Worn - SCP Foundation

All that was left was the waste, and in the waste there was nothing. Deserts spanned the Earth, and in one there was a cavern, and at the mouth was a pillar of stone.

It was hardly a shape anymore, but the rock had looked like a man once; now the body had been rubbed smooth and far too thin from erosion. The head was almost absent, rubbed to little more than a tumor on the neck. The fingers of the right hand had broken, and nubs were left on the end of a stump. The left was ground almost to the elbow.

It was moving inwards, although if anybody had been alive to watch it, they wouldn’t be able to tell.

Years later, it would touch the back of the cavern, and begin writing on the walls, again. Already there were other lines scratched into the rock, in a language nobody was left to remember. From centuries earlier, they had only started to fade.

I saw a flash today. it was so brief I thought I had imagined it, but it was hot, as the mountain had been hot when I was young. then there was fire. nothing was left after that

before everything changed faster than I could keep up

trees would grow, seasons would change in moments.

now there is nothing left to change

It reached the back and brought its arm up, grinding for months, and leaving one more line.

This will have to be my new home

It finished, satisfied with its journal, unaware of the atomic pace it moved at. As it turned back, it fell. Too fast for the stone man to comprehend, it was on its face, but could not get up. The torso, ground thin from years of erosion, had snapped, breaking his body in two.

For decades, the stone man wept in his own way. It would still be centuries before he died.