Thanks to my awesome critique partners! This is always my favorite part of editing, no matter the project. Getting that outside perspective and ideas for ways to improve that I never would have thought of myself always does wonders for the work.
The Last Confessions of A Dying God
I’ve been alive so long I’d almost forgotten I could die. But then, once the others had gone, it hadn’t been living. Alone and in the dark. Wandering a forest I can’t remember the name of anymore. There wasn’t much more to do besides breath, try to remember the family that had gone, and keep placing one foot in front of another.
My knees hit the hard dirt of the forest floor. It’s cool beneath the thin fabric of my pants. I don’t intend on rising to my feet again.
I sigh and let my shoulders relax as the rest of my hand fades to smoke and drifts away into the dark. Skin, sinew, cells. It’s all fading. I’m turning to smoke and joining oblivion. Like the others did. And it feels as much like letting go as I suspected it would.
Until the first of my siblings faded, we had all thought oblivion was a uniquely human experience.
But perhaps there is something more. Perhaps I’ll find those I love beyond the dark, among the moon and stars. Perhaps I’ll finally be home.
What I would give to see them all again. Dozens of us together again. I’ve long since forgotten their faces. Their names. Their voices. What their laughter sounded like. But I remember their warmth. Their love. How it felt to stand together, atop a mountain staring down at a world we were born into too.
The remainder of my arm turns to smoke and disappears. The other arm was gone hours ago. The rest of me isn’t long for this world now. At least it’s a dignified way to die. Returning to the cosmos and chaos I was formed from, rather than being lowered into the ground.
I slump down against the trunk of a tree and stare up at the stars.
“Are you all right?”
My head lifts at the voice.
A lone hiker with a backpack nearly the size she is. An old, dying god belongs alone here among the trees. She’s young and alive and does not. I’d forgotten how fragile the humans always seemed. No wonder our slight power had been enough to convince them to deify us.
I stay leaning against the tree but turn my head to meet her eyes. “Are you lost?”
She frowns and shakes her head. “No. But you look hurt.” She takes steady steps my way, all caution lost. I must truly be a sad sight then, if she’s not hesitating a moment to approach a strange man in the forest at night. Or perhaps she’s just the right amount of naïve and caring.
At the woman’s kindness, memories rise up inside my mind. I was married to a woman like her once. She had dark hair and was far kinder than I ever deserved and always failed to carry a tune. It’s her and the way she used to make flowers grow everywhere we walked that I miss most of all. I haven’t lived since the day she faded to smoke herself.
“Are you all right?” The hiker crouched in front of me repeats.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s my time. That’s all.”
Her forehead creases. “Your time?”
“I’ve been waiting for it. This. I’m ready.”
I close my eyes as she lays a hand on my shoulder. A simple touch, but its gentleness tears what’s left of me apart. It’s like I didn’t realize how alone I’d been until I wasn’t anymore.
The worry she’d been working so hard to hide creeps into the woman’s voice. “What’s your name? How long have you been out here alone?”
“Since your kind decided we were no longer worth worshipping.” My voice lowers and I don’t bother opening my eyes again, though there’s a slight tingling in my torso as it turns to smoke too now. The woman’s kind had sentenced us to death by ceasing in their belief. But any bitterness I’d once felt had long since faded. At least she wasn’t letting me fade alone now.
“Sir, do you have anyone I can contact for you?” Her voice turns frantic as more of me leaves this world. “What’s happening? Where is this smoke coming from?”
Her concern sets my soul alight. A quiet presence here is far more gift than I’d been expecting from the world that had sentenced me to death. I heave one last deep breath, all tension gone from what’s left of my body.
It is the stars on my mind and her kind voice and the weight of her hand on my shoulder. The last memory I take with me before I go, along with a weightless hope that beyond, I’ll no longer be alone. And at last this old god dies, fading into nothingness and smoke, leaving behind mere whispers of memory.
Josie Smith 