Fool's Beginning, Fool's End (At The End, Everything is Okay: The 0th Story)

Section 11

Jone died the way he lived: alone and miserable.

Time moved on. The valley stayed the same as always and the canal continued to stink of wereghoul waste, but Jone grew old and withered. The impression of bone became visible in his wrinkled skin, his hair turned white, and eventually fell out, along with many of his teeth.

In the many years since the last Great Catastrophe – the one that had given birth to their kind – the pack had noticed that their affliction had begun to wane. They still lived with their cycle of normalcy and agony, but the agony phase had lessened in severity.

It was clear: in the coming decades, the wereghouls' affliction would end. The wereghouls understood that they would eventually become no more. They held each other close, as they always did, and they celebrated.

As the months turned into years, and the years into decades, the wereghouls eventually ceased to be. The humans – the regular people that the wereghouls became – slowly moved out and away from the valley, each having their own reasons.

The last two humans living in the valley were Jone, and – unbeknownst to him – a young man in an ancient containment tube, tucked away inside a bunker, in a cave that Jone couldn't be bothered to explore.

And at some point, Jone passed away.

Nobody was there to see him. His soulmate never arrived. Not a soul bore witness to his corpse before it eventually returned to dust.

Perhaps, at some point before his end, Jone had considered that maybe – just maybe – his soulmate was among the wereghouls. Perhaps he did, and, perhaps, he dismissed the idea as rubbish.

One thing of importance did happen before he met his end, however.

On one particularly cloudy day in the valley, a strange-looking man appeared from out of the woods near Jone's hut.

He was extremely tall, with sallow, almost green-gray skin. He carried a massive clipboard with dozens of papers in one hand, and a fancy-looking briefcase in the other.

At first glance, he wore a two-piece suit. On further inspection, the coat and tie was actually a gigantic black tattoo across his chest and back. A name tag was sewn into his skin, across his left nipple.

It read, "Craig S."

The man approached Jone. The man told Jone that he was a lawyer with SavCo, and that he had been tasked with surveying the area.

He asked Jone if the strange-smelling creek had a name.

No, Jone said.

The man asked if it was called anything.

Jone said that it was called the Puke Chute. That was what the wereghouls called it, anyway.

The man thanked him, scribbled something on one of his many papers, and promptly left. Jone didn't stop him.

That man was the last person Jone ever spoke to.

And then Jone died, and his memory was washed away in the tides of time.