A Place To Die Alone - 2020 - (III)
I must’ve hit my head fairly hard on the way down, because I’m seeing stars. The small cracks of sunlight are shifting and shaping into forms that my eyes shouldn’t be able to see. It’s either concussion or I’ve died, and I’m not sure which I’d prefer.
I hear the faint sounds of battle above; who knew we were fighting over such a cavernous space all along? Worthless now, to those who stood to gain from our suffering, a murky and rotting structure in the light of reality. Some would call that poetic justice; I abandoned such romantic thoughts long ago, though perhaps I’m a more cynical soul than I used to be. This is not justice, no, this is the universe laughing in the face of its own unfathomability, revelling in unknowable coincidence and looking down on all of us, each and every one of us, with unflinchingly cold, callous disregard.
I know what fate awaits me. There is no chance, or indeed, no time to be saved from horrors down here; where the darkness creeps ever closer and the frost has already begun to settle on every bare speck of cracked skin on my tired body, while the faintly roaring sounds of cosmically microcosmic discourse incarnate grow more mundane with every passing hour, and the air grows down here thick with the fetor of bloodshed. Mephitis seeps from the ground as fresh sanguine soaks in. Truly, a place to die, alone, with naught but my eclipsing thoughts and a muddied and stained letter, unopened, from my dearest to ease me off this mortal coil.
A match hangs in the spots of my vision; coiling and creasing as unnaturally as the twisted, wretched cacophony that fills my recoiling ears, over-descriptive of a scene no one should bear to see. I reach out with my blackened fingers, clawing in the air, pleading my strength to return for one last final movement. One last final chance for comfort amidst the chaos.
Life was long, and now it is fading. My chest continues to dye my clothes such a comforting shade, I wish I could remember this. My tangled bones grasp at the match, light as a feather, but weighty right now as the iron that coats my every breath. My fingers stain the cream wood of the match. I watch as the blood drips off my damned hands down the inconsequentialities of the grain.
I squeeze as tightly as I can betwixt my fingers, as much as my frailty allows. I think of my beloved one last time, and how I will die happily with this letter, out of spite for history. I strike the match head on the rough of my boot.
A flicker, a quivering flame, dances for the briefest moments. A cold wind snuffs it out as quickly as it came. Truly, a place to die, alone, with naught but my eclipsed thoughts, and a smile of never knowing what words I wished I’d known, and knowing, painfully and infinitely through my entire being, I never could. “Memento Mori”, you once said.
Truly, a place to die alone.