Life is nought but a game of chance. Akin to the cast of a die─once thrown─one ought to die. Despite its eyes, it was unable to see. Whereas the ending, it has always been foreseen. He, who once was… shall someday be no more.
There was no tally, no one kept score. Eternal silence was the final encore.
…All shared a fate to fade.
Choice? There was none. Forgone was the conclusion. Creation’s due, one ought to recall, was, thereafter, the hereafter. Loss or gain? Equal to blind die─o’ death reaped thine beloved and hated alike.
Destiny claimed and maimed, called and mauled, bereaved and retrieved.
Neither purpose nor calling was of consequential matter. Be they hero, villain or passer-by: some day those had unwillingly come to and some day those would, inadvertently, come to…perish.
Such tragedy: prewritten, such barbarism: directed; such is life.
The tale of being was one of infinite possibilities, but with solely one direction to take. It was so and would be so. Different beginnings marked the same definitive ending. An actor’s visage remained interchangeable. The curtain call, the callous claim, that did not differentiate amidst the parts played.
The circle of life was nothing more than a direct pathway towards oblivion.
As such, death was nought the game of chance. Akin to the cast of a loaded die─once thrown─answer, someone had to answer. It was clear for everyone to see. Don’t YOU see; the ending is foreseen? He, who just is, was soon to be no more.
An eternal darkness. And a ray of light that, breeching all night, brought a temporal lustre to the encompassing gloom.
A speeding car, all by its lonesome, shrouded in the twilight of yet another day gone forevermore, made its way across the sparsely illuminated road.
In its way stood a silhouette, the silhouette of a human. Alas, the car cared little about the fleshy object in its line of travel. Contact was made, a body flung, and the merry journey resumed once more.
An act of sheer happenstance or mere bad luck? Planned vehicular manslaughter or a driver under the influence?
It was all the same; the blood was warm, the sight fuzzy and the person unmoving.
The sudden union between a motorized beast of metal bearing the weight of two tons and an average human resulted in a rather obvious outcome; it left very little to the imagination. This affair left one on the brink of death and the other with the need for a paint job.
-C’est la vie, mon ami- Might have thought a brain to itself as it was contemplating the next compulsory stage in its evolution: being fodder to carrion crows.
A mind faced with its impending expiration was quite the peculiar thing. Some would scream bloody murder at the great injustice that had befallen them, others would lament not having acted up on their wishes and missed opportunities.
Many would turn to conspiracy theories or consult otherworldly powers in a vain attempt to make sense of whatever crises which led to their downfall.
This one, in particular, crazily cycled through the different ideas, creating vertigo.
Mind you, a mind afflicted by severe blood loss was not all too inclined to think rationally. And with the ticking clock, the condition would not get any better any time soon. ‘Tis but a scratch’, sadly, rarely applied to victims of car crashes….
No band-aid of this world, not even those applied by loving moms with magical words, could fix these terminal boo-boos.
At heart, the brain had known the truth all along. Soon the aforementioned vascular organ, known to be given away in a figurative sense to those held dear, was to play its swansong. Consequently, the prison of flesh and bones, from the hairs’ tip to the feet’s soles, […]
…from the glutes, the left cheek and the right cheek, to the metaphysical equivalent to the butt of the joke, would abruptly halt and come to a violent st…
….
….
The wordplay left the grey cells clad in pink with a sense of pride and accomplishment. They might have even patted their shoulders, had it not been for the critical lack of blood supply.
Not that the thinking apparatus in question was all too keen on experiencing the penultimate break without a punchline, but no amount of introspection or schadenfreude could change the inevitable outcome.
In theory, there would be no follow-up; conclusive evidence remained in the after ‘alive’.
Peering through hollow eyes towards the unforgiving, distant scenery of stars kept the fleeting consciousness preoccupied. Under their silent watch came the beginning and the end.
The sight… the same.... the life lived… too brief.
DMT secreted; false happiness exuded; hold on, to letting go. A single, feeble spirit meant to see the world of colour gazed into a universe of grey─a kingdom of monochromancy. In place of answers, only the lack thereof was found.
In the latest, last moments of life, the gateway to the soul displayed no emotions. Neither vitriol, hatred, or displeasure nor happiness, consolation or elation appeared. No tears were spilled, revelations had, salvation received. Truths and falsehoods blended into a familiar grey, becoming one with the apathetic cosmos.
The universe’s goodbye was a silent one.
The brain has drawn, it fell unto its lot… that it should rise, and the universe shall not. Nowhere to stay, other than spiriting away. Eyes turn’ heavenward, for vision turned downward.
Now raise the parting glass, to a mem’ry one might not recall. Be night and joy with you all.
Till some distant day, as it must, all shall return to dust. Words of wisdom ─ to live by, to die by, to fade with ─ describing the gift of existence and certain downfall, its consequence. The dies have fallen; this was a mind’s given answer.
Another morrow arrived, breaking the shackles of nocturnal tragedy. Warm rays prickled the skin, ashen as fate permits. A few birds warble softly, the hymn of the dawn, and dead ears listen dearly.
