The Moth and the Candle

The fading flames of the fire listed heavily to the right of the grate. The left was a pile of accumulated ash, white and dove-brown, crumbling into fragments at the merest pressure. Little dancing lights popped loudly at the sparks flew off the bitumen. Pale, half-visible smoke streamed slowly upwards, the curling tendrils bubbling lazily. The old man regarded the darkly coals absently. He spat into the grate, his thick phlegmy spittle hissing and crackling as it hit the coals. He sighed and left his chair. With the slowness borne of failing health he opened the door. Outside, the rain beat down, heavy on the windows, the gusts of wind lashing the panes with thick slats of water. The flue sputtered as the rain leaked in and touched the hot metal.
The room was sparingly furnished. The protean fire burning in the grate illuminated little in the gloom which fed on the shadows thrown by the flames. A ragged mat, ends frayed mercilessly, a small leather chair its stuffing falling out. A writing desk stood in one of the corners, the surface littered with scraps of paper all of them covered in a spidery screed. An oil lamp on the wall, the glass shade on top of it charred brown-black in parts, cast plashing shadows.
The old man opened the door to the room. Briefly, the outside world poured in. The silhouette cast in the doorway was outlined by a tumult of water cascading downwards in the darkness. A stark stab of lightning arced across behind the old man’s head but, strangely, the sound of the lightning and the peal of thunder that followed were intensely muted, as if it was happening on a television screen with the sound turned way down. With an incomprehensible mutter, the old man slammed the door closed and the gloom was regained. He shook the remaining drops of water from his sodden cloak, the drops falling in chaotic patterns on the floor around him. He threw the cloak in a corner and sat down heavily at the writing table. Taking up a piece of paper and a pen he wrote some laborious sentence. As he finished he tossed the piece of paper away carelessly and left it to lie with the others.
Groaning at an unspecified ache, he shuffled over to the rocking chair. The fire’s embers glowed brightly as he stoked the remaining coals. Muttering the same incomprehensible half-syllables he sat back in the rocking chair. Unseen, a clock loudly chimed the hour, its bells haunting the room as they marked the passage of time. The old man’s head raised, the scarred surface of his scalp gleamed shoddily. His eyes, though. His eyes looked around and they were…unusual. They were almost wholly black, not the eight ball haemorrhage black of murder victims but the vortex blackness of blank infinity. As the old man surveyed the room tiny stars wheeled in his eye sockets, the guttering of microscopic galaxies, blinking and brightening almost imperceptibly. What he saw was beyond the faded despair of the room he sat in. Whatever it was, he snorted derisively at it and leaned back in his chair, his fingers steepled and resting against the tip of his nose.
As the old man stared into some fourth space, three loud knocks boomed at the door. The walls shook with the force of each blow but the old man didn’t flinch. He flicked a hand at the doorway. The door swung inward. A cowled figure stood at the threshold. Despite the pouring rain outside the figure was bone dry. The old man cleared his throat in irritation and motioned the figure to sit down. With a curious clicking sound the hooded man passed between the old man and the fire.
For a long time neither spoke. The old man regarded the cloaked figure over his steepled fingers. The other did not even pull back his hood. Something more than time passed. Thousands, millions of hours and days and weeks and years blurred as the two regarded each other.
Finally, the old man spoke
-It has been a long time since
The cowled figure turned slightly.
-Yes. But there was little reason to meet. Until now.
The old man smiled
-You think so? All of this, he said, gesturing at the mean little room, is not the end. This will all be again, just as it was once before. You cannot stop it.
-I do not intend to. But even if that is true, these times are ending and are ending now.
-But I am not. I remain. Those many things which are me, the old man said, the multitude of worlds and places I created carry me in them and I carry them in me. I created this world, I shall survive its destruction. That is self-evident.
-Every thing answers to me. From the smallest particle to the most complex organism, they must all face me at their time.
The old man snorted.
-You think me a higher order animal? For stupidity, Death.
The cloaked figure leaned forward. It waved a hand at the wall opposite which became transparent and revealed a nightmarish landscape of electrical storms, heavy rainfall, thick cloud cover, choking industrial strength smog, the muffled crump of explosions and the irascible orange of distant fires. Shattered tanks, trucks and cars lay in their thousands along with the tattered skeletons of civilian and military aircraft. Huge mounds of calcified corpses dotted the landscape. No living thing moved.
With a gesture the wall returned to its opacity. The old man was unmoved.
-So?
-The End of Days has been and gone. There are no more stories to tell. The damage is irreparable. There is only one more task to be completed.
-And that task is me? You overreach yourself, Death. I am not subject to you. There is nothing I cannot create. There is nothing I cannot destroy.
-Then why live in such a mean, pitiful place?
-Do you live in a palace?
-I do not live.
-Neither do I but this suits me. What would be the point of excess? That is only for humans.
A note, the barest tremor, of desperation appeared to enter the old man’s voice. His demeanour gave nothing away, unchanged as it was without the barest flicker of the eyes to denote fear or loathing. But his voice still carried trace elements of…something. Death faced him without moving. The old man shifted uneasily after an aeon. Outside the vastness of forgotten waste howled unheard. Clouds boiled across what was left of a broken sky and polluted rain corroded a diseased ground even further. And still the pair argued, unaffected and oblivious.
There is a time and there is a place.
The old man was becoming palpably desperate. His words said very little but the tone spoke deafening, illuminating volumes. His eyes shone now, the dark spaces fever bright with the intensity of a superhuman longing to be, to remain. The ghost of other presences made not a move though it spoke.
-You are decaying yourself. Look at you, frail flesh hanging on a weakened frame. You know the end involves you, must consume what form you take and that form has come to define you in the absence of other markers. There are no other ‘people’, he said pronouncing the word disdainfully, to compare yourself with. You cannot hold in your memory what it is to exist in the absence of others.
-I AM NOT HUMAN, the old man shouted.
-Not for a long time. But you are now. You have become so. The creator became the created, too fond was he of his creation, studying it too closely. Play became mimicry, mimicry became normality and normality became mortality. There is a cycle to it, an inexorable movement. It is too certain.
Death rose. The old man tried to summon what he knew was no longer there. Bitter beads of sweat formed on the old forehead with the effort. His hands shook as they clenched the arms of the chair.
Still, Death merely looked at him.
-I do not know the meaning of kindness but…
-Yes? The old man looked up, suddenly very human, suddenly hopeful.
-…you were great once. Be glad of that.
Death walked to the door which opened without being touched. It closed gently after him.
The old man sat in his chair until the breath left his lungs and his heart stopped. He could feel every millimetre of blood vessel that he possessed, he could hear every alveoli opening and closing but could do nothing when they stopped, when his body failed.
After a time, God died. And there was no one there to notice.