The Pub at the End of the World.

“They said I was the chosen one,” I grumbled. “Absolute rubbish.”

David had that same bored expression, as he gazed over the bar towards me. He was polishing the same mug as the day before.

“Chosen for what?” David asked. A slight, mocking grin tugged at the corner of his mouth.

I narrowed my eyes. He was baiting me again, like he did every day.

“Fuck it,” I said, biting. “I hope you’re ready for a wild story.”

David smiled and lowered the mug. He slung the dirty rag he’d been using over his shoulder and leant against the bar, all ears.

I stared into my mug of ale, half empty, and my dark, tired eyes that were older than I remembered stared back.

“My father,” I started slowly. “He held me up the day I was born and proclaimed I would do great things. I would change the world.” I scoffed. “Foolish bastard.”

“Why do you say that?” David asked, reciting the same lines he’d said the day before.

“Because he didn’t know,” I grumbled. “He had no idea that the world was already going dark. He was sheltered. He didn’t watch the news. He didn’t see the fading lights. He probably hoped, but he had no idea the power that promise had.”

The patter of rain along the pub’s tin roof sent a chill down my spine. I gazed at the nearest window, but I don’t know why I bothered. It was dark. There was nothing to see.

“The world keeps turning,” David said, his head turned upward toward the ceiling. His eyes were distant. “Maybe today is the day?” He blinked and looked in my direction. “Maybe today you step outside?”

My ever-present frown deepened. “You know I can't do that,” I mumbled. “It’s too late.”

“Then tell me about your childhood,” David said gently.

I waved my hand and nearly spilled the rest of my drink across the bar. “Forget all that boring shit. It was the same as everyone else. I grew up with the same concerns. I experienced my first blackout when I was five. I had never been so afraid of anything before…”

“The dark?” David asked.

I nodded.

“They had spent so much time filling our heads with bullshit, my parents especially. By the time the darkness actually came they basically died of fear and shock.”

David nodded. “Same… sort of. I was used to it by then.”

I paused for a moment, hands shaking, before continuing. “That wasn’t until I was old enough to take care of myself anyway,” I said. I scratched the side of my face and grimaced. My beard had grown so scraggly and wild and it was greasy and matted. I made a small sound of disgust.

“You could step out into the rain,” David said, waving towards the door. “When was the last time you bathed?”

“When the roof caved in in that corner,” I said, jerking my thumb towards the corner of the pub behind me. Dust and debris still littered the floor, but we had patched the ceiling with the wood from a few tables and chairs. Now only a trickle of water made it through, gathering amongst the rubbish on the floor.

“You can hardly talk,” I said, pointing at David with a grubby finger. “Your face is covered in dirt.”

David smirked. “Never bothered you before.”

I chuckled and nodded.

“Tell me about the first time,” David said, leaning forward further.

The skin prickled beneath my collar and my cheeks felt hot.

“By the time I found this place,” I said, taking in the dilapidated, dust-covered bar with its rickety chairs and mug-stained tables. “I barely knew who I was anymore. I’d been walking for so long and yet the horizon remained so dim. What was the point in continuing?”

“But why didn’t you continue?” David asked.

I paused. That wasn't a question he asked often.

“You know why,” I growled.

A smile slowly began to spread over his lips.

“Tell me again.”

Again the nerves returned. My hand trembled as I reached for my mug to take another swig. The beer was warm, but the bitterness was all I wanted from it and the pleasant numbness it brought if I were to continue.

“I stepped into the bar,” I waved my hands around me, indicating my surroundings. “And saw a vision of my future. I saw a man unlike any I had ever seen. He had dark, brown hair, deep blue eyes and freckles spread like stars across his face and arms.

“Amongst other places,” David joked.

I nodded and smiled to myself. “He was tall too, which I always liked. Not too tall, but just tall enough for our eyes to meet without trying…” I felt that old tug of frustration at myself. I was always slipping up and saying the wrong thing. David hadn’t noticed, he just smiled and listened.

“I decided that I was going to stick around and get to know this man. Besides, we were both alone by that point. What was the harm in delaying destiny?” I said.

A long, sad silence filled the air between us. It stretched and grew with all the things that had gone unsaid, all the things gone undone.

“Isaac?” David asked eventually, breaking the spell of silence. “You don’t have to stay here with me. I’ll be alright.”

Outside, the rain turned from a pleasant patter, into an all-out downpour.

“You have no light left,” I whispered. “No power. No batteries. Not even a candle.”

