The End

As I sit before the river, a caterpillar ticklishly crawls up my arm. Taking it onto my finger, I smile and place it gently on the ground to be free.

It’s hard to believe this all started when I first awoke in this city. The City of Gods, they call it. It was only a small town back then. At the time, I was homeless, alone, and confused. I had forgotten everything in my life, wandering the streets until a stranger offered me a piece of his bread at the local tavern.

“Who am I?” I had asked to no one in particular.

“You are everything,” he had answered despite holding out the ID of me that he’d found nearby with the name ‘Jane’ on it.

That stranger turned out to be a man named John. At the time, I thought it a strange way to flirt with me considering it was the first time we met, but I quickly fell for him, and he became my husband. Sometimes I didn’t understand him. He could be a bit distant, but I knew he loved deeply if his dedication to my needs was enough proof. And what I needed then, was to remember… to know.

But now, I have come to accept that there are things I don’t know - that I will never know - and that is okay. And the rest of my life was enough - more than enough. All the friends I made. The family I created. Now I was the last of them in the mortal realm after the apocalypse.

It had been a long journey, finding myself and living a beautiful life full of love and tragedy. Then, there I was - old, wrinkly… but two steps from death’s door. I was already very familiar with him, but we weren’t close. At all. Not like some of the other gods I knew. I couldn’t seem to step any closer, so now I sit outside the cottage by the river.

I’ve started to appreciate the little things in life a lot more since the Dark Days began, having seen so much death and destruction. It’s a miracle I’ve lived as long as I have. Listening to the rush of the water and the rustling trees, watching the fluffy clouds roll by in the endless blue sky… it keeps me grounded.

“Jane Miller.”

I turn to see a figure – humanlike but not human. It’s everyone I remember in one body that is fluidly changing. They speak with a myriad of voices in unison, a familiar melody. They are not human but… Could they be a god? No. I don’t know what it is, but something tells me that they are even a being that transcends the gods. That transcends reality itself.

As if to validate my conclusion, my surroundings - the sky, the mountains - begin bending and morphing into impossible shapes before the ground suddenly disappears from beneath my feet. My heart drops as I plummet. Falling and floating and flying in space as the river flows by. I reach out my hand and feel the cold, wet sensation, watching as shiny droplets spray in all directions becoming stars. When I realize that I can walk, I follow the river until it suddenly stops flowing at the end of time where all the water within it gathers in a giant wave-like wall that curves around me.

Like a mirror, I see myself in the reflection of the small ripples. The wrinkles around my lips are gone. The stress lines of my forehead have vanished. All my scars are healed. I pull up my shirt to see the stretch marks on my stomach from my pregnancy have disappeared as well. Not only that, but the flexibility and free movement in my joints have returned.

I am young again.

It should be exactly what I want, but suddenly, I am taken back to when I was eighteen and being kicked out of the that small town infirmary with no connections or direction. Feeling small… helpless. Not knowing who I was or my purpose in this life.

Then I see them, standing behind me, watching me through the current. I turn to them as the wall of water falls like a flood of torrential rain back in place, rushing down the mountain side as everything returns to how it was before.

“W-what are you?” They are tall, magnanimous, and intimidating as I look up at them. Terrified doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel.

They gesture to the gravel beneath us and though I initially hesitate, we take a seat side by side, watching the river run as if we are old friends. “I have existed for as long as I can remember. Back then, there was nothing, just emptiness. And me. So I created the very fabric of space and time.

“To answer your question, I am the creator of all things. I created the multiverse, the gods and by extension, you humans. I have watched you all inhabit my space. I have seen every decision you have ever made. I have seen how you have lived and died in every universe.”

How is this possible? Is the creator of the universe really sitting right next to me?

“Are you here to kill me?”

They do not hesitate. “Yes.”

I gasp, though I shouldn’t be surprised. I knew my time had been coming for a while. But when I went, I had been expecting to be taken by Thanatos, the god of death. Not The Creator.

“I am here to eliminate you. I am here to eliminate every person, every god, every creature. I will level cities, worlds, and dimensions, and every universe to ever exist.” My eyes widen at their revelation. They’re not just going to kill me. They’re going to kill everyone. “After an eternity, I have grown weary, so I will destroy myself and by extension, the multiverse. I created the war of gods knowing that it would all lead to this exact moment.”

I am speechless as they explain their grand plan. “Why are you telling me all this?”

