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The world ended last night.
He’s not sure why, or even really how. He thinks that maybe, probably, it was bound to end pretty soon anyway, that it was only a matter of time before these people tore themselves apart. At least he hadn’t let them take him too.
No, they won’t be getting that privilege, he thinks, maybe they took the world apart bit by bit like hands tearing into a crumbling loaf of stale bread, festering mold and desperation, but at least the world has taken him, compensation for the both of them. An eye for an eye, maybe, not that he’s got many of those left to give.
So yeah, the world ended two days ago, or maybe three, now- hard to tell when it’s all so dark- because people were too selfish, or desperate, or stupid, not that he’s much better, what with how he takes and takes runs and leaves people behind to get crushed by the weight of the world they’ve all doomed, the end they’ve brought upon themselves but at least for now it is them and not him. Maybe the end will come for him soon but for now he is held gently in the soft hand of destruction and undoing, selfish creature that he is and always has been, a blade or maybe a bomb, cradled as he flickers in and out, bright red light blotting out his vision.
The world will end in a few months, but he doesn’t know that yet, and pretty soon it’s not going to matter anyway because the end of the world means very little to someone who’s already starved to death. He’ll get used to this type of hunger soon, to the desperate haze of being on the brink, to the feeling of raw, bloody flesh tearing apart underneath his fingers, but for now it is- not new, no, but maybe not familiar just yet. Not familiar enough for him to know that something is wrong, though, maybe the act in and of himself should’ve been enough to raise alarm bells. Oh well. He’s never been the smartest, no, never been good with common sense, hard to trust his gut when his stomach is so empty and his insides keep trying to tear his outsides out of place. He doesn’t notice for a while, because how could he when everything has always been wrong and somehow all of him has always been impossibly rotten, maybe dead for years now, certainly not alive in any of the ways that matter.
So, this banquet is one that he enjoys in solitude, two dead things amongst the living quietly merging into one as he chews and chews, maybe too stupid or maybe hopeless enough to not notice how easily flesh rends from bone, bone that is stained with charcoal and graphite that he never could wash off his hands, tearing into meat that is scarily close to his own in both composition and proximity, close and distant enough that he could bite into himself without realizing, a cloudy haze as he watches the vulture he has become paint its beak black with viscera, tainting its insides the ashy color of death, stopping its heart, more chicken than vulture at this point, severed head still pecking at the poisoned carcass of himself.
At first, most people assume that the mangled animal remains that they find in the woods are the result of a hungry wolf or maybe a confused zombie (though that second description isn’t exactly wrong). But some of them start to connect the dots. The smarter ones. Not that any of them are particularly smart, himself included. Himself especially.
The world has ended a while ago, now, been over for a while now. It’s started again for some people. Not for him, though, no, he’s not the type of person that gets to start over, nor the type of world or wound that gets to heal. Ugly things, deep, blackened, old things, bits and pieces of insides exposed to the outside, slowly worn down more and more but never repairing themselves, candles burnt down to the wick and then burnt a bit more for good measure. The distant part of his mind that could still be considered his, be considered conscious, knows that he is not built to last, not being used in a way that will allow him to last, but the rest of him, the him that matters, the him that moves and feeds and survives even as it barely lives, is too charred and frayed to understand that, to do anything other than keep going until there is nowhere left to go and none of him left to go there. The part that knows feels too tired to care. Eventually, his body is going to collapse, to crumble in on itself, and maybe then his debt to the horrible, vile people of this world will be paid and he will be allowed to rest. Until then,