text: The Last Will and Testament: Before we move any further, I should inform you that if there’s anything else you wish to complete, go do so immediately. You won’t have much time left. Taste every breathe, scream all the air out and bring it back in again, feel whatever life you can before it’s drained out of you. Try to reach a piece of peace. Tell others the truths you've been secreting. I am not sure of the exact timing of it all- or even the exact cause of it. You might have days left or only seconds. You might be overwhelmed by a virus, or technology, or perhaps some eldritch horror. In the beginning, I was worried how anyone would even discover this will- once I am truly gone. Dead. But then, I remembered how everything related to that demon is never quite right. I imagine this paper will just be slipped through time, below a door or into a mailbox or down the covers of your bed in a million different little screams. I think they would enjoy it, the added tension of it all. You will at first dismiss me as a lunatic. Oh, what a gift a lack of lucidity would be. Or to age at all, in fact. If my body ever got around to being autopsied, at first it will just seem like your ordinary 30-year old, a J. Doe struck down in the prime of life. Until they notice the frozen blood with centuries-old viruses lurking inside. Until they realize that what was first assumed to be organs, a heart, lungs, liver, were simply clever replicas made in plastic. And that the only true part of mine left was my brain, rotted away from centuries ago with decaying maggots pupating inside. A pact was made. With an entity, some devil, some death, some Cthulu. In the end, the name never had importance, the archetype is the same; The End of All. My body would be the first key; they had dealt me the chance to begin the ultimate last. Quickly, I snatched it up. Oh yes, Armageddon, the decimation, the devastation, the annihilation, The End of All. Let us get on our knees and pray, let us burn and pillage our lands, let us sacrifice and loot and be terrified by ourselves. Well, we all make dumb mistakes when we are young, don’t we? In your youth- when your trust in humanity first slowly crumbles underneath you. When you first come across that concept of pure selfishness- the complete unfairness of life. That initial understanding that the universe cares not for you, or what you have created, indeed, they don’t even consider you as a concept. Oh, when that perfect void of the utter uselessness first envelops you, soaks you in, has you become just one of its trillions of lost souls. Ones that are so plentiful that you asphyxiate on your own normalcy. You know that feeling, of course. Anyone would do the same, in that situation. I repeat to myself that anyone would have done the same. So, egotist that I was, I made the sacrifice, I branded myself, I crucified humanity, and was proud for it. Think of all the pain I prevented. Think of all the suffering I stopped. Then I waited- And I waited- Until my own stupidity mocked me with its evidence. Until I wiped the mist of self-obsession from my own eyes and saw the world from a perspective that was not my cursed own. Until I unwittingly learned to care for another- and then another- and another. Until, by extension, I finally understood that our own intricacies and importance are not subtracted from by our multitude. Until I realized how much I had truly doomed everything and everyone. I prayed to a God that I knew did not exist for my consciousness to just end. For my me to end. To become nothing but dust and rotted flesh and flies, so I wouldn’t have to consider myself with such disdain any longer. Then I waited for mercy- And I waited for mercy- I spent a century seeing the same events happen over and over, again and again. I spent another just trying to understand the patterns they created. There were decades consumed watching waves slowly eat away at the coastline, of feeling the mountains grow and shrink beneath me. I sank into the ocean only for it to raise me up. I burnt out so much time in volcanoes that my skin will never lose that charred, aching feeling- regardless of how my exterior appears. Eventually, there was a forgiveness, but I don’t know precisely when. Eventually I told myself that whatever force I did sign with could have done this regardless. It was a joke, really. It’s all a joke, if you don’t think about it hard enough. There is a sick irony to it all. That every generation wishes they were the last, every age prophecies and hopes and wonders and seems determined that this is the highest they could possibly go. Everything must be so much worse after this, because of course, who could do better? And I watch all of them, laughing, because I- the cause, don't even know that expiration date. Because I have seen their same society begin and end a hundred different times. I know this is unfair of me- I have spent too long in life, and he has made me unfair. I’ve had so much time, truly too much time, to be confronted with this. Yes, I know you must also need time, but there’s precious few left. Yes, I know that’s unfair. Go panic and go through your eight stages of grief if you must, but if you can, come back to sanity. Because we always tend to become the very monsters we have nightmares of. This end is just like the volcanoes really, the end of us, but not of all. We mark the skies with it, it destroys our land and futures, and yet, there is creation. It’s just not our creation. I’ve lived through so much, have seen so much, and I know now what I did not when the pact was made; that this is just another part of the cycle. In the end, they always think a knowledge will be revealed to them. A truth, no- The Truth, to everything. But- in that end, Armageddon will be the same process as the bloody birth of a child. Screaming and pain and blood, only for a sudden quietness and the start of anew. We circle around and around ourselves and then call it original. The only secret that is revealed in the end is that there is no such thing as original. The evils we conjure up are misunderstood in their intentions. Yes, institutions fail, kingdoms fall, all people, even I- will die. Writing that now, a shiver rushes down my spine- some instinctual terror laid deep in my genes that I’m yet to be rid of. Even now, when I'm so ready for my own ultimate last. We were never the only ones. There were billions that created us, and billions that will come after. There always were- Our end will be a beginning for others- that is the secret. If you can, please take comfort in that. If you can- forgive, make amends, gather your loved ones close, and- then wait. Perhaps we will be allowed to see the start. Perhaps it will be a better one than our own.