The river flows, the river flows, the river flows.
The words plague his mind like locusts, no signs of stopping their ravenous spree. It seems forgetting is too merciful. He is beholden to the river, and in the river there’s no forgetting. In the river there is no remembering. He is the water of the river. And the river flows, and the river flows, and the river flows.
He opens his mouth, and he breathes. Lungs close to bursting, viscous fire in his throat like molten stone. The river flows, it flows inside him, it flows and it flows and it flows.
He fights against the current of the river. He struggles under the flames, eyes snapping into darkness. He breathes in the fire. He burns under remembrance. He feels himself skinless, shapeless, the absence itself, himself the space. Eyes to darkness, brain to air; he is the river and he flows.
He never stopped bleeding. He only stopped noticing. He bleeds and bleeds. If only he could stop the bleeding. If only he could unmake this wound. But the river flows. There is nothing except the river and the dead in the pit of his stomach.
He gasps for nonexistent air, with nonexistent lungs. There’s no pile of corpses, only water. There’s no splendor, only water, and the ever-approaching shore.
You got what you wanted, the river says. You got it, the end. This is it.
But the river does not stop, he thinks. It flows, and it flows. He feels his brain erode and tatter to a stream of consciousness and yet, he knows this to be true. He knows the river flows, and so it is not the end to the bleeding. It stops being scary. It starts being a comfort. Not glorious, but small, like a hand around his hand.
Only when he stops struggling, does he feel it. The sand beneath, the cold like knives. The last beacon of life at the edge of the void, wailing and wailing.
He wakes up in a deserted beach, black as the night though it feels like midday, despite the lack of sun - or much of anything. His brain just says it is midday, and he believes it. The air tastes like salt and ashes. He hears nothing but the crash of water against nearby rocks and sizzling foam.
He begins to walk, if only because he does not know what else to do. He walks for what feels like miles, always in the darkness, always in his bipedal shape. He doesn’t get tired. He doesn’t even think about thirst. He just walks and stares at the sea — the river, his brain corrects. This is just an island, like the one you lived in when you were bound. That’s why there’s no end in sight, and why it’s a river, and why you’re just as alone.
All his loved ones are dead, he made sure of it. They live in this ash beach, in the bone-dry air, in the sunless day of this nowhere realm. He wanted this. He wanted the nothingness. He built it. In his madness he gave up everything for it. And is this what he wanted? Is this the greatness he sought?
But there was no greatness to it, only infamy. Only selfish, personal, ravening vengeance. He wanted to stop the blood from flowing, and the earth from turning, and the tree from renewing its crown.
In his frenzy, he killed the world, which is just another way of saying he restarted it. He killed God, which is another way of saying he --
Only in the distance, does he catch a glimpse of light. It’s minuscule, but unquestionable. It wavers on the water, cinnabar-red and vigilant.
Well beyond its opalescent glow, the world is being remade.
