The Lonely God
By: Quentin Norris
Tags: Chess, Surrealism, Flash Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction

Photo by ᴊᴀᴄʜʏᴍ ᴍɪᴄʜᴀʟ on Unsplash

Death wakes up from a wonderful dream that the world was still green and rich and full of souls. He sits up, noticing the grey light from outside peeking through his window, and he remembers where he is. Groaning, he flops back onto the mattress and wraps his bony body in the sheets.

“I’ll only sleep five more minutes” he grumbles to himself, “it’s not exactly as if I have somewhere to be.”

After thirty minutes, Death reluctantly drags himself out of bed and leaves his comfortable home to go out wandering what is left of the earth.

Nothing has changed since he went to sleep. The world is still a barren husk of its former self, and the humans are still all gone. He’s whisked them all away to the afterlife, and there is nothing left for him to do here.

Death walks out to a mountaintop cliff and gazes out at the silent city below. There’s a gray smog wrapping itself around the sun and blocking out all the blue of the sky and the sad beauty of the image brings him some mixed comfort but only for a brief moment. There is something about bleak days and pollution that Death loves. Then he remembers how phenomenally bored he is these days thanks to all the smog and pollution the humans created and his appreciation of the scene evaporates. He continues on his way.

He kicks a soup can through the empty crumbling streets of the city, looking up at the mountains of rubble that were once skyscrapers. Buildings that grew taller and taller the wider human imagination expanded. As he walks down these empty streets, Death recalls that there was once a time where humans would bustle past each other on the sidewalk while Death strolled along unnoticed. They would walk through Death’s ghostly frame without even realizing it as they hurried from one location to another. This sensation of people walking through him always tickled Death. He missed the feeling. In a strange way, he loved these people even though they were afraid of him, or at least the idea of him since they’d never met him in person. His greatest joy was to escort these little people from one plane of existence to the next. This was when they finally saw him for the first time. As he brought them to eternity, they would always have the most engaging conversations. He missed this most of all.

He never minded all the killing and the violence before. It was the circle of life. These silly creatures would always be this way. Yet their ambitions and their fears got the best of them and the killings escalated over the decades as his work steadily got much busier and more chaotic. Then one morning Death woke up and there was nothing. The humans were gone. He was all alone. The only souls he escorted to the afterlife these days were creatures that survived the manmade holocaust: cockroaches, rats, and worms. They weren’t very good conversationalists.

Death remembers he forgot to eat breakfast. He goes back home and makes himself a sandwich. Death accidentally gets mustard on his cloak. He goes to his closet to get another. While grabbing a fresh cloak, he notices his old chessboard. His heart flutters a bit. A little spark of excitement lights up his bones. He’s flooded with memories of challenging unwitting heroes to games in exchange for their souls. How grand he once was, how majestic!

He grabs the game and rushes outside only to realize he forgot to put on his cloak. Embarrassed, he covers his naked skeleton, shielding it from no one in particular. Old habits die hard. He runs back inside and clothes himself.

Death searches the city streets for some kind of opponent, any opponent. After a fruitless quest, he finally finds a rat in a back alley. He challenges the rat to a game, claiming to be the best player in the land. If the rat wins, he explains, the rodent will become richer than any other rat in the land. If the rat loses though, its immortal soul belongs to Death. The rat looks up at the ghostly white specter in the flowing black robe while nibbling a piece of moldy cheese.

The rat tells Death it likes the idea of a game of chess but has mixed feelings on the whole “losing its soul” bit. Begrudgingly, Death compromises and says the rat won’t lose his soul. He just really wants to play chess. The rat agrees and sits down across from death, and starts to set up his pieces.

It turns out that Death is much rustier at Chess than he remembered. A few minutes later the rat has already claimed checkmate and Death is reminded of exactly why he hates this stupid game. He makes excuses about how many centuries it has been since he’s played but the rat will have none of Death’s pitiful excuses. The rodent runs around in excited circles, squeaking with delight, celebrating its victory, rubbing it in the demi-god’s face. Death sighs. At least people tended to be good sports about winning or losing. He misses them but he knows they aren’t coming back. The rat will have to do for now. Death sets the pieces back up and demands a rematch.