In the End — Short Story Fiction

All your best paintings hang on the walls of Thomas Studios. A gaggle of fashionable elites accompanied by their younger and prettier partners has come to admire your work. The studio’s proprietor calls it a “huge success.” Admirers have already asked her about purchasing some of your pieces.

“Where are the prices? You forgot to mark them.”

Incredulous is the word that best describes the expression on her face as you tell him that you don’t plan on selling your art. “It’s only a hobby.” Most of the buyers would just be friends with money trying to be supportive. It doesn’t count.

Thoughts of first love, and second love, and the loves that followed, the college experience, a degree in philosophy, work and all the accolades and all the comfort, your house in Newport Beach, your on-again-off-again lover who awaits your call looking for an excuse to drive down from her condo in the Valley to see you, they all vie for your attention. None of them bring you happiness. None of them have meaning. What good are they?

There is your life, and you see it is no good.

A junkie in a bedraggled coat and swim trunks smells of skunk. His eyes are grey and tired and he asks “What’s the hurry?” He might be talking to you, or to himself, or an invisible god–maybe the same god you would talk to if you had to choose one. He picks at a mud-colored thumbnail as you pass him by. “Everyone’s in a rush. Go. Go. Go. What’s the hurry? What’s the season? Everyone is being born or dying, at peace or warring.”

His disgruntled mumbles blend in with the crashing of waves, the cawing of seagulls, and the murmur of a beach city preparing for the night. The tourists head back to their hotels, changing out of their swimsuits, washing the sand and saltwater off of their bodies, and getting dressed: “First we pre-party here. Then, we can grab something to eat at La Casa Del Camino. We have to stop by the Boom Boom Room; It’s next door to La Casa. After that, we can let the wind take us wherever and then finish at the Early Bird. A local told me they’re the only bar that serves after 2 a.m.”

There is your society, and you see it is no good.

You take off your shoes and socks and abandon them by the side of a trash can overflowing with cans and bottles and walk onto the beach.

An old couple holds hands as they walk parallel to the shore leaving a trail of footprints, only to be erased by the lapping waves. The sand on the soles of your feet and between your toes is neither cool nor warm. You say to yourself, “Nothing is good.” Your body is cold and numb. It holds no more meaning to you, your earthly vessel than a plateful of ash. Upon realizing that you would cast it off as readily as you did your shoes, you walk toward the water.

The water is cold. Your muscles tense and your walking is belabored by the stiffness of your body’s movement. Still, you continue into the ocean and once the waters reach high enough on your chest that you can no longer wade through the waves while standing, you begin to swim.

You swim as far as your body will take you, and further you are drawn out into the sea as if the ocean has held its palm underneath your body and carried you to its bosom.

This is your last glimpse of land, and you see it is no good.

Onward

As the waves begin to lap over you; you swim, dipping your head under the salt water and swimming completely submerged, holding your breath and paddling until your lungs force you to break the surface and suck in a mouthful of air.

The waves are gone. You swim further into the dead, calm water.

Your arms grow tired. They burn. They begin to give. You push on.

You swim until the sun sinks over the horizon. Pinks, oranges, and ochres brush the sky–more beautiful than anything you could have painted. The sun bows, the star of his own play. He shimmers on the ocean’s surface before you and waits for creation to applaud him. You acknowledge the sun but give him no applause. The warmth he gives off is meaningless to you.

There is the light of the world, and you see it is no good.

The Pacific steals you away and your muscles give in to exertion. You kick your legs and paddle your arms in an attempt to stay above the surface. Each moment feels like an eternity. You gasp for air. Will this ever end? A distant voice in your head screams. “I want to live!” You acknowledge the voice but deny it any control.

As you accept your fate, your death, the sea responds in kind. Your last breath tastes like salt. Your body descends. The water and your body are calm. Everything is calm–the sorbet sky above–the endless dark below. “Nothing is good.”

Down.

As you stare into the blurred sky above–further and further, the colors begin to fade. Warmth dissipates. The need for air–quenched.

Slowly.

You sink down into the black. The sight of the sky above, above the water, is a dim and muddled slate.

And, then…

Black.

All is gone.

You lose all meaning of time. There is no sense as to where your body begins or ends. The darkness permeates your being.

At some point in existence, you see tiny pinprick lights. There are stars like distant flames. Among those pinpricks, you realize one has a planet that orbits it called earth. You watch the flames die and fade and flare up. Billions of years pass by as you watch the last light go out and never reincarnate. And, then there is nothingness.

The only true god is Death.

Entropy has conquered all of existence. There is no longer space nor time and even nothing has lost all meaning.

Everything is nothing–meaninglessness.

Death is bored, its work is complete. “Remember this. Even gods must die,” it says before it retires from this plane.

Your presence is all that is left. There is no barrier between you and the infinite for the infinite has reached its end and now there is no now for the beginning and end have died and there is no you for there is nothing to differentiate you from nothing.

And, in this nothing which is neither a moment, for time never was, nor a place, for space never was, you call it a day. And, since there was never one before it, you call it the first day. Then you speak for the first time since before the last time a word was spoken.

You say, “Let there be light.”

And there was light, and you saw that it was good.