For a moment, they just observe me as if I were the caterpillar curiously crawling up their arm. Weak and powerless against the advanced being before me. Then they tut at my question.

“Jane, Jane, Jane…” They pronounce my name with purpose as they take in the features of my face with intent eyes. I gulp. “I watch you among all my other creations, and I can’t help but be amazed. You wake up at the same time every morning, open your shop at 9am sharp, sweep, dust, mop, smile pretty for your customers, and at the end of the day, you eat a simple meal, and retire to bed by nine. It is incredible how incredibly unremarkable it all is - no matter what spectacle is brought to your doorstep. I would have thought it your superpower if I didn’t already know everything about you.”

My fear suddenly begins to subside as irritation replaces it. “Do you have a point besides insulting me?”

“Yes,” they chuckle but I’m not understanding what is so funny, “I want to ask, how do you find satisfaction in your monotonous life?”

“Well,” I drawl, pretending that they didn’t just insult me again, “I find joy in the little things. The beauty in all the colors, the feeling of the sun or the rain on my skin, the joy in the sound of a laugh. And then I think about the role I play in the grand scheme of things.”

“Your life is but an insignificant one in the grand scheme of the multiverse.”

I suppose it makes sense that the creator of all things would believe my life to be insignificant, but I disagree. “All life is significant.”

They sit with the information I have just told them and as I look at them, I realize that I can now see a real, tangible person with a soul. I can see the weight that sits heavy on their shoulders as they contemplate their decision.

“Would it really be so bad to continue watching over the multiverse?” I ask softly.

“I would have to look over it for the rest of all time. Do you know what it is like to see everything everywhere all at once, then see the same things happen over and over again in every moment for all of eternity?” they ask, then shake their head as if they already know that my feeble human mind couldn’t even begin to comprehend it. What I have seen today is but a tiny fraction of what they have. “The only solution is to end it all.“

I consider what they say, but even with that knowledge, I can’t seem to find it reason enough for them to resort to offing themself and everyone who ever existed by extension. “Maybe instead of blowing up the multiverse, you could live out the rest of your days as a mortal? Transfer your powers to someone else to look over it. Maybe that’ll help get some of the excitement back into your life.”

After all, there is nothing else like the adrenaline rush when you feel as though you are truly going to die.

“Why in the seven hells would I do that?” they question as if my words were the most bizarre ones they’d ever heard. They then proceed to puff out their chest in arrogance as their booming voice shakes the trees. “I’m the most powerful being in all of existence.”

I tilt my head to the side as I look at them. “Well, from what you described, it sounds to me like being the most powerful being in existence is unbearably boring… and lonely.”

They give me a high brow as if to say, “You’re not wrong.”

We sit back and watch the sunset as they seem to come to terms with what they must do. I mean, if they wanted to end the multiverse, they probably would have done it by now, right? And then a thought occurs to me.

“Say,” I speak as I turn to them, “If you know everything, shouldn’t you have known how I would respond to this conversation?”

A slow smirk slides across their lips as they eye mine and I bite my bottom one self-consciously. “Maybe I just like a little drama.”

And then, in the blink of an eye, their hands are crowning my head, both thumbs on my temples as their eyes begin to glow impossibly white. I gasp.

Wait, are they—

They’re going to transfer their powers to me.

“I-I didn’t mean me!”

But it’s too late, because I begin to see it. All of it.

Everything.

All the unimaginably vivid colors of light and love as well as the inexplicable depths of darkness, hatred, and violence… of loneliness… of nothingness…

I see every place, every creature, every spec of dust in every universe of the vast, infinite space we call the multiverse. Hear every sound. Feel every sensation. Know everything that has ever occurred and will ever occur for all of eternity… including the true identity of the near mortal before me.

“John.”

He smiles a bittersweet smile, and my heart thrums - a lifeline amidst the chaos that has befallen me. Suddenly, I remember him in every version of myself. I see all the times he watched over me, cared for me, loved me from afar. I see him for who he truly is.

Our infinity symbols glow as he kisses me, hard with soft lips, rough with delicate hands, unmistakable passion and love pouring from him. It is everything I remember of him and more. I find myself as I always have seeking his touch, his warmth, his familiarity.

Then he pulls away, and my heart aches as he forgets it all, and I relieve him of his agony. He watches me with blank eyes and a neutral expression, as if everything we’d been through was nothing.

“Who am I?” he asks, plain and simple.

“You are…” I say, just watching him, knowing all that I know now.

“You are everything.”