarantine zone to stop them. Then the soldiers died. And the doctors died. And, finally, within their white containment suits, the CDC workers began to die.
And still he waited.
When he ventured from his home, not knowing how long he had sat, numbed, nothing remained alive in town. Even the animals were dead. Birds had fallen from the skies. Small bloated insects lay crisping in the baking sun.
The air was thick with decay. Hot to the tongue.
He began to walk.
Time and miles went by as in a dream; his red rimmed eyes unfocused. When had he last slept? Eaten? His tongue was swollen and dry, yet he felt no thirst. He was aware of the ache in his body yet he was not weary.
Vehicles flamed beside the road where they had crashed. Bodies lay strewn. He did not see them. The road stretched away before him, shimmering black, leading him toward the city he had never visited.
What remained was a shell: foul smelling. The dead lay everywhere.
His mind began to clear. Why am I alive?
He slowly became aware of time. He had walked for days, remembering the rising and setting of the fierce sun. The air was enough to burn his lungs yet still he could breathe.
And still he walked.
The soles of his shoes wore through. His feet blistered and bled. He stopped and considered the trail of blood on the hot road behind him.
It was his blood.
He removed the tattered shoes, and raised his face to the intense orb that was the winter sun. It was February. The sky was white and blinding. His lips were split and dry; skin the colour of charred meat.
His heart hammered.
Why am I alive?
He ran on bare ruined feet, passing towns and cities.
Everywhere he turned rotten eyes stared at him from bloated faces. The silence was crushing. It roared in his ears.
His feet carried him into the desert. Trees burned under the cloudless sky. Behind him smoke rose from the city; beneath, the ground was dust and rock, cracked and black.
Beyond the horizon the ocean evaporated into the sky; floating corpses burst with flame and became dust to blow on a searing wind.
He stood on a cliff top and stared into the great dry basin that had been a sea. Distantly an electric storm raged across the sky.
‘WHY AM I ALIVE?’ he finally screamed. His voice was inhuman; a pained sound that ripped its way from a dry bleeding throat; from dust filled lungs.
You asked for this.
He turned sharply and faced himself: the image of the man he had once been.
You offered everything so as to live an eternity, and everything was taken. You offered the world.
The vacuum of horror dragged at his insides.
You asked to experience all…for him, for father. And so you have: life, death, sorrow and anger; pain, hunger and thirst. And now, finally, you will feel guilt and regret. All this is yours. Your life is no longer empty, for you have experienced it as no other human ever could. You have seen the world and the world is yours. You have everything…and nothing…
He screamed, long, loud, the sound tearing into the sky, carrying across the empty ocean bowl. He fell to his knees on the scorching rocks, pounding his fists into them till blood flew from tattered skin.
He felt no pain.
His fingers clawed at the ground till the nails split away and he saw the white of his own bone in the ruins of his flesh.
And then he was still. The rapid thumping of his heart pulsed in his ears. His lungs feebly drew in ragged breath.
How long he remained on the rock he did not know; how long he heard only his own heart, as lightning shattered the cliff top and sent fragments dashing against his body; as the last of the trees crackled to charcoal and the air filled with sulphur.
Then he stood and once again he walked.
He saw his wife’s face and the smiles of his children, heard their laughter and could remember the smell of their hair…as he stepped into flaming magma. His legs began to burn. He sank slowly into that fiery river as his flesh and bones dissolved in the heat, as his hair flamed and his skin ran from his skull. And in that moment he saw everything about him: the burning sky, the end of the world, and he savoured them, those last moments of existence…before –
Death?
But death did not take him.
He became the magma and flowed across the remains of the earth.
And could not even scream…
~
