Cicatrix

• Matt Kuch, Grade 11, Kew High School
• Short Story
• 2014

Excellence Award in the 'The Text Generation 2014' competition

I have made a mistake.

This mistake cannot be corrected like an essay written by a child. Nor can can it be remedied with a simple apology, no matter how sincere. The scars I have left here are greater than any I have ever seen. Indeed, they may be the greatest anyone has ever seen, and yet, here there is nothing. Where I stand now there is nothing. Where once there was something, everything, there is now only nothingness. The buildings are gone. The trees and the flowers are gone. The creatures that once lived amongst them are gone. Humans. There are no humans anymore. They are gone too.

I’ve done something lamentable, something so foul and despicable that even I should bear a feeling of sorrow, of grief. Do I? Perhaps a twinge of responsibility. Maybe a small amount of shock. I'm shocked at my own power, my own control. I stare down at my hands, entranced. There is still energy dancing between my fingers. My hands are bleeding, dripping with crimson ichor. I find the source; two lacerations that extend from the base of my palm to the tip of my middle finger. I shake myself and regain my senses, only now do I notice the full extent of what I have done. The scene is unsettling.

Bones, everywhere, the bones of humans. Ribs and vertebrae splayed out, as if there is a sea of blade-toothed beasts before me, hungry, mindless. The skulls of men and women are omnipresent, their dark, hollow eyes staring at me. Staring into me. It’s as if they know it was me. They know I killed them. Even the crania of children judge me. Their eyes are the most damaging, they are darker and they pierce deeper, like heated blades. I pick up one of the smaller skulls and look into its eyes; they are bottomless, black voids. The ichor from my hand has stained it, the sockets now bleed. This was a child, innocent, fragile, yet with infinite potential. Yet it seems that when unbound potential is met with immeasurable power, the latter mutilates the former.

But why? Why do only these skeletons persist? Why do I hold in my hand the head of a dead youth? I tried to use my power to destroy myself. I was created, not born. And my creators, for reasons unknown to me, intended that I remain alive indefinitely. I am immortal, but my only wish is that I die. I look at my hands again, the wounds have healed now. They always heal.

In my haste to end myself I have destroyed this place. I have destroyed this entire world. The structures and the bodies and the minds of these people, all a mandatory sacrifice to an insane god. I am a god, a god without disciples. Everything is dead here. I crush the skull in my hand. I now know what it is to feel desolation. I am the executioner of my own heralds.