The cycle began anew, with melody ebbed away. The listener grew silent as can be…
Lifeless orbs closed and remained so. Some words left lips of bluish hue, but no reply came…a departed last words.
They were of no value, not one ear was to hear them. Merely the last whim of a dying brain, a silent confession to the stars, one could not even notice in this atmosphere.
They marked the closing remarks, in a life’s final chapter.
”…How utterly cliché…”
Therefore, in lieu this story became what the protagonist proclaimed. And if they did not die due to horrendous injuries inflicted on their body, they would have lived happily ever after.
The end’s end.
—--------
This marked the conclusion to the peculiar posthumous piece, that for some wondrous reason remained as unnamed as its famed author.
The first, last and only tale stemming from the late writer’s early works achieved its notoriety for employing themes such as mortality and the tendency to die when killed.
Its remarkably unremarkable tone clearly indicates that its writer solely had made love to a lexicon.
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“Hark my words, the end times are to come. Hark my words!!” exclaimed a particular disinterested, disembodied voice.
Eyewitnesses would ascribe this voice to the person who experienced the principle of inertia first-hand… and last hand. But that would not exactly limit the list of potential candidates nor specify, which exact fleshy equivalent to a crash-test dummy acted as the present-day narrator.
To solve the newly found, age-old mystery one need not look further than a sudden shift in explorative perspective.
Or to put it like one of those pesky mortals:
Yes, it is I, the brain that thought about itself dying.
While the switch from third-person omniscient to first-person limited POV might appear out of the blue; it was not like getting run over by an ice-cream truck was an every-day-occurrence either.
Driven by your own sister─nonetheless! I spare you the average, tragic backstory, simply because I could not remember it, even if I had wanted to. Blessed be you, ignorance. Lest I had to learn the true cause for my nearest kin to murder me in cold blood.
“Your concern is noted, however is there truly a need to continue your soliloquy? There must be more pressing matters compared to finishing a highly dramatised version of your ‘so-called’ unfortunate passing,” implored one disembodied voice to the other.
Said other voice was not a split personality, neither was it my inner demon tempting me to do unspeakable horror.
Quite frankly, I had no idea who or what the voice was in the first place…
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Nor did I know how any of my or its thoughts were vocalised without vocal cords. Normally, one would need a body to speak, yet basic anatomy did not seem to mean much in the current state of affairs.
It was not something anybody would get; see what I did there? Because I clearly do not─am dead, thanks for not asking!
Not that I would have loved such a thing, who would want to talk to someone else? These ever-so endless hours, trapped with myself, alone, unable to tell apart reality and the figments of my mind…what a loveable after-human being became of me.
Here I was- the bathsalt-philosph- who rambled on. Look at me, narrating everything in past tense because everything has to have happened that way. it ought to be real; it did happen.
Yes, Yes, Yes. Losing one’s memory was perfectly normal. Reality was merely a construct and it crumbled away on a daily basis. Things were a-okay.
“An apology had already been dealt, what else is there to be done?” bemoaned the voice in its usual manner─sorely lacking any shred of empathy.
SSSSHHHH, does it really matter? All this time─solitude─in my mind, no other THING… other than myself. There was only me, ME, mE, memememe.
I did not like the person speaking back to me one bit.
Seemingly infinite seconds later, my personal truth revealed itself to me: I was. I thought, and so I was. I describe something and therefore that was…at least, to my mind…it’s real.
I…Was…REAL.
“Entertaining as this childish tantrum of yours is, could we stop this façade? Best save the reality-questioning bit for when you have a reality, to begin with.“
In came the revolutionary commentary from the sidelines. The haughty tone of voice and its tendency to contribute nothing of value might not be to my liking, but the dance of social etiquette just had to continue, did it not?
My, oh my, had the time for pleasantries already passed? Mimicking an irrational lunatic did not seem to strike any fancy in you, my dear interlocutor. Tis’ quite a shame that a certain someone refused to play along with my perfect acting. Inquiring whether or not I had a death wish would have been the correct continuation in this little act of ours.
There was a script to follow, there were rules that needed to be respected…
Well, technically it was more of an earthen-expectancy thing, the blame here lay entirely with the former guy from Earth. My bad! Still, why go through all the trouble and send me to some strange place? Times should not be as dire. Why settle for the likes of me?
“There is no such thing as a raison d’etre. Your arrival here did not stem from a higher power. Signs indicate that you simply, suddenly, unpromptedly sprung into being.“
Ha~Ha, golly gee what a jolly laugh we shared. Do know this: while your artistic story-telling is highly commendable, I find it hard to place much faith in the message itself. Or to put it into the words of the most modern poets: That was a whole heap of bs.
Truer words had never been spoken by teenagers.
Ah, the folly of youth, an absolute buffoonery of days long gone…Shall we stop our lil’ play pretend and address the currently OD-ing elephant in the room?
Luck was a great thing, but having too much of it was not. The discrepancy between miracle and ordinarity surmounted to nothing more than a critical lack of information. So, please forgive me for not believing in this coincidence.
