After the End

PROLOGUE

"In my end is my beginning." - T.S. Ellliot

He began his long night by watching the sun sink beneath the horizon, as he did every night. The light  refracted by the shimmering waters was a beautiful amber. The man stood in the receding tide, ankle deep in the water, letting the warmth wash over his face. This had always been his favorite moment of the day, even before the cataclysm. The cataclysm had changed many things, but it had not touched the sun. He was glad for that. He was glad for many simple things now. He was glad that he was alive. He knew that if he could have one wish at that very instant, any wish at all, he would wish for the sun to hang in the air for a few more minutes, so that he could continue to bask in it's radiance and savor every precious second of light. He felt almost confident that this would be the one, the sunset that would last for a joyous eternity.

But as with every other sunset, he was wrong.

The warmth receded from his face, and when he opened his eyes, the beautiful amber light was gone, replaced by creeping gray shadows. The sea had claimed the sun for it's own once again, and the moon had once again taken its place, hoping to light the way for the denziens of Earth until the sun was once again released from its watery prison. And as the light faded, the man once again turned his back to the sea. There was work to be done.

A familiar sight greeted his eyes. Mounds of decaying corpses littered the length of the beach, piled five or six bodies high. Their blood had stained the sand around them red, and a ghastly odor hung in the air. Their bodies were bloated from water absorbtion and long hours in the sun, yet their flesh still sagged grotesequely. Many of the corpses were horribly mutilated, small and large cuts disfiguring them. Pieces of skin were missing from what flesh they had left, as they came under constant attack from various carrion.  Dismembered limbs were strewn haphazardly among and between the piles of corpses. The fading light cast eerie shadows over the corpses; here and there, a shadow would cover the face of a body with a forboding shroud. The bodies were an equal share of men, women, and children. There had been no battle, no war here. Only slaughter.

The man picked his way carefully through the piles of carnage, looking about for a suitable corpse. It was hard going; the light had faded quickly and his eyes had not fully adjusted. He walked slowly, scanning every body in a pile. Behind him, the shoreline quickly vanished in the gloom, while in front of him, a vast open space of sand remained. Beyond that, he could very faintly make out the outline of the forest in which he made his home. The man was already intimate with nearly every body in the piles close to the ocean, but he was a very careful man; he combed each pile thoroughly every night, in case he had missed something the night before.

Time passed, and night was now in full effect. The moon shone high above him, casting a silvery glow on all around him.  The sand had long ago dissapeared beneath him, giving way to grass that felt cool and wet underneath his bare feet. He walked without feeling pain in his legs, and he searched the never-ending piles of the dead without feeling pain in his eyes. Eventually, he came upon the outskirts of his forest. The trees grew close together, and rose high, high above him, gnarled and thick. At the edge of the outermost trees, the remnants of a village stood.

This was where the corpses had once been; men, women, and children. This is where they used to laugh and cry, where they used to love and hate. The man liked to think that the village had once resonated with the kind of busy sound and energy one would find in a city; just in a smaller scale. If it had, he would never know. The village was as dead as it's inhabitants.

A few huts remained, albeit in shambles. The rest had been burned, or pulled to the ground. Burned and broken timber was strewn about the grass, amidst bodies. Wherever the man went, the scenery seemed to change, but the corpses remained a constant. The grass here was severely trampled, tatters of clothing fluttering about on the ground. Some pieces of cloth clung to  the beams of broken woods.  A light wind blew through the village, ruffling the man's hair.  A light tinkling sound reached his ears.