Second ThursThreads story. This one doesn’t count.

First chain: *You knew it when you made your choice. You were entering into a life where there was no way out.*

Second chain: *It’s too late to ask for forgiveness, you know. You knew what you were doing.*

Third chain: *You thought you could reason your way out of this. You always think you can reason your way out. Who are you, fucking Raskolnikov?*

Fourth chain: *Of course you had a choice to follow a different path. There’s always a choice. You were just too scared to follow it.*

Fifth chain: *You wouldn’t have been alone. You’ve never been alone. You expect too much from the world.*

Sixth chain: *What do you mean, ‘It wasn’t what you meant to do.’? Why do you think it matters what you meant? No one means to be a fuck-up, but lots of people are.*

Seventh chain: *You messed around with the most powerful forces a human can experience and expected to stay in control? When has anyone ever been able to control love?*

Eighth chain: *Of course it hurts. Only sociopaths wouldn’t be in pain. You’re no sociopath, as much as you wish you were.*

Ninth chain: *What are you going to do now? You’re going to carry us around for the rest of your life. And there are going to be days where we’re all you know. We are never going to let you forget.*

Tenth (and final) chain: *Yeah, for a while there, it was something special. Sorry Notsorry.*

ThursThreads, week 381

Prompt: https://siobhanmuir.com/thursthreads-tying-tales-together-week-381/

The darkness was rising, a roiling plasma of nothingness covering the world as far as the eye could see. I climbed easily up the mountain, its cracked surface providing me ready handholds in some places and in others, I simply sank my fingers into the rock and pulled myself higher. It was noon, and the people were out in the fields, at the markets, or on the roads. The ones in the valleys noticed the darkness first, some trying to run, others standing dumbstruck. But there was no way out, not from what I had wrought. It ate them alive, starting at the soles of their feet and working upwards. Once it touched you, the darkness consumed you. To them, it must have seemed alive – and that’s because it was. I’d been working for millennia to get this right, and I hadn’t made a mistake.

Finally, I reached the top of the mountain and stood there, waiting. I would be the last victim of the darkness – how could one as cruel and casually malicious as me escape this ultimate judgement? But before it took me, I would see the world wiped clean. Every human, every animal, every bacterium – gone. There was no reason for it, it was simply what I existed for. There was one of me on every life-bearing world in the galaxy. Life could exist for only so long. It was no big deal – there were always new worlds being born. They’d die too, of course, thankfully.