Walking down this particular road, she heard a sound that wasn’t really a sound, not really. It’s the kind of thing she hears when her ears are perked, searching for something to listen to, as if attempting to reinforce the misplaced belief that something was following her. Darting her eyes around, she saw a figure that wasn’t really a figure, not really. It’s the kind of thing she sees when her cortisol spikes, searching for something in the dark. Quieting the thoughts in her mind, she felt a presence violating her internal privacy, and while it may be an intrusion to peek into her life, there is no violation, not really. There is nothing she can sense following her. She is truly and utterly alone.

Despite how she tried to suppress them, her mind wandered among irrelevant thoughts, “What was that sound? … Am I being followed? … Who’s watching me? … What happened to everyone who found the tower?” and they’re irrelevant precisely because no thought could solve her problem. Her problem comes from the condition of being something. And were there something else following her, those thoughts could only distract her from the danger stalking in darkness. It is merely paranoia. There is no stalker, not really. She is, in some way, truly and utterly alone.

She’s tried her best. She always has. So often at that tower, she wanted to give up and return to the road. She had every opportunity to depart from her body, to fall and ascend, but she was as she was and so she was then, too. She walked the road not knowing what would happen, conjuring vision after vision and therein lies an unfettered beauty  — the embodiment of unknowing. The world presents her moment by moment, slice by slice; poetry. No certainty when or how she will die, no certainty what will happen when she arrives. Yet she decides with imperfection, with what little she can conjure — every fallible memory, every faulty belief, every feeble emotion — and for that reason, divorced from her past and future selves, she is and has always been truly and utterly alone.

She walked the road to the tower with no faith in her direction. Fork after fork, she picked at random where to walk. Walking in circles at times, she sparked some irrational fear from some inconsequential sound. Thinking in circles at times, she talked to herself like she knew what she was doing. How does she decide when to speak out loud and when to keep those thoughts inside? It’s something not even a god could feel (strictly, a domain for humanity). With no intention behind these choices, her body acts long before the thought, and her body feels long before the act (there’s an elegance in ignorance). It is she who provides comfort communing with she who desires comfort (for her, one before and after the other); it is she who acts before her time, an impulse to assuage her paranoia, to feel less alone than she truly is.

“They must be alive,” she said to herself at a time before her long walk. She found that all had met the tower before her, and ignorant to the truth of their proclamation, she muttered, “Please God, help me find this tower,” and other pointless things, but no god (or what something like her would refer to as God) would interrupt her craftsmanship, for if they scrutinized what came before and after she found the road, they would surely have a plan (God’s plan — affectionately referred by them). For that, she refuses her belief in God in divine irony, for it is only in moments of great duress that she finds herself a believer, and in moments of great nothing that she finds no need for belief. She who had not found the road would perceive this as an irresolvable contradiction (it would resolve at some point, although the timeline matters little). She knew of others who believed in God through a devout faith for which had been prevented her opportunity. With wavering disbelief as more and more departed for promise of salvation, alone she sat, the last of her ilk.

First it was one, then the others, and as more departed, the rest. She never heard her revelation; it was not hers to receive. Her god did not speak to her, for speaking would corrupt her delicate balance of love beyond divinity. Oh, repetition, repetition. She thought to follow the others or stay, no proof of salvation but the dwindling faces around her as one never having believed in God. Skeptical, dependent; God, no God; depart or not; all for good reason. These contradictions polished her soul (an object of divine envy), and it was not until she observed these herself had an earthly revelation been revealed: it is the belief in an external witness that helps her feel less alone, in a world where everything she loved had abandoned her.

“I can’t do this shit anymore,” she said (among other irrelevant things), and yet she left her home in search of something more, with dedication not to drink, not to eat, not to calm her nerves until she found the road to the colossus stretching the horizon. Within her was a drive to move forward despite her suffering with no promise of salvation; and where arise persistence but the past to push onward, her feeling when to speak and when to think, communing as a god could, affecting her actions never revealed. She who felt had urged the thought to she who acted, and overcame what she never could alone (like only a human could). She feels herself apart from what she was before, with a feeble sense of self, and is yet incomplete for she is truly and utterly alone; she could never observe the whole of her self (like only a god could). “You’re fine … You’re going to make it through this … You’re strong, even alone,” she said with clairvoyant certainty (metaphorically of course, for what she has literally is more precious than the divine alternative), talking as if she were something other than herself on a world newly borne of no one else.

Her father left for the road long before she thought she needed to. So young then, when of no certain return, one by one had left. Question after question, but none could explain the truth of their promised ascendance. Proselytize as they might the truth of God’s plan, she could not fawn in their claims and froze in search of answers. Not so young then, when of no certain belief, she found the strength of flight, but as they were found among the pantheon of an abandoned world, she was found an unknowing inheritor of all they left behind. As her (precious and limited) years had consumed her will to fight, she yearned for what family had provided — that which she needed now more than ever in her life: an unconditionally warm and loving presence to feel less alone.

