"It doesnt think, it doesnt feel, it doesnt laugh or cry..."

[Nyarlathotep]

**Warning** This story is a bit graphic, but I didnt feel it was enough to warrent being put into The Scarlet Pen.

 

 

 

 

 

Life continued as it always had. Feeble apes going about our days. Living in our luxury boxes; paper ceilings, padded floors. Toiling away to earn bits of paper and metal to trade for other's ideas. Raping the very womb we were spawned from to no foreseeable end.

 

It happened in a fortnight.

 

They came from out of the corner of your eye, through the glazed wall of heat off blacktop, through the fog of a fever, from the imagined spheres behind your eyelids. The portals opened in reality like so many menstruating uteruses, ensanguining us with refuse. These beings spread across the land leaving filth and disease in their wake. This was not an invasion, merely a migration of excrement. They left as quickly as they came.

 

Those still alive enough to, were left in a daze. No one really could understand what had happened, except that a trail of all encompassing leprosy had rended it's way through us. Though these faceless plague bringers moved on with haste, those afflicted with their bane did not. The death throes of the pus riddled went on for weeks...months...years. What they had rout upon us was so varied and unique, no one treatment was all encompassing. Death was not feared, it was welcomed with opened arms.

 

Billions rotted in our vehicular arteries.

 

The cosmos had left us coated in a thick viral ejaculate.

 

As if turning our physical form against us wasnt enough, our spirit was crushed under the weight of Nature's passover. Not one other organism was affected by this neo-black death. Not the acres of future paper, nor the soon-to-be plastic packaged raw muscle. We raged at the realization. Raged at nature, raged at each other, simply raged. Our Gods commanded us to cleanse, our leaders commanded us to fight, our instincts commanded us to kill. The spiral of suffering traveled ever downward towards oblivion.

 

As humanity gasped it's last breath, we looked towards the stars and suddenly saw for the first time. What little mind was left un-atrophied awakened truly the first time. But it mattered little that we had finally moved forward as a sentient race, for as we finally understood ourselves and our place in the universe, we died. Our last exhaled breath choked back by blood and pus. A fitting end for one such as we.

Edited April 25, 2007 by Nyarlathotep

[Wyvern]

I really like this vignette, Nyarlathotep. :-) It definitely paints a bleak picture of the end of humanity, and the dark imagery works very well for the most part. The way that you describe the coming of the plague-bearers makes it sound like it's not too far a stretch from reality, which gives the piece an eery sense of realism that makes it all the more unsettling. I love your choice of words in a number of the descriptive passages here, particularly in the third paragraph when you describe the way we view the plague-bearers "from out of the corner of your eye, through the glazed wall of heat off blacktop, through the fog of a fever, from the imagined spheres behind your eyelids." I found that passage excellently worded, and the "migration of excrement" later in the paragraph was a very nice touch as well. The only aspect of this piece that I didn't care for as much was the ending... While appropriate, the irony of finally understanding everything briefly before death is somewhat overused in "end of humanity" stories in my opinion, and it didn't feel as genuine as the rest of the piece to me for this reason.

 

Anyway, very good stuff Nyarlathotep. :-) Thanks for sharing it.

[Patrick]

Great short story Nyarlathotep. Nicely painted imagery and as Wyvern had already said, the dark style fits the piece quite nicely.

 

Keep up the good writing.

[Whisky in Babylon]

Everytime I read this story it makes me cringe, yet it is that same grotesque imagery that makes me love the story. Its really one of my favorite peices that you've written so far.