002

“Oh, you are finally awake.”

“Yes. Where are we?”

“It is not the where that is as important as the when. For then we are at the end.”

Looking around, fog-refracted moonlight illuminates our tiny row boat at the centre of an unrelenting expanse of still water.

“I see now. We can’t go back.”

“There is no back, nor forward.”

“Will I be missed? I want to see them one more time.”

“Missed no more or less than others swallowed by the ceaseless flow of time.”

“I’m sure I won’t be forgotten…. I must have made a mark.”

“Your mark is akin to a fingernail imprint in the side of a mountain. You may have been wealthy, but you and the rest of your kind have been granted unfathomably little of the only currency worth something. How that substance was spent is what determines the rich from the poor.”

“It may have been short, but I believe I do not regret anything I did.”

“No. You regret the things you didn’t do. Save the rest for the one who waits — he is not as kind as I.”

“A man? In this desolate place? Who might that be?”

“I would not be so foolish as to utter his name.”

Try as I might, I cannot make out any features of the figure who sits not a metre away — nothing that resembles a human’s, short of four limbs and a head. A cloak darker than the night that surrounds us, a drooping hood concealing what should have been a face: instead, a mask of shadows reveals nothing. Arms so terrifyingly slender heave the oars with more consistency than the second. Suddenly overcome by an intense pressure, icy daggers pierce my heart. I inhale sharply and avert my gaze, staring at the floor of the creaking wooden vessel we share. I blink, and an eternity passes.

“Has it been so long?” I mutter, to no reply.

Raising my head, it occurs to me I am alone in the boat. Have I always been without company? Even before this place? An ominous drone fills my mind. Now, it is clear what I must do.

“I hope to see you once more, my friend.”

Without a sound, I fall softly to the side. As my body passes beneath the water, an inexplicable sensation engulfs me entirely — consuming my thoughts, my dreams, my memories. Drifting further and further out of the realm of being, a thin smile develops across my lips.