She loved talking to God, the God she knew wouldn’t listen (and in turn, she is lovely to listen to). At times, she cursed her God for abandoning her; heavy with despair. At times, she thanked her God for providing her food and water; light with hope. At all times, she did not believe this God (a perspective reserved for her and her alone) but no god abandoned her. To abandon is to leave another worse off without one’s presence, as a god never could, for a god could never leave. Love as gods do, no god could ruin what is rightfully earned. Beauty from suffering preserved her right to connect she who was hungry with she who was nourished. She cursed God, she thanked God, she disbelieved in God, all in the same breath, and through beauty alone she stitched her past and future with tawdry threads along a deserted Earth with no bounty left to pick and no help left to offer.

“Fuck you.”

That was the first thing she said to me. It was a confession — not so much that she believed God exists, but that if there was one, then He should be fucked.

“Please God, save me.”

That was the last thing she said to me. Similarly, it was a confession — not so much that she believed I would intervene, but that if there was a God to witness her final moments, then she would feel less alone.

How cruel that her god has known of no better decision.

Before the Earth was struck by the first tower (a most deplorable decision), before she was abandoned by everyone she loved, before humankind’s ultimate apotheosis; she was alone. That feeling — being the last human on Earth — was metaphorical long before it was literal. She never discovered why for herself, but on the road to the tower, she felt less alone than at any other point in her life, even as she prayed in desperation that anyone else had made it back down the tower as she later would (yet another contradiction). She who lost her mother could only imperfectly commune with she who found the road, for time had divorced them long enough, but one knew the importance of love and the other had forgotten from lack thereof — yet she tried regardless, in any way she could. “Fuck you.” She felt that hole in her chest, the embodiment of loneliness, all her life because she had known that at any moment, with or without warning, she could lose everything and everyone. Who, then, could she trust with her unconditional love? Only two things in her entire world. Herself and her god. No, I couldn’t interfere with the source of her loneliness. Her loneliness brought her closer with herself — all versions of herself — and in turn, she grew closer with her god. On that road, she could never be truly unloved, for there were two beings who would always love her, and she could never be truly misunderstood, for there was one being who tried her best and one who couldn’t possibly fail.

She tried at many times to keep these feelings at bay, having every tool but never the wherewithal to choose, suffering all the while she grew further and further from loneliness. No tool could fix what was never broken. Loneliness was never a punishment from her god, it was a gift from herself — protection in the form of blessing, transcending time, like a scar (one of many; self-inflicted; body and soul) to remember the conditions of which she could never allow again. At one time, she had grown to love everybody, and for that, she was loved in return, showered with fleeting and fast-expiring affection. They loved her compassion, her body, her care, her touch. She gave and gave, until she who had everything to give tethered the same emptiness to she who had nothing left, as she who had lost her mother communed with she who had found the road, here with such painful precision that she could never give again, for there was nothing left to give. Of course, this was also inevitable; she attempted the expression of an unconditional love that is reserved for us, their gods, and so she turned to hers with no options left.

“Oh God, I’ve done it again.” I know. I’ve been with you your whole life. I’ve seen your every attempt. “Help me.” My love, you are your own to help. You who tried to abandon your soul and you who tried to reclaim it are one and the same, and their marriage is as inevitable as the fleeting love humanity could offer. At the end of this trial, you will become a stronger woman, one worthy of being the last to stand on an Earth that none could appreciate until it was gone. “Why did you let this happen to me?” Head craned upwards, she gazed at the sky with soulless eyes, mouth agape, muscles limp, and for these brief moments, it feels like we’re unified by love beyond divinity. “Please don’t abandon me.” I can’t, and thus, I never will.

As tower after tower fell, with more and more abandon, she felt less and less alone. “Thank God.” This was an inside thought, as if speaking out loud would make it more real than it already was, as if she could deny the only person she could ever be. She couldn’t count how many had departed, and in the end, she never knew she was the last human to stand on the last tower. It wasn’t loneliness that brought her to the edge, like it had so many times before; it was the very question that led her to the tower to begin with. It was that indelible urge to be divine, the same urge that had led us all to the tower before her, but the contradiction remained. Should she fall to ascend, despite never having had her revelation, never having believed in her one and only god?

“Please God, save me.”

How cruel that her god — so wise in matters of sloughen flesh, so foolish in matters of nascent divinity — has known of no better decision.

Approach she had the edge of all divine mistakes, the air had thinned and kissed her flesh like God had watched in bated breath, but god had little breath abated, watching knowing not if he would steal of what could be but never stolen. Her toes had dangled off and thoughts had not approached her, weighing all she was and shifted ever forward. The rush of falling felt her closed eyes and crossed arms, ready for what to come, and yet the cusp of judgement wrought, and she who lost her mother and she who found the road, she who had to give and she who had none left, she who had abandoned her soul and she who had reclaimed it, and she who cursed her God and thanked her God and never believed her God had begged her — she who stood the test of towers  — to save herself and all of what she loved. And so she did.

Now we’re at the end of time, a time outside of time, and hold as I have her life in my hands to forever suffer in the clutch of a finite realm she had every opportunity to ascend, I beseech you — God amongst gods. Have we any reason to save her?