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(2) <——

'Well..' He began, taking a long breath from his cigarette. 'A thousand years ago this was nothing. A hundred years ago this was the center of the world. In a hundred years, it will be nothing again.' He stopped, and started again.

'There is a man. His name is Jeremy. He is the destroyer of cities, of worlds. He tried to live here because he wanted to be normal.' The man looked at me, the shadows of the dark morning hung around his face. 'You know him; you met him. On the top of the hill, last night. He is everyone, all at once. All their dreams, and hopes, and fears. He is pure evil and pure good.'

I remembered his torn emotions from the agony of losing his family and began to protest, that man could not be evil, but my words were waved away before I even spoke.

'Yes, I know he had a child, and a wife. Maria, I think. That was the good in him, the dreams of a normal life. But he had another side, and he didn't always want to keep it hidden. The evil in him yearned to be let lose and he wanted to let it go.' The man sighed and shifted his legs in the ash. The scythe settled comfortably against him. 'He is the opposite of me. I am nothing, nobody. I am the forgotten dreams and hopes and fears. I am what no one, anywhere, has any wish to be.

'I knew Jeremy well, he also saw me, just as you do now.' He looked away and stared at the horizon. He seemed almost... sad.

'We were bored. Life is for the living and you cannot be the man who has seen a thousand deaths and still believe you are not immortal. This city, it was easy to destroy. Humans believe what they want to see. Show then anything, and they will only see what they think is there.'

The sun was rising, just a glimmer behind the black skeleton of the city. The people had given up on saving it all, they now wandered like ghosts amongst the collapsed city, calling and searching and hoping that somewhere was someone that they loved. I could see their pain but I could not feel it. I did not know the immense pain their hearts felt as they lived, now, in the world of not-knowing. I had a feeling this man was now feeling more pain then anyone could bare to feel.

The man beside me watched the sunrise too. He watched it with the boredom of someone who has seen a thousand sunrises over a thousand worlds, but still with the wonder of someone who tries to find something interesting everyday. I got the feeling that he was not certain about this situation.

He seemed like a gentleman, cautious and careful not to be too worrying, because he already knew that he made you uncomfortable. He was the sort of person who stood in the background and corners of rooms and you tried very hard to ignore him because he couldn't be real, could he? He twisted the scythe's handle in his hands and his thin face and blue eyes seemed to melt with the sadness they were struggling to hold.

'You don't know what it is, when you can do anything except the one thing you want to do. It's like having all the tea in the world you could ever desire, but all you really, really want is a single mug of steaming coffee. It's no way to live.' He sunk his head into his hands and then lifted his head and stared at everything. And he was looking at everything, because he could absorb everything all at once. And what sort of life is that? Looking at a book and knowing everything inside it and all the people who ever saw it or read it and all of their lives, and then the lives of everyone who ever knew them... eventually and so quickly you have found out about the whole world. Just by looking at a book.

'Humans spend their whole lives learning but I, and Jeremy, we could know everything all at once.' He added. He gave a weak smile as he looked at me. 'Sometimes, sometimes I can guess thoughts as well. And you think very... determinedly.'

'Of course we would get bored. That's why we destroyed this place. We wanted something exciting. We wanted to take something and... I don't know what we wanted. But we wanted something.' We were both quite for a while.

'Did you find it? Whatever you were looking for?' He looked at everything again and shook his head.

'No. I just gave myself more work. And Jeremy got a broken heart he will feel for a thousand years. And these people here lost a home.' He unfolded himself slowly and picked up his scythe. With some effort he swung it onto his shoulder again. 'Have you ever heard that you have a purpose in life?' I nodded. 'Sadly, I believe that you do not die until your work is done.' He nodded at the ashes of the city. He seemed less human now, with the scythe on his shoulder and the sun just behind him. 'My work is never done. I will always be here. Existence is what I shall always have, and what I want is life.'

'But if you have life...' I said slowly, 'You will have death.'

He nodded. 'That is the tragedy of it all. With all these people living, how can I ever leave?'