Well, here’s the unedited first draft in all its glory! I’m a chronic underwriter so it will definitely gain length in revisions. And writing especially chaotic first drafts is my specialty 😉
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, one can’t do much but survive.
I chuckle to myself as the rest of my hand fades to smoke and drifts away into the dark. Skin, sinew, cells. It’s all fading. Turning to smoke over small moments and joining oblivion. Until the first of my siblings faded, we had all thought oblivion was a uniquely human experience. Or perhaps there is something more. Perhaps I’ll find those I love beyond the dark, among the moon and stars.
What I would give to see them 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 rest of my arm disappears. The other was gone hours ago. The rest of me isn’t long for this world now.
I slump down against the trunk of a tree and stare up at the stars. I was worshipped once, you know. Drunk on the power the humans were convinced was enough to deify us.
“Are you alright?”
My head lifts at the voice.
A lone hiker with a backpack nearly the size she is. An old god belongs alone here among the trees. She’s young and alive and does not.
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. I haven’t lived since the day she’d faded to smoke herself.
“Are you alright?” 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. Worry creeps into her 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 I can feel the slight tingling of my torso turning to smoke too now. “I don’t think any of you knew, but your belief gave us power. And that power destroyed us, our happiness, our relationships. By the time we could see what we had become, it was too late and we were fading. So, please, don’t sentence anything else to near immortality. Please don’t turn anything else into a god.”
“Sir, do you have anyone I can contact for you?” Her voice turns frantic as more of me fades. “What’s happening? Where is this coming from?”
It is the stars on my mind and her kind voice and the weight of her hand on my shoulder. That’s all I take with me as I go, fading into nothingness and smoke, leaving behind mere whispers of memory.
Josie Smith 