Unkindness

Our hearths are gone out and our hearts are broken,
And but the ghosts of homes to us remain,
And ghastly eyes and hollow sighs give token
From friend to friend of an unspoken pain.

S Lainer - Ancient Terran wordsmith

On a nameless world, far flung from the decaying bosom of the Imperium, the man waited at an ancient wooden escritoire. Hunched over, with frayed quill in wrinkled claw, he scratched out his final repose to the dim light of a single guttering candle. His chamber was small, barely ten paces across each way, with a bare-bones billet alongside one wall and the aforementioned desk with accompanying chair. The open maw of a pipe set into the floor served as his latrine. Piled in one corner, empty and half-empty ration-cans putrefied, adding an underlining tang of rot to the stench of sweated sheets and the stink of his own unwashed body.

The only entrance lay directly behind him; a heavy iron bulkhead, long ago sealed shut with oxidised rust. Many years ago, this had been a safe haven, deep underground and well stocked with provisions and water. He had survived for nearly a decade by carefully portioning, eating a single can but once a week. But now the food had run out, and the thousands of kilo-tonnes of earth and stone above his head had become an oppressive weight.

He had been a large man once. Corpulent, with greasy rolls of flab sagging from a poorly built frame like semi-molten wax. Now he had been reduced to little more than an emaciated skeleton, his formerly opulent robes now rags stained variously in foetid greys and browns from his bodily excretions. It had been a folly to run here, he had realised some years ago when escape had proven impossible, to live but a little longer. This hadn’t been a penance for his crimes, but rather a long, drawn out death sentence that he had imposed upon himself. His safe haven was, in fact, a tomb disguised by his hubris.

His rations had run out a month ago, and after a fortnight, he had taken to consuming his own excrement for sustenance, to eke out a little more string of his miserable existence. But this was not out of desperation to live, but rather spite against those he had wronged. For they did not forgive and they did not forget.

Sickness had already taken root in his veins and he did not have long left in this world, yet his mind was already little more than the tattered remnants of the proud man he was, insanity having taken root some years before his body had started to fail. So now, his final testament was little more than illegible scratches on the labels from his tins, his inkwell long since dried to blackened flakes.

Suddenly, something changed in the aspect of the room, and a familiar, yet dreadful carrion reek, palpable yet subtle, entered his nostrils. He did not need to turn around for he knew what would be waiting behind him.

“So, you have found me at last”, his voice cracked, unused to speaking for such a long time, “come to take my life?”.

Then, just as it had suddenly arrived, the mouldering miasma vanished and the man risked a tentative look over his bony shoulder and took in the absence of the room. Nothing had changed; had he just been speaking to shadows and thin air?

No, he realised in horror, his visitor hadn’t needed to waste any energy to take his life. Better to leave him here to perish in suffering in his own self-imposed tomb amongst the shadows and thin air.

The shadows and thin air.

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