Prompt 1: The Chosen One Doesn't Save the World, (S)he Destroys It.

Written by: Farhana Safran 

I am bored and tired, Death thinks.

The usual sing-song voice that accompanies his thoughts is quiet, today of all days. With a heavy sigh, he steps down from his old, rickety throne.

“Time to finish the game, then.”

The girl chosen to bring upon the apocalypse is in every which way, a normal teenager. A little bit sullen, maybe. But then again, aren’t all teenagers prone to a tiny bit of angst?

            She starts her official title of the Harbinger of the Apocalypse by performing miracles. Healing a child’s scrapped knee. Soothing the pain of a cancer patient before she dies. Bringing her little sister, 5 years dead, back to life. Miracles. Undiscovered scientific marvels. Who knows?

An angel, sent to aid humanity. A she-Devil, sent to entice weak men. A new breed of humans. Conspiracies after conspiracies, new theories growing more farfetched as her story spreads.

God’s Chosen, someone says.

The anti-Christ, says another.

“I am just a girl,” she insists to the media.

“False modesty will get you nowhere,” Death, as the newly awakened voice in her head reminds her while she smiles at the cameras, her eyes blind from the flashes.

Tents are erected on side walks, a few meters away from her front door. Men and women of different faiths, nationalities, languages pray in her honor. A man blows himself up while she holds his child. She emerges with the many people gathering around her, unscathed, the man (and his child) a splatter on the ground. Another miracle.

She inspires an army to fight in her name. A call for a new world order. The new Joan of Arc. Entire continents crumble beneath her. Shrines are built in her name. Ballads are sung in her honor. No, not a Joan. She serves no one. A God, her army decides. Men and women and children are slaughtered by those who wish for her favors.

“I never asked for sacrifices,” she cries.

“But we are your humble followers. We honor you in these rituals. They refused to accept your divinity.”

Death rolls his eyes at the all too familiar absurdity. Soon, the girl will realize that they no longer hear her voice. Are you still there? No singing. Alright, then.

“Am I meant to save the world?” the girl asks one day, as she sits on her shiny new throne, the world outside her castle –how very princess-like –in ruins. Death in the streets. Death in her head. Death, standing next to her, leaning onto her throne.

“What is there to save?”

Humans are always prone to hoping. It irks him.

I have created you in my image. He scoffs at the thought, although there might be truth in them.

“I don’t know.”

The answer startles him. He regards her with curiosity. Have they broken her? So soon?

“Shall we burn it all to the ground?”

“Okay.”

 “A phoenix may rise from the ashes. We may salvage what’s left, if you’d like?”

“No, we’ll start again. From the beginning.”

He marvels at the determined set to her jaw as she contemplates razing entire cities to the ground and erasing the entire history of mankind. How very familiar.

He closes his eyes. At the back of his head, a woman begins to sing again.

The end is nigh, is nigh, is nigh, she sings sweetly.

“Oh, there you are,” he murmurs quietly.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Oh, nothing, I was just talking to myself.”

The girl gives him a look, sighs, and straightens her spine. She looks forward.

 In the end, Death takes us all.

The singing stops with a tone of finality.

Death opens his eyes. He straightens, ready to see the girl plunge the world into chaos. He looks to her, this girl shouldering what was originally his to bear.

“How about ruling over a family of apes next time, huh?” the girl quips. He lets out an unsurprised laugh.

“We shall see.”

He looks at the back of her head and smiles sadly. History is circular. Did she not learn this in school? But then, what better way to learn if not from experience?

A family of apes, then.

Be, and it shall be.

The world begins anew. A new throne, a new god, with a new voice inside her head.

“Let the game begin.”

His knowing laugh echoes in her mind.

A Quiet Confession.

 Mark this post as presenting a shift in my personal views. It had a long time coming. 5 years, 2 months and 5 days in the making, if I have to be more precise.

