Last Soldier on the Beach

A man lies dying on a beach of burning smoke; one brave soldier among many. Gripped in hand: a photo of his fiancée. This he lets drop—his body now resembling a garden of wet, tattered roses. Despite his dimming sight the world around him has yet to change, to reveal even a subtle flare of the next realm. The waiting is… ordinary: screeching gulls, skittering crabs, sky the same earthly blue it has always been.

After time unmeasured he hears approaching footsteps in the sand. His head falls to the side knowingly—Death, working the beach, has come for him at last. Thoughts turn to what Death now means to him, this corrupt thing that smuggled so many of his friends out of their youth. He shakes his head in anger, red droplets smacking the sand.

Death emerges from the haze, a shapeless, distorted aspect of windblown smoke and fire. It becomes increasingly substantial as it nears him: billowing black cloak; gaunt face; stiff, exaggerated gait. The soldier scowls at the entity, harder than he ever did at the enemy. He begins to chuckle. Death suddenly strikes him as funny, this bony, somber cliché, the odd reality of it. And it shouldn’t be here—not for him; not now.

The soldier reaches for his machine gun, cringing in pain. Screaming expletives, he lifts the gun and fires directly at the approaching form until the bullets run out. Death stops, turns, goes another way. Minutes pass. Then hours, days, a week. By now the soldier has bled out, his spirit tangled with stark fear and pain. Flies have laid eggs in several wounds; thoughts of their hatching plague his mind. Weeks go by. How many? Day and night, he remains alone.

Now we find the soldier picked clean by scavengers. All that remains are a half-buried skeleton, a crab nestled in each eye socket, and consciousness. Presently the soldier sees Death begin its second approach. Upon reaching him, Death stands over the skeleton and drops a loose handful of bullets. Each is a long, echoing ping against the man’s skull. Before he is led away, Death leans in with frigid breath and says, “Do not disrespect me again.”

First published in Spectral Realms in 2022.