Ruin

 “Swiftly the remembrance of all things is buried in the gulf of eternity.”

- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

No gods, said R. There are no gods and there are no devils. But there were lives out there and in here too. He pointed at my chest.

He looked at me from under his hood. His breath smoked out from between his teeth. 

What about the strength of belief in us, I asked. What about the tendency for us all to believe?

Improbable, said R. I’m fairly certain a case could be made that, for instance, whales tell stories in their songs. They all seem to convey information to each other over great depths. It’s romantic to assume that it is the same with us. I doubt very much that whales have gods. Yet their behavior is decidedly worshipful. Some of that is anthropomorphic—a wonderfully common human skill. Nevertheless, there is no more evidence for a whale god than for a human god.

He swung his head toward me and I got the impression that there was a keen intelligence gazing at me from the dark depths of his eye sockets.

You’ve been out into the unknown, though, haven’t you?

He would have smiled if his face wasn’t a rigid rictus of grinning teeth and bone. I have been to places that the human consciousness couldn’t understand, yes. I’ve also been to the bottom of the seas on Titan and to the very heart of the universe and it is empty of life, except—here he paused and I got the distinct impression he was choosing his words in such a way as to protect me from some inside joke—here, of course. You lot are all there is in all the universe and of course, me. Until now, anyway.

We had been walking for some time. Huge skeletons of what were formerly buildings lay around us, stretching dead fingers to the skies they once scraped. R and I had been going like this for some time. He—I suppose he was a he—was quiet unless I asked him a question. Then he didn’t mince words, but he also didn’t seem reluctant to share. Smoke or possibly mist was running long, white fingers through what remained of my world. Here and there were smaller, more heart-wrenching artifacts of humanity. It was becoming more and more evident that it was all over.

I often wonder if there is a god, why didn’t he intervene before this? 

R looked at me again, from within the darkness of his hood. He stopped and stood a bit straighter. There was the distinctive sound of bones grinding under his robes.

As I said, there is no god. There have never been any. There is nothing to intervene on your behalf. No one is there. Or here, for that matter.

What are you? Aren’t you a god of sorts?

The rasping coughing sounds that resonated from within his frame must have been laughs. 

I am not a god. I have no special powers. I’m simply what remains of the humanity of the place when the humanity has fled or been destroyed. When I am gone all hope for humanity is then gone. I’m as much a part of your people as you are. In some ways, I’m what makes you human.

I thought about this as we trudged along.

R stopped and set himself down on the twisted remains of a park bench. The air was rank with cold stench but he didn’t seem to mind. I looked around and realized that I had lived here. This was my former neck of the woods. The building that had contained my apartment was damaged but still standing. The shop on the ground level had been burned out but there was still a fire escape climbing like iron ivy up the side of the building. I looked at R and he nodded.

When I arrived at what had been Mrs. V’s window, I looked in. It still seemed the same. Snow was on the floor and the curtains had become tattered, but there was still no muss. I crept in and found myself saying the old woman’s name, as I had done on countless occasions before. The room was silent. 

I stood in the window for a long time. The light was different, probably because the sky was so heavy with dark clouds. Even so, it still seemed homey. I walked into the kitchen and found it to be much the same as it always had been. Neat, clean and inviting. There was a tin on the table for cookies. There was a kettle on the stove. There were some plates in the drainer by the old, cast iron sink. I ventured down the hall. This was much farther than I had ever dared go in my previous visits. Mrs. V was an Italian immigrant, or at the very least of that descent. She always had biscotti, or homemade bread and sauce. She would very often make me meals even when I hadn’t visited. It was like she was born to feed me. Her bathroom was just as pristine as the rest of the flat. The room at the end of the hall, which I assumed was her bedroom, seemed miles away and yet I managed to go the distance. The door was ajar.

R and I had become fast friends. He wasn’t talkative, as I’ve said but in a world suddenly eliminated of people to talk to you take the chance with the strangers. He had taken my hand, his bony fingers interlaced in mine in a most intimate way. I had only held the hand of a few people, before. There was always something missing in the act. It was as if they had held something back from me even in close physical contact, but when I held R’s bony hand, I felt truly loved, truly adored. As if I was the last person on the planet. And maybe I was.

Mrs. V was lying on her bed, propped up on pillows. Her eyes were open. She was dressed and her bedroom slippers were by the side of the bed, as they might always have been. Her hands were clasped on her stomach. A handmade blanket crocheted of brown and yellow and green and orange yarn lay across her. A cup of cold tea was beside her on the nightstand. 

As I looked at her, I felt the presence of my new friend behind me.

She’s dead, he said.

I know.

She died peacefully, he said.

I’m glad.

She was your friend?

She was, in a way. In an adopted grandmother or elderly aunt sort of way. She used to bring me food. The whole upstairs used to smell of garlic and herbs. 

She didn’t have any pain.

I’m glad. Should we do something for her? I looked at the picture of a family on her dressing table. There were several younger people who all looked like her, which I assumed were her own children. She also had grandchildren. I wondered why no one had ever come to see her.

The end, which had also been the beginning for me and R, had been fast and painless for most life in the world. I don’t know what happened and R hasn’t told me, but the end came and it was swift and sudden. One minute, life was still struggling through its large and small battles. The next there was absolute silence. Unless you call the screaming of the last person alive silence.

R put his hand on my shoulder and I backed up against him. Underneath his robes, he felt like a regular human, but I suspected that he was merely skeletal, like his face and hands. 

I sighed. I don’t think I ever really knew anyone, R. I think I lived alone in a much more final way than this.

It’s true, he said. You were forced into a solitary kind of existence by the rigors and strictures of the world you inhabited. Nothing to do about it. You stayed alive. You’re here now.

I turned to him and looked at him for a long time. There were depths in his dark eye-sockets that could barely contain the feeling and emotion that rushed out of them. I moved in, to hug him and I felt his strong arms go around me. 

There’s nothing left, for me, is there?

No.

Am I dead?

Not yet.

Can I die?

 Yes.

Will you stay with me?

Of course. We will be together now, forever. The last of your humanity and its death.

Take me away from this place, R.

There was a sigh from deep within him, like sand in a storm. 

There are stars. Brighter than they ever were in my life. They coat the landscape in silverlight. R, whose real name I now know better than my own former name, is always with me. We share a love of mutual aloneness. He holds my hand with unbridled intimacy. We walk under these neverending stars. We talk. I make him laugh. I make Ruin laugh. Too bad no one is here to see that.

The world as I knew it and the world as I left it is now gone. It is simply a dead place, revolving in a dead dance of other small worlds bereft of life. I never knew what ended my world or how I ended. I only know that my only friend in the entire night that is now what remains of my life—my death, is the one who made it all happen. The memory of my own people’s demise resides with us but it won’t matter. There is no longer any life left to record it.

So, we walk under the stars, my beloved Ruin and I, and the world has moved on.