No single thing took place without reason. As much as an uncaring system, blind to existential blight, may bring consolation to human mind, it should be seen only as a great delusion of spirit─a self-imposed absolution to life’s consequential nature.
To every action there was a reaction. To any act there was a cause. To every cause there was a precursor…always would there be a logical chain of events to come before and after.
An audible sigh reverberated throughout the confines of my own brain or, rather, what remained of it.
“Without vision is not the natural order, but blind is he who seeks for logic and reason within. A fool he is for seeing the world through lenses from another. This, is who you are…”
Great, the church of Incoherent, Cryptic Foreshadowing just gained another devout follower.
I had a premonition myself: things would not make more sense than they did now. Nonetheless, that did not make me a seer, because those could actually see a future for themselves.
Appropriately, a pair of cold lips dressed in a cyanotic tinge of purplish blue emerged out of thin nothingness. Like theirs, my arrival here was devoid of any logic and we both had an equal amount of life left in us.
In an action that gave human anatomy the all too familiar middle-finger-treatment, the two lips detached from another and began to arrhythmically move up and down.
Over and over again they closed only to open again. No noise escaped through them, not a single sound came forth.
This…was…not…real…
Artificial, inhuman, disjointed, it was mimicking─something. What was it mouthing? Did it try to tell of something. Was it a warning or prophecy of my impending doom?
Aaaaaaannnnnd CUT!
Could you spare me the time and effort to set the ambiance? It is off-putting enough to watch these lips trying to give me metaphysical mouth-to-mouth. Can’t we just go on with that little foretelling of yours?
“What is, is what should not have been. Yet was, that, which should never have been. Unlike any other, had it been. Unlike any other, it shan’t know destiny, be it fated to simply fade away. That, too, was part of you.”
Unperturbed by my antics, the voice resumed to tell me all about its lovely day.
Or whatever the subject was─that I totally understood everything about. With as much motivation as your average call-center slave, pardon 'employee,'it continued to speak in riddles.
That’s just how un-life do be at times. It is what it is, and helpful, it was not.
Some day the puzzle pieces might all fall into place and the full truth would come to light. Though for now, the mysterious messages were about as useful as nipple on a man.
Cue more ominous, foreboding words to follow!
The script, maaaan, the script said so.
Gotta kill some time before the inevitable fade to black. Skip to the waking up at an unfamiliar place schtick? As if it was that easy. There was no option to skip this cutscene with the press of a button.
“In one, the union of two. One in all, the other in none. One to create, one that destroys. One, which ought to exist, the other should have never. Ye child of sorrow where art your morrow?”
“To you, for whom fate holds no sway, where is your place?” A soul torn asunder, trapped forevermore in-between, is that you?
… …
… …
These last imposing words echoed in the vast, empty halls of my mind construct for a long while, instilling it with a sense of awe and trepidation. Solely one thought lingered on: “Was that it?”
Yup, that was it.
Instead of half-truth hogwash, could things not have been a little less “OMG, he is a Virgo?”
Obviously the answer to said conundrum remained forever unfound, since the oracle in question had run out of lines. On one hand, YAY!...on the other hand Yay?! Not hearing anything was not great either.
So be it, though.
The backwards foreshadowing finally came to a closure, the words basked in sadness dissolving in the ether like once cherished dream, or like any other flatulence─both equal in their vapid usefulness in life.
After this kafkaesque, schrödinger’s cat-esque finesse finally met its long due conclusion I was as knowledgeable as ever. Which did not seem to matter much in the grand scheme of things.
As a professional former dropped baby actor, I could tell with great confidence that those resources were limited to begin with.
Be it so, though.
Unceremoniously time continued to pass on by. At last, silence resumed its usual routine. The revelation about a certain, uncertain future did not exactly yield much information nor did it make me very happy.
One could easily deduce that this did not sound like a happy-ever after. But, did a marionette dancing the dance dictated by invisible hands really have a say in the matter?
Silence, once more…I loathe it.
Something, however, differed.
The space, the black around, ripples tore through this world devoid of light. Spreading throughout in wave-like patterns. Oscillations shot around without purpose or direction.
At first, the difference was faint, barely discernible. Nothing but a low and infrequent cobweb of pulsating clashes with the endless laying around. Here and there it hit, nowhere and closeby did it ripple.
The intensity increasing with every moment’s notice.
A vibration laid itself over my undefinable perception. The total darkness shook before me, twisting, curling in on itself. The space grew distorted, no, it contorted. As if its shapeless vastness collapsed under its own weight.
Change was imminent…would this be mine and its end?
This lack of everything seemed on the verge of breaking, a butterfly’s wing beat away from crumbling into whatever would come after.
I did not hate it.
However, soon the happenings began to replay itself. Prophecies became ominous foreboding promises of what was to follow after.
…soon my vision would return to me… my new world awaited.
Please, do not be, not again.
…soon.
—-----------------------
“Balance draws near”, murmured a foreign voice at the seedling it had planted in rich soil.
To sprout into a thing of beauty, and grow petals to marvel at.
A beautiful flower or a neophyte?
An act of sheer happenstance or mere coincidence? Nobody knew…just yet.