A Letter From the End of the World

I am not one to wallow in lost hopes and naive dreams. That's why I wasn't all that surprised when I saw the world end. It's funny, to me; humans fear death above all else, the boss level of every video game, the monster under every bed, but what they really fear is the unknown, the terrifying thought of plunging head first into a world in which they do not understand.

I talk as if I am not human, sometimes I wish I wasn't.

But I do not fear death like they did, not enough to make up impossibilities and believe in false deities. It's funny how faith can turn people into the very monsters that scare them.

I had a dream, the night before it happened, and it felt like the world was falling apart. It was a sickening premonition, and when I woke my stomach was twisted with anxiety, but you can't very well tell people that you saw the world end in a dream because they will not believe you.

That is the will of humanity, I have learned, they don't believe anything until they experience it themselves. Damn stubborn.

Maybe that's why nobody believed me, because humanity refuses to believe that things come to an end.

But they do, and most times, they end in flames.

There are things I don't know. I think that the world ended in slow motion; actions turned to decisions and decisions into threads that made up a lifetime, but it is not those of the powerful or the notable that change things, it is the actions of the unknown, of the average person in an average life.

I remember thinking that the world was so unfamiliar. The streets were cold where they should have been warm, empty when they should have been full. This didn't bother me at first; there is something about a dream when you're having it that makes everything seem reasonable. Ethereal is not the right word. I'm not sure if I could find it.

Ash fell from the sky, gathering like snow on the abandoned curbs and empty sidewalks. I find Thanatos beside me from one step to the next, and we acknowledge each other but say nothing.

I leave footprints in the ash behind me, one in front of the other, but Thanatos walks light on his feet and leaves no trail.

I don't know if I realized what this world around me was, not really; not until he spoke it.

“Welcome to the end of the world.”

There was something about his voice that gave me the strongest urge to lie down and let the ash bury me. When I tried to look at him again, he had already turned away.

I didn't say anything more, and he didn't either. I wonder now if I should have.

I don't know why we kept walking, if I was following him or if he was following me, but the world grew darker the further we went, until there was little to see but my own hands and Thanatos beside me.

Further, we walked until the darkness was complete. He looked at me, and it wasn't that I could see him, rather, I felt the pressure of his gaze, his attention, his power. Even as I write these words, awake, far from that ash covered street, I can feel the unlimited of him.

His words weren't cruel, not exactly; maybe he was warning me, taunting me, but there was something in his voice that felt almost detached, like he had lost a game he didn't much care about in the first place.

“They will come to believe you. They will be too late, but they will believe.”

And that was the end. I woke up after that.

I found the world the same as it had been, but there was a sense of dread low in my stomach that would not leave.

I told my parents about the dream, my friends, they all said the same thing. With furrowed brows and thoughtful eyes, “Weird… But it was just a dream. I wouldn't worry about it.”

I almost believed them, tried to believe them, their words and assurances, but the dread followed me everywhere.

I thought about the people next to me on the train and knew that they would soon be gone. I passed the skyscrapers and houses, the shops and cafes.

They would not be there tomorrow. Nothing would be there tomorrow.

When faced with the end of the world, the first thing one might think about is how they could save it.

Believe what you will, but I confess, I did nothing to stop it. I didn't want the fate of the world to be in my hands; I felt it’s dread, and the feeling scared me, but I don't think I ever really believed that the world could end. Would end.

Still, I carried Thanatos’s words with me that day, even when I tried not to, they returned to my head as if wanting to be remembered. I suppose now that maybe that was a warning. I have spotted it too late and for that I apologize, but even in the face of their own doom, humanity would not believe it until it happened. Some would call that foolish, and it is, but those who believe before they see are fools, too, and there are no in-betweens. One either believes or they don't, and that makes us all fools in the end.

What is it you'd like to know? Do you look to the past for help? Because I'm afraid I have none to offer. The sky fell and the fire burned and we died, the world turned on us and someday it will turn on you, too. The only thing to believe in is endings, and if that is not the advice you were looking for, I'm afraid you are looking in the wrong place.

So what else am I to say? Am I as stubborn as my brethren? Despite all I have said, do I write these words with the hope that maybe this is not the end?

I don't like the idea of hope. It seems much too optimistic.

But I suppose I must have some, to put these words to paper in the first place. The idea does not sit well on my soul.

Maybe you’d like to know who we were? I can't tell you exactly, I'm not so sure I know myself. We had words that weathered years and soaring libraries to hold them; we built things that touched the sky and walked among the stars, we could hear music and we could feel it even when there was none. We saw the world in brilliant color and sometimes that was a bad thing; we made destruction and death and treachery. We fought wars already lost and brutalized our own world until it brutalized us back.

I am not so sure if we were good, or what that might mean, but we were here. We walked this ground and lived these lives, and maybe that is all there is to do.

This letter will find you or it will not, I suppose I will never know; but if we are to be remembered, remember us like this—as hope for a future at the end of the world, as a life in pursuit of something worth dying for.

With love from the end of the world,