The Earths Last Breath

The streets stood silent as they had for decades. The sun, obscured and dimmed to a pallid grey ghost of itself by the endless clouds, cast a gloomy light over the landscape. The city, once the jewel of the earth where men believed God himself once roamed and had slaughtered one another for this sacred prize, stood now only as a shattered visage of man’s achievements. Snow covered the streets. In ages past snow never dared to approach this once dry and scorching place, but now, like every corner of the globe, had dominion over it.

When man had finally set the world aflame, the faithful had fled to the grand mosques, synagogues, and churches of the city from around the world. They prayed and begged their God for mercy and salvation, but he had remained silent. The bones of the pious and the desperate decorated every corner of the streets, their clothes long since decayed and stripped away like their flesh. They lay in various positions of prayer or in huddled masses of what were once families clutching each other for some comfort in their final moments, terrified and unwilling to die alone.

None had fought each other, though once they had hated one another and sought to wipe each other from the face the earth. Confronted with the common and inevitable fate that befalls all living things, the hatred had died before they did. There would never be a eulogy for them, no one to remember or speak their names. Only the earth would remember them, and she too was dying. She had been struck with a mortal blow by the creatures who had the great gift of love, compassion, courage, and virtue, and the dark curse of hate, malice, greed, and vice.

She, like man, would finally see the end of war. The end of heartbreak and sorrow. The end of love and courage. Neither tears of joy nor pain would ever flow again. But the end had not quite come, for there was still one left. A man still walked and he carried the last piece of her with him. He once had a name but had long since parted with it. His father and mother called him son; others called him kid or boy. He had seen no one for years now and had no need for a name of his own. There was only one left who had a name. The small, precious creature that he carried with him. An old, scraggly rat, whom he called Methuselah.

He had found him many years ago, and to his astonishment he had lived far beyond what one of his kind should live. The man protected him from all harm. He was the man’s last and only companion in this dying world. Methuselah had always looked east, towards the unknown horizon, and back at the man after a few moments, as if telling him where they must go. They traveled across continents where once mighty nations and vast empires had been, and through the snow of this endless winter brought upon by humanities anger and hate. No plant or animal remained. They were alone. The last witnesses of this strange end to this once beautiful world.

He had long since stopped speaking to God. There was no comfort in speaking to someone he was no longer sure was there to listen. He sometimes spoke to Methuselah, hoping for a word of reply, but he was always silent. Yet he always listened and he was always there. This small, odd creature was the mans last bastion standing against the unrelenting onslaught of loneliness and despair. A humble yet mighty fortress of hope. When Methuselahs inevitable end came, the man knew that the armies of despair would overcome him, but Methuselah held on to life resolutely and defiantly. It was almost as if he knew that he was the guardian to the man’s spirit, just as the man was the guardian to him.

Onward they went, scrounging for what little food and water they could find, heading ever eastward to a destination they knew nothing of. They had arrived in the city the day before. A weathered sign told them where they were. Jerusalem. The promised land, the land of miracles and of God. They went on carefully, not disturbing the bones of the dead from their rest. The man knew not where he was walking to. He only had a feeling that he had reached the end of the road. Methuselah had begun to wheeze and struggle for breath that morning. In his heart he knew the end was finally coming.

He had found himself at the top of a hill, outside the city. He sat at the top in a clearing surrounded by the dead, frozen in time, kneeling before where he now sat. He reached his hand into his coat and pulled Methuselah from his place. Methuselah looked at the man, unblinking and with tired eyes incapable of hate, malice, or evil. Then he looked up towards the cloudy sky as if looking at something. Methuselah let out a sound like that of an angel rejoicing. Then, he crawled up the man’s arm to just below his chin, nuzzled him, and drew his last breath.

The man sat there, caressing the lifeless body of his last true friend, weeping. He was truly alone now. This tiny, loving creature had held on as long as he could, standing a silent watch for the sake of one whose kind had viewed him as a pest that needed to be destroyed. Now he was gone. The man did not stir from his grief. He simply sat there, determined to die holding Methuselah. He looked back towards the city and saw something he hadn’t seen since he was a child, and the world had become engulfed in the ceaseless cold. The grey clouds were parting. As the rays of sun came to the hill, he saw a stranger walking towards him.

The man did nothing but watch the approaching figure. He didn’t know if this man was real or simply a figment of his broken, lonely mind. “Hello there friend. What brings you here?” the mysterious figure called out. The man said nothing and simply gestured to the lifeless body of his tiny companion. “Ah, I see. You have lost one for whom you cared deeply. And now you sit waiting for the end of all things.”. Again, the man said nothing, shivering in the cold. “You are a strange one friend. Tell me, what is your name?”

