Short Story: The End of the Universe

What if I tell you a story about a dying man? A man who is the last of his kind at the end of the universe. What would you think of his last thoughts to be? Would he worry about bills? Would he care about the wrong thing he said zillion years ago? Without learning the person’s history, I guess there is no definite answer to give. It is even possible he was a man who had rage in his soul, and he was the one who caused the demise of his kind. But that would be a sad story to tell, at least for those who still have a bleeding, beating heart.

And what would we think when he was gone? How about that there is no one to long for him, no one to remember his life—what a way for a man to die. The last minutes spend watching as the sky is burning or spitting out blood from his lunges or trembling on the ground without no one having touched him in ages. Would he have written his life down in the hope that the universe would start again and that part of him was left for the future to come? Or would he have smiled, thinking he would finally see behind the veil and get the answer to what this mystery was all about?

I see him standing at the edge of a mountain, watching as the sun dips down into the dark blue, turquoise, and slightly yellow sky. You might see him at the ruins of a bombed city or one covered by trees and moss. But in mine, he still feels the cold air whipping against his beaten face, listening as the world gradually crumbles into pieces. He still has hope in him that all wasn’t in vain. That all he had experienced had at least made him into the man he had become; that he can accept the inevitable without hate, without pity, and without regrets. While he hadn’t felt the warmth of another human being in eons, he knows love for the memories of those he buried and for himself too. There had been kisses from her. There had been a tiny hand holding his. There had been life. There were houses, cars, dogs, and trees. There was him. He, who was the last man ever to exist.

Here at the last minute, before everything ends, he isn’t crying. He sings bye-bye, taking a few dancing steps, the slow kind. Those he had with her before she was too weak to get up from the bed. When the days had been good, and there had been just him and her and the tiny one. Ever since they were gone, he had been searching for a sign of life. But even when he found nothing more than opened tin cans and empty corridors, he never let the rot take him. That would mean letting the cosmic joke have the last laugh at his expense. Now he would at least go the way he wanted rather than a slave to the uncontrollable.

The last-minute goes. There is no sound. There is no bang. There is just a black, empty space with a potential for nothing and all devoid of him, her, the tiny one, the dog, the car, the house, and the trees. 

Thank you for reading, have a beautiful day ❤

© K.A. Ashcomb