Finality

Anshul Rastogi

Etched into this passage of time

Is the wearing of our brittle bones

And fitful bodies

The herald of the last door

A final feebleness

A frailty of the corpus failing as, Ever gradual and inevitable, The faculties fade

And the functions collapse

Nihilism

Vaibhav Rastogi

There came a day when the sun didn’t rise. Fragments of the universe disintegrated into bytes.

A cold, lone earth spun in the heavens.

A plague biting away at its atmosphere.

A starless, moonless, desolate sky.

There was a man who looked at the heavens.

As the firmament collapsed, he stared into an inky abyss,

In that abyss, he saw himself.

Until this heap of gaunt flesh

And stringy muscle

Tears itself apart

Beneath the burden

Of its own breath

And the mind sinks into eternal oblivion

The door shuts

Leaving behind only

The abyssal silence

Of utter Finality.

An observer, unable to revert the impending collapse.

A man of free will, but only in definition.

The sun slowly rose to greet a new day, gently warming the world beneath it. The air filled with the buzz of unconscious life, resonating over crumbling roads and the ashes of collapsed buildings. Vines snaked their way over deteriorated walls and nestled in the burnt husks of rusting cars. Trees claimed homes and flowers wilted in the empty skulls that decorated schools, hospital floors, and everywhere else people once wandered.

Koen's steps sounded heavily on the creaky wood floors of his house as he finally dragged himself to wake for the morning. He rubbed the gruff of his face, his rough hands meeting his astringent stubble with a dry scratching sound. His feet were bare and the only clothes he bothered to wear were his baggy sweatpants.

He brought himself to the bathroom mirror, peering past the orange and brown rust stains that ate away at the reflective surface at his figure. His fingers inspected the textures of his face, plucking, pulling, and rubbing at the bags beneath his eyes. Some fundamental part of him still looked twenty-four.

But he could feel the truth hidden away somewhere inside him. He was an