“What?” finally said the man.

“Ah, so you can speak! What is your name?”

“I… I have no name”

“Yes, you do”

“No. I stopped having a name long ago. No one was there to speak to me anymore.”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t have a name.”

“Are you even real?” asked the man annoyed at the insistence of this figure who stood before him.

“That’s an odd thing to ask.”

“Well, are you? Or are you just the last desperate attempt of my mind to hold on to some vain hope?”

“Does it matter?”

“What?”

“Does it matter if I’m real or not? If I’m just a hallucination of your lonely, grief-stricken mind, does it mean you will stop speaking to me?”

“No” said the man. He had realized that the figure was right and that it did not matter whether he was a real person, he simply needed to believe that there was someone here to speak to. Someone who could listen and speak back.

“Well then, tell me, what truly brought you to this most sacred of places?”

“Methuselah”

“Your companion”

“Yes”

“A wonderful name for a wonderful creature who had the immense gift of meeting you”

“What do you mean?”

“You could have eaten him long ago when you found him. But you didn’t. So many others would have, but not you. Why?”

“He came to me. He wasn’t afraid”

“I see. But you are, are you not?”

“Yes”

“Why? Do you fear what comes next?”

“No, I’ll die like everything else”

“But what about what comes after?

“Nothing comes after”

“How do you know?”

“How do you know there is something after death?”

“One needs only to believe, Issac”

“How do you know my name?”

“I thought you said you had no name?”

“You just called me Issac. How did you know to call me Issac?”

“Lucky guess perhaps. Or perhaps we once knew each other”

“Everyone I’ve known is dead”

“True. But perhaps death is not the end, but a change of worlds”

“Maybe, maybe not”

“Like I said, one only needs to believe. They wait for you there”

“Who?”

“Those whom you once called Mother and Father, and those whom you called friends.”

“How do you know?”

“You’ll just have to believe me. Besides, the clouds are retreating, that much you can see, and there is nothing quite like that grand and radiant sphere of eternal fire to make one believe. Until we meet again child”

With that the stranger walked off leaving the man on the hill. He sat there watching the stranger walk towards the west. He looked back towards the city, which now shone brightly from the sun that had finally been revealed after so many years. When he looked back towards the stranger, he was gone, with no trace he had been there. The man looked over the landscape that had once been grey and gloomy but now glimmered from the warm rays of light.

The land was covered with a thick blanket of snow like it had always been. But now it stood pure and radiant, like that of a bride’s wedding dress in ages past. The light of the sun had driven away the gloom. The bones, which had only moments ago stood as a sorrowful, depressing display of desperation and fear, now seemed to look upon the man. The once macabre skulls now looked beautiful and seemed to have a look of compassion and love, as if to say to the man, welcome home child. The man looked at the body of Methuselah, his companion and friend, and softly said “Thank you my friend”. He looked at the sun and pondered.

Perhaps the stranger was a figment of his imagination. His mind telling him that there is nothing to fear. Perhaps it was God coming down to finally answer the man’s prayers and doubts in his own strange way. Or perhaps he was simply a lonely, wise old traveler trying to comfort another lonely traveler in his final moments. The warm rays of the sun cut through the cold and brought comfort to the man.

He thought that maybe the sun is where God resided. A great sphere of blinding light and warmth that never stopped trying to reach his most loved creation. Blocked, not by him, but by those who destroyed the world but whom he had never stopped loving. Though alone, the man was no longer lonely. He had seen the beauty in this world, even in its dying breaths. He had known love and sorrow. He had walked farther than most men had ever dreamed. He had carried hope for far longer than any might have thought possible.

He sat there, not moving for a long time. His breath had become shallow and labored. The end was here. But he was no longer afraid. He hoped, he believed that there was something beyond this world. He knew that there was beauty and would always be beauty, for while some said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the truth was that beauty is like that of the soul. Eternal, radiant, and divine. In the end, the man was smiling.

The earth had taken its last breath. Its life had been filled with joy and sorrow, love and hate, mercy and cruelty. Man had lived with the earth to its final moments and had been the architects of its darkest days and had secured its final moments. Yet earth’s final moment was its greatest. For it did not come with fear, sorrow, and despair. The final thing that the earth and the last living man experienced was beauty, joy, and hope.