Zothan Ru

A Nightmare

I know how the universe ends.

I’ve seen him.

Twilight turned to dusk. The sky still looked a clear blue, but the forest surrounding me was getting harder to see by the minute. An eerie silence had settled over the area, one you would normally only expect after a night of heavy snowfall. Leaves occasionally rustled in the trees, but their defiant ruckus proved futile since sound no longer carried. My surroundings would have filled me with a lonely dread, but presently my mind is occupied by a yellow rubber ducky bobbing in a small pond in front of me. My name is Riley B. Its name was Zothan Ru.

‘I come from a world where all things are false. And I waged a war upon the color green. My name is Zothan Ru, and I am the cessation of all things.’

Its voice rumbled and echoed and it felt like he was speaking directly to my brain. I immediately understood the mercy my mind had granted me in giving the incomprehensible a form I could understand without rendering me blind. Although I did notice my surroundings had become even less vibrant and had taken on a more oppressive quality. As if nightfall had been replaced by a vintage sepia filter and I myself had become a cardboard cutout with an expressionless face.

A bell dinged and several seconds later the 7:30 stopped in front of me to let people off. There were six of them. Two of them walked down the street in opposite directions. The other four scuffled into the forest behind me and behind the bus shelter. None of them had faces. None of them made a sound. All of them ignored me. All of them ignored Zothan Ru. I didn’t care, because it wasn’t my bus.

‘History is littered with men who in vain sought the Ball of Many. They searched from the deepest depths of the Lajathal cistern to the golden city in the sky overseen by the great dragon Murenath. Those who found it never knew. Those who didn’t never came back. ’

The rubber ducky bobbed violently as his words pulsed inside my brain. I became acutely aware of myself. I realized that I knew that the Ball of Many, much like Sputnik 1, was round and likely inedible. What I did not know about it was everything else and this late in the conversation I was too afraid to ask. If I had known I was going to be quizzed I would have spent more time studying last July, but it is too late now and I’m going to fail this course. I’m behind a desk in a classroom filled with the people I had known in year 6. We all graduated years ago but had collectively decided we missed high school so much that we entered a post-graduation course. The girl in the front of row 2 had always hated me, although I never knew why. The guy next to me in row 4 was called David who once helped me pass a test on Henry VIII and his wives.
I look outside and I see the bus shelter with me in front of it, and with the rubber ducky in a puddle in front of me.

‘You should not be overly concerned about your own being. You are nothing more than a flash of consciousness manifesting in a world on the edge between dream and existence. Who is to say the you who calls itself ‘I’ is not merely a subroutine of your short-term memory?

I had a small part in a theater production where I was cast to read exactly one line from a paper. Since the paper had been stolen the play could not progress and the zombies that were supposed to exit the stage after my part couldn’t leave which meant everyone was in danger. A woman named Tillie dressed in a burgundy suit pointed out a little man had escaped with our paper inside a little green car so our only option was to evacuate. Our escape route unfortunately was a rickety old staircase high above a forest which did not at all help me calm my nerves. One of the old wooden planks gave out from under me and I plummeted into the forest below. I had escaped the zombies, but not Zothan Ru who was once again before me.

'Tomorrow there will be no more sun for I will have wiped clean this universe. However I do not wish you think me cruel and so I shall grant you an act of mercy. Make one wish and it shall be done,' he said.

'I wish that nice waitress at the friture I was at yesterday has a nice day,’ I answered.

The physical form of Zothan Ru had disappeared and the small pond turned into crumpled old newspapers from the year 1971. I wish I could go there now because I heard back then the trains had adequate space for luggage, unlike the busses of today where my backpack is crammed in between me and the seat in front of me, causing my right leg to go numb. There is no comfortable position to hold my book. Then the sky started raining triangles which poked holes in the ground. Trees started popping like balloon animals. Several bells agitated the shadowed figures from the forest. I felt one of them brushing up against me.

‘Last stop: Roaming City!’

And so this universe ended not with a bang but with a dot.

Next: Prodigal