A/N: Extended metaphor for the win. Came up with this at the tail end of Spanish class and just HAD to write it.
It needs big time improvement. I'd like to hang onto it for the next Journal, but I don't think it's living up to its full potential at the moment. Tear to shreds as you please.
To clarify: The "he" in this story is not God. I may be an atheist but I'm not a rude atheist.
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This Old World
He was dying, suffocating in the poisonous black cloud emanating from within him. He would cough and shudder, his insides raging, destroying him from the inside.
Still, the pain did not stop.
His body was covered in billions of parasites, billions propagating their own survival as they destroyed him. He was collateral damage to them. His body did everything it could to rid itself of the parasites. Disease, disaster, destruction. Nothing worked. There were always enough survivors to bring their numbers back even stronger than before.
As time marched on and he aged like all things do, his fight weakened. The parasites went on damaging him, tearing him to pieces. They could renew their numbers, renew their fighting spirit. He was not so fortunate. His strength was not boundless.
The parasites were a foolish sort, believing that they had been put in him for a reason, that he was their right. They lived in denial, professing their love for him and saying they respected their host. In truth, they only kept him alive to suit their own needs. The minute they evolved, the minute they no longer needed him, they would abandon him and everything that they had built.
They would abandon him for the other side, a place they so foolishly believed was real. An other side where nothing bad happened and only the good would go. A place where they would meet a Lord who had put them where they were for some higher purpose.
Fools.
He knew they were all damned little things. There was no hope for any of them. Whatever they believed would happen to the wicked, it would happen to every last one of the cursed demons.
He knew he would not last very long. They would get to see their mythical other side soon. Every day the parasites furthered his destruction by leaps and bounds. The will to live was leaving him. He knew he was fighting a losing battle. There were too many.
There were too many.
He felt heavy with them, heavy with their combined weight and their structures and their very way of life. More than anything, he felt heavy with their self-important ways. It was all for them. Everything his weakening body was theirs for the taking. Their higher power, their blessed Lord, gave them permission to carry out their evils.
Soon enough, he began to believe the whole lie himself.
There were too many.
How was he ever supposed to resist?
Some part of him knew that he never had a choice in the matter.
Soon enough, as the weight of the parasites became too much to bear, he collapsed. His body went into one last desperate effort to rid him of the parasites. Floods, hurricanes, earthquakes of futile attempts to kill every last one and set him on the road to recovery. It seemed only a blink ago that he had been happy and free of these horrid plagues overwhelming his system.
But nothing his destroyed form threw at the parasites hampered them in the slightest. They rebuilt at the speed of light, the casualties buried and forgotten. They were efficient at their job, if nothing else.
Eventually, he lost all sense of time and all sense of sanity. He closed his eyes and drew one last breath, one last breath that had been tainted by the poison clouds. The parasites began to scream.
There was nothing on the other side.








