The End

The End

By Evie Anna Maria

An ambulance wails in the middle of the night, crying to the Moon about Earth’s endless suffering. Its screams are broken, pitchy, and I think of how you would scream too if you saw me like this. 

I’m finally ending. 

And it was so easy; decay wrapped its gnarled fingers around my once fresh, smooth, plump body so quickly. My blood grew bitter and dry so subtly until my veins became long-gone rivulets under December’s scorching sun. The memories of your fingers on my soft skin are still alive, pulsating like amber embers after the campers have killed the flames. Imagining fire instantly brings warmth to my face, even with wintry winds gnawing at my nose and tiny runnels of melted snow piercing my back.

I don’t really mind that you aren’t here with me. Here I am, eternal, unmoving, and at peace, but seeing your lips would take that away. I'd fixate on how nice fruits of an infinite summer would look on them, and start to wish I had more time. I’m glad you left because this is the right thing for me. 

I hardly feel the steel splitting my skin. Something metallic enters my nose, heat weaves over my knuckles. But the feeling is far away. 

And then, when I breathe, the air turns thick and sticky and trickles down to my throat, where its awfully warm mass chokes me. I want to cough, splutter, to force the overwhelming sweetness out but I simply can’t. It’s the same pain as from you. 

“Let me go.”

My body is horribly heavy or... weak? The syrup flows down, burning a path of acid, sugar, and heat as it worms into my stomach, and I begin to melt. Hot, smooth, silkily sweet. I am the syrup. I am your love and glucose. I begin to cry, and my eyes feed my face lovely, liquidy honey, crazed streams running from between my eyelashes and forming deltas across my cheeks. I love this. I love knowing that it’s finally over. I just wish your hands were in mine as they grow grey. 

Suddenly, I’m caught. I’m somewhere your false promises and those wilting lilies you gave me can’t reach. Fragments of my soul divorce my body, only to return rearranged. I don’t feel the sins and hunger of humans anymore; everything that once caused me pain is distant now and my thoughts of you are only sweet. I start to forget why the black memories ever mattered to me, and why the only thing that could wash your venom from my bloodstream was my mortality.

I’m on Earth, as I always have been, but I’m not really there. Now I’m pure, hollow. An omnipotent, primordial, divine being is showing me my world, for only a moment, not through the horribly murky umber sunglasses I’d worn all my life, but with newfound clarity. 

This thought still frothing in my mind, I open my eyes for the first time. It’s beautiful. The stars swim above me, the cosmic ooze around them that once seemed so full and heavy, now a void of something unfathomable. The emptiness of the night sky makes me feel okay about mine. Soft florals from last spring, long buried under the tears of winter, begin dancing into my nose. I think I’d like to stay here forever. The air moulds itself so nicely around my slowly rotting body. But I know this sacrosanct state won’t stay. Acidity sits on my tongue, probably the remnants of my fear that I swallowed in order to carry out the cutting, and I wish I was tasting your kiss instead. Your whispers, your laughs, your lullabies that once buzzed in my ears aren’t there anymore, they can’t hurt me here. But somehow I don’t prefer the drone of insects that now fills my head. I’m not complaining; I’m happy I abandoned my futile attempts at a desire for living. I just wish I could hear you one last time. 

Everything grows airy, weightless. I feel as if I could be Thumbelina lying in the plush petals of a peony home. The idea of this ethereality grasps my eyelids, drawing them down. As my vision blurs, the world around me begins to shift. Mounds of snow that rose and fell around me now become clouds. The frosted trees weeping above my head become pearly gates. Colours flutter and fly. And winking specks of infinity held in the inky oil that envelopes our Earth suddenly swell, their luminescence throbbing until it consumes all darkness (yes, even the darkness inside of me). 

I never found the time to ponder heaven; when the rush of cars kept me awake and staring into the bleakness of my ceiling I’d think not of the afterlife, but of you. I guess death didn’t matter to me like you did.

A single finger emerges from the mist swirling just out of reach. It’s yours. I know it. I’ve analysed your hands so many times before, admired the way your knuckles add curve to linearity, dreamt of being small enough to cling to your nails so you could take me with you everywhere. Attached to the finger is a body, or maybe just a soul. Maybe the solidity of flesh and bone doesn't exist here. I don’t care to wonder about these things anymore. Because now I’m with you. 

Moving in something akin to a trance, perhaps because of my conscience’s recent journey or perhaps just drugged with love, the gentle points of my fingertips reach out to yours. And when I touch you everything’s right again. We’re on a candlelit boat surrounded by midnight blue. Little fluctuations of waves rock us, lulling me to sleep like you once did, and I know that it’s truly over. Your heart is in my hands. The sea’s silent song draws us towards the end. Just as it consumes me I think of how strange light is. The first thing to welcome us into the world, the only thing my pupils reflect as I gaze into you. And the last thing I see as we kiss goodbye.