Through the grime and sweat, I could still see the man I had fallen for a year ago. Though David’s deep, blue eyes now welled with despair, rather than love for me. Even out of focus, I knew them all too intimately.

“You don’t have to let the whole world go dark, just for me,” David said.

Those words pounded against the walls I had built around my heart. They shook my entire being like an earthquake.

“But…” I whispered, stumbling over the words. I could hardly get them out. “You can’t see.”

David’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes searched for me as they always did. I saw him, but he had never seen me.

“Exactly,” David said. “It is nothing new to me. I have lived in the dark all my life. I can survive here without you.”

“Come with me,” I pleaded, barely a whisper.

David did not reply, but his sad, determined expression answered in a way his words could not.

He refused to slow me down. He had said it a thousand times, and after a while he had stopped saying it. He had just looked my way with those eyes that ripped my heart to pieces.

“It’s simple,” I said in a low voice. “The world doesn’t need me. They can figure their own shit out. You need me.”

“I never needed you,” David said softly, his words always so gentle when we arrived at this stage of our verbal dance. “I love you. I want you, but I can’t need you. That would be far too selfish of me.”

I sat in that. In a way, he judged me. He didn't mean to, but he did. He hadn’t meant to, but he had implied that my choices were selfish. That I was selfish.

“People go mad in the dark,” I murmured, barely loud enough for him to hear. “They forget who they are, who they were… they forget friends, family… loved ones. Some forget they ever loved at all.”

“Isaac,” David said.

My name upon his lips was magic in my ears. My heart fluttered and the butterflies from that very first day danced in my stomach.

“It is time.”

My stomach twisted into knots and my heart felt like it had seized. Never had the conversation reached this point. David always made some quip about never forgetting, or that he could handle himself in the dark. But not this time.

“Your light will never leave this place, even if the darkness returns,” he said. “You must find the place where all lights meet. That is your destiny.”

“But…”

“You promised me,” David said. “Don’t go back on your word. Don’t let everyone else suffer as I have. Light their way, as you have lit mine.”

I hung my head, so low it rested upon the worn, scuffed bar. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. The world didn’t matter to me if I had to leave my world behind.

“It’s alright,” David said. “I’ll manage.”

My stool creaked and I slowly stood and slid it back. I tentatively lifted my mug to my lips, paused and then downed the rest of my drink. It tasted awful. It always had.

I stumbled, slowly dragging my feet across the floor until I stood before him.

“I think I smell pretty bad,” I said.

David reached out. His hand searched until it found my shoulder and he pulled me into his warm embrace. I buried my face into his chest and let the weight of the world go for just a moment. I wept like a child. Great, heaving sobs wracked my body as I clung to him. He held me tightly, his arms were secure and strong. I just wanted to stay there, against his chest, my arms wrapped around him, trying to pull his entire body into mine. If I could do that, he could come with me. I could be his eyes and he could be my courage.

Tenderly, reluctantly, he let me go. He held my face in his hands and he kissed me. I tried to kiss back, but I knew it was our last. It was like poison and it churned my guts into large, swelling waves of pain. It was bitter and I wanted to spit it out, to push him away, but I held on for dear life, preferring agony to the loneliness that would follow.

In the end it was David who pushed me away, not forcefully or with anger, but with the compassionate care I had come to know him by.

He could do no more. He turned his back to me, his cheeks wet with tears and fumbled around for the same mug he had polished everyday. He nudged it with his forearm and knocked it onto the floor, where it smashed. David did not flinch, he simply reached for another mug and began polishing it instead.

I watched him for a long moment, one that felt like an eternity. Then I too turned my back and walked towards the door.

Right before I turned the handle I paused and chuckled. “I’ve always hated this Pub, you know?”

“I know,” David said.

I don’t even know where the darkness came from. I don’t think anyone does. They used to speculate though. Some thought it was God punishing all the wicked of the world, just like the floods. Others thought that it was a curse from the stars, meant to wipe us all out. That led easily into the conspiracy of aliens conducting some kind of experiment on us. All I know is that when my father declared I would do great things, I was cursed with light. It followed me everywhere, filling bulbs, igniting candles and even brightening the sky.

When I stepped out into the pouring rain, I had expected nothing to change. But the old neon sign of the pub blinked to life and above me a ray of light poked through the dark, brightening the storm clouds overhead.

The Respite.

It was such a simple name for a pub. It had attracted me the moment I saw it. All I had wanted was a place to rest, to run down the clock and let the world fall apart. But in reality its name was far too fitting.

It was just a place to rest, before I continued on my way to the place where all lights meet, leaving everything I loved behind.