A Very Good Book of Short Stories (I Hope)

01 || Welcome to the end.

Sinking to her knees, she couldn't help but laugh.

"They're all dead! All of them..." her laughs transitioned into sobs, racking her body as she covered her face with her bloodied hands. "Everyone's dead!"

They'd done it. The enemy was gone... at the cost of the world, of course.

Tell us how it feels being the last person on Earth when you arrive in hell, 'Conduit'.

The sentence rang in her head before it faded to static. The last voice she'd hear other than her own.

"Haha... You really got us," she stared at the charred ground, now on all fours as her hands gripped the ashen dirt. "You won."

"You assholes tricked us all! Planting a bomb in the earth's core? We were doomed from the start!" her sobs turned into laughs once more. "Cheaters... And you're giving me an hour of torment here alone? Why? Have I not been tortured enough?"

Her maniacal laughs became heart wrenching sobs once more. "Look at them! They're all dead!"

She stumbled forwards, her hands gently holding the once handsome face of her partner. His skin had been boiled, his eyes plucked out... he died right in front of her, just twenty minutes ago. Just before those machines self-destructed.

Her tears spilled onto his beaten and bloody body. She ripped herself away, crawling over to another of her comrades.

"S-Seri," she hiccuped. "I'm sorry I lied. I really thought... I thought we would win."

She laughed for the nth time. "I was so stupid! You're all dead. Everyone. Aisuda got his brains blown out, Jax bled to death, Hiro was gutted, your girlfriend was crushed... isn't it funny?"

"We were doomed from the start! All cause of me!" she growled, digging her nails into the ground. "Why didn't anyone tell me? Why didn't they kill me? Why did they leave me alone to die?"

"I want to die," she whispered. "I want to die. Let me die. Blow me up already."

She burst into another fit of tears, pounding away at the ground as if throwing a tantrum.

"I'm so s-s-or-ry!" Azuka screamed. "Everyone is dead. Everything is dead! Why am I alive? Why me? Blow up already! Don't leave me here alone! Come back... come back, please... please, don't leave me here alone. I don't want to die alone..."

Her words turned into wails, tears splashing onto her the barren land below. She couldn't take it anymore. She might as well go insane kneeling right where she was.

"P-p-p," she tried. "P-please!"

She pounded her fists against ground angrily, her vision blurry with tears, regrets, and emotion.

"I hate you! I fucking hate you!" she screamed. "WHAT DID WE DO? WHAT DID WE EVER FUCKING DO?!"

Azuka forced herself to her feet, storming over to a mangled AI bot, forcing her fists onto its bent and beaten body. She didn't care it was metal. She didn't care that it hurt. Everything hurt.

Her hands hurt, her legs hurt, her knees hurt, her head hurt, her heart hurt.

"I hate you," she collapsed to her hands and knees, curling into a fetal position as she lost the will to continue beating the long-destroyed bot. "I hate you..."

And there she lay for the final minutes of her life; of Earth's life. It was all a lie, too. Of course it was. When the world exploded, she felt nothing. Didn't even realize it had happened. Azuka was instantly killed, and no. She never made it to "Hell".

In fact, she was quite certain she'd already lived it.