I thought I knew it all. About life as a whole, or about my own life, like I could control every part of it. I hoped to make sure a certain situation passed just because I wished it to happen.
I thought I knew everything, enough to fulfill my life dreams. I felt I could, at least until it started acting on its own. People died. Situations happened out of order. People controlled different aspects. Stuff I couldn’t see or control from the very beginning.
I thought I had it under control. The sky, the oceans, the mountains–everything. Past, present, future, beyond.
It crumbled away like shattered bones. Dust conjured from human bodies. That dead fragrance like chicken bones caught in a furnace. Death and nothingness. Grainy black. Never knowing what was flesh or blood, arteries or veins.
I thought I held my life in the creases of my hand.
My father died a couple centuries ago. Death always seemed to surface the mortality in someone, even people without souls. There’s a special presence with death, funerals, and the correlation with the color black. Endless dark that made people question what they never wanted to confront.
It’s normal to feel sad. Lonely. Even calm when a family member dies, like a father or a mother, maybe a close cousin. People somewhat prepare themselves for that. Sudden deaths take the mortality out of it, if that makes sense. Imagine your favorite puppy dying all of a sudden, a son, possibly a daughter. It strikes harder into the heart and the brain, leaving a type of numbness that can be compared to “black”.
I had everything under control for a while. It was a simple argument between me and my dad. Notice I come first, or course I come first, especially before a drunk idiot who killed people for pleasure. He’d just gotten out of prison. The worst in the universe. Plain and simple. Mom passed long ago from depression, sister ironically drown to death, and brother was mauled to death for being different.
I’d prepared me. I had a feeling something would happen sooner or later to all of them. Honestly, I saw each one coming, even wrote them down in a notebook to see if I would be right. Kind of made a bet. Them first or my father.
Obviously, he wasn’t quite ready for the news when I told him that it was just him and me, well, me and him. Now just me.
It happened four minutes ago. It’s fresh in my head, the satisfaction, the goosebumps slithering under my skin. I feel good to say the least, refreshed and ready to begin “The Journey” as my people call it.
I think we should call it “Rapture” or something, take a word from Earth. They seem like they know what they’re doing.
I drew a circle on the ground, five point star filled with my blood, edged with dragon scales and Tresh bones–always hated those little fuckers, similar to rats from the Northern Quadrant.
I ran electrical currents through the floor from my fingertips, just as my masters taught me, and made sure not to overload my body. I placed the items at each point. My mother’s ring finger still containing her love for prosperity, my sister’s ears that ignored the pleas of family, my brother’s heart that followed it’s path, my father’s eyes that swallowed truth, and a single strand of my own hair.
I thought I had everything under control. Thought I knew it all. And I did.
I predicted their deaths. Because I pictured the end of everything. Next stop was Earth.
Just Buckle Down 