text: I've never shared any of my short stories I like to write before, but for some reason I felt like throwing it out there tonight. If you read it then thanks for taking the time, and hopefully it was semi entertaining. Death, A Thing of Beauty “What once was, that now is gone, can never be fully forgotten.” The words left my mouth barely over a whisper, yet the strength at which they left was of no importance. The world that we lived in was different, different than that of my childhood. Throughout the years I have found myself trying to figure out if we were better off knowing what once was, or to never have known. Today, I wish I never knew. We did it to ourselves. And it’s not that we didn’t know better, we were simply too greedy to care. Those of us that remained after the gears of mega infrastructures shutdown were forced to fend for ourselves. We managed, for a while, until disease set in. It ended up being the one thing that we all took for granted. We all understood the importance of water, shelter, and food, yet many of us failed to truly grasp the importance of all these little fucking things we live with daily. It started slow, but death breads death, and death has a way of changing a man. In the end we are animals, nothing more. We made it further than most, to the northern lakes that still held life, that could hold ours. Yet as I look at the evergreen covered mountains topped in the most picturesque snow no photograph could ever truly capture, I can’t help but feel that it was all for not. This leg was in bad shape, and I fear there’s no coming back. Through the shelter, the crack of a fire, and the scent of wet smoke that lingered in the air there was a perfect moment, if only for a second. So pale, so weak, it was only a matter of time now. The spoken words that ring through my head “Did this life matter, did any of this matter? Or will it all be forgotten with the morning wind?” At the time I didn’t have an answer. Yet now, as I look down at her, the words “what once was, that now is gone, can never be fully forgotten” leave my mouth barely over a whisper. Alone once again I strike out into the unknown. The dew soaked grass seeps through my boots as a glance back to where the last thing I cared about lay among the trees. There was no purpose in my steps, no meaning to my breath. The life of a lonely wanderer, to where the only place rest and peace could be found was in death, a thing of beauty.