 The morning I got the news that my dad had passed away, I felt it. The emptiness in my guts.When he died, he took parts of me with him. All my life, he was my constant. He was far from perfect, we all know that. Yet, I shared his dreams. He wanted me to be a doctor. Eagerly, I said yes. I read books about famous doctors and their contributions in the medical field. He told me to be number one, and I tried so hard. I cried over an unfinished test, that one year another girl took my spot as number one in primary school. It was as if my existence relied on his trust in me. It made sense that I lost my bearing. I built myself up with my dad's dreams as the foundation. Without him, all that's left was a shell.

I am many things in relation to others. A daughter. A sister. A student. A friend. A rival. But what am I to myself? What am I if not a collection of memories, of human experiences shared with others? I know what the religious would say. I am but a servant of God. In the end, I am ash and dust and a solitary soul forever residing in heaven or hell.

"From Him you came, and to Him you will return."

I will share with you what I think about that statement.

 The more people you lose, the more you start thinking about life as borrowed time. I lost my dad at sixteen. My grandma at eighteen. My granddad at twenty one. Of all the things we are promised to experience, death is the most inevitable. They say atheists and agnostics fear death. That's why they seek immortality. In books and films, godless heathens search for ways to live forever. In real life, religious fanatics murder to gain a ticket to heaven. If we dig into the very crux of that matter, I would say the religious are the ones who fear death the most.

Why?

Because it is the unknown. We fear the oblivion, as John Green, through the voice of his fictional teen character, Augustus Waters, said. (pretentiously, if I might add.)

You spend years and years convincing yourself that there is life after death. The Day of Judgement. Heaven. Hell. Purgatory. You refuse to accept that borrowed time is what it is. Borrowed, with a termination date. The limit does, in fact, exist. The best we could do, even with the most educated men and women in the field of medicine, is to prolong the inevitable.

 Over the years, men and women contemplated the idea of what lies beyond death. Religions were built upon this premise of life being temporary. The afterlife is forever. Countless belief systems long gone, and others still prevailing in the modern world. Personal gods, Institutional religions. Roads that run parallel and may cross each other, sometimes colliding, often with disastrous consequences.

 I do not need to think of myself as a servant of god to know that I am insignificant to the world, that without me, god would still be a powerful being. I respectfully disagree. The strength of gods lie in the strength of their believers. My god is as dead as my belief in him. There, I said it. My ultimate truth. I am no longer a believer of god. I have not been one for years, now. Those who truly know me might have seen it coming. Those who don't will condemn me to hell. Frankly, even those who know me will think of it, but they are respectful enough not to voice it out loud. Call me an apostate. I will not deny it.

 On a much grander scale, I am but a speck in this universe that has existed billions of years before dinosaurs even roamed the earth. That is humbling enough to me.

 I have cast off so many parts of myself that I thought would forever define me as a person. In casting away my tight fitting armour, I allowed myself room to grow. To question. To make decisions that are not bound by what others want from me. (You may call it selfishness, but what is wrong with wanting? Ambition stems from wanting. The future is for those with ambition.)

 I've lost and gained so many things, it feels like I am no longer the person that I was before.

At sixteen, I wanted to please, to make amends.

At seventeen I cried over all the wrong decisions.

At eighteen, I tried to make peace with the things I cannot change. I wore cynicism like an armour.

At nineteen, I reached out and found friendship I would not trade for the world. I saw how we are all cut from the same cloth, but colored differently.

At twenty, I cast off my faith and began building it anew, from the ground up. I was a Muslim, I was an Agnostic. I was (and still am) an Atheist.

Now, at twenty-one, I have decided. To hell (or not) with it, I am what I am, and whatever I choose to be. I am human, first and foremost.

Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
Seize the moment, trust tomorrow even as little as you may.

I am always changing, and that's how I will always be.
None of us are promised tomorrow, only the possibility of it. The point is to go forward without having the lingering regrets eat you alive.