Nothing - Alex R. Kimmerly

Darkness. The everlasting darkness. How long has it been since I've seen light? It could be ten minutes, an hour, one thousand years? The universe is gone. Everyone and everything. Everyone I ever loved. Erased. The glimpses of strange shapes in the darkness morph and dance. Sometimes they take the form of people I think I used to know. I've finally died and can see my own Heaven at the end of the tunnel. A middle aged woman with red hair standing beside an old man. His back is hunched and he is struggling to stand with his wooden cane. And the one in the middle, only one I can put a name to. Barbra. A small girl wearing a frilly pink tutu with matching pink flat shoes. Her hair is always up in a bun to help keep her puffy, curly hair out of her face. She always wanted to be a Ballerina when she grew up. And thats all I know about them. A woman, an old man and Barbra the Ballerina. They are still all strangers to me. I truly have no idea who Barbra is or if she's even real. But always the same people.

All I can do is sleep or watch the darkness of the now dead universe surround me. In my dreams, I recall visions of memories I do remember. I was one day cursed with immortality that has left me indestructible. Nothing, not even the cold can kill me. I was a young man then. But now, all I want is to be dead. But I can't. I have lived for so long. Too long I've tried to destroy myself many hundred times.

Then all of a sudden I'm watching as the planet I was on was destroyed by an invading alien colony. Their name escaped me after so long now. I flew fast enough to escape my sun's gravity and was launched into deep space. The pain I felt in my lungs from the emptiness of space was unbearable. But with all that pain was something good, the stars were so beautiful. The core of the galaxy, star clusters and nebulae looked too perfect to be real. I think I was some kind of scientist. How do I know all that?

Then next was a ship carrying people. A tall and gray being with big black eyes looking down at me. Then a small skinny being with white skin and black hair wearing a red jumpsuit. I think I was a child. They seem really important but I don't know who this child is. Then a red thing with tentacles in a floating bowl of water pops into my mind. Feelings of nervousness came from this thing. How can that be a dream? I don't know how I could come up with a squid thing floating around in a bowl of water. It doesn't make any sense. I can't tell if I've been making it all up or if something is real. Then some men in the same red jumpsuits at the child blasts me out of an airlock leaving me floating in space. It felt like I was dying again, the pain in my lungs was back with a fury. But now I was stuck, slowly spinning into the depths of space once again. When I woke up, I was spinning much faster. There was no help now. No one would ever travel into Intergalactic space now or ever. No one knows I'm here, no help. The end of the Universe. Black holes have completely killed everything. No stars, no planets, only me. Cursed to live in the cold, dark empty void of the dead Universe. Only spinning into the void. Would I go to Heaven if I could actually die? Or is this truly my personal Hell?