The Overman

It was the smallest of bones with the thinnest strip of meat. It couldn’t have been anything more than a tendon, but It didn’t matter to Philip. It went down his throat all the same.This wasn’t the first rat he had ever eaten and the flavor of anything he could find to eat had long since become inconsequential. He was completely adapted to eating such things to survive. He picked at the wire thin flesh with experienced soft teeth and swallowed it eagerly.
It was night time. The world was dark and his fire was small. It was necessary as a tool of survival. Long years had been passed with small fires and small meals such as these. Time had been whittled away in dank holes in the earth surrounded by the burned and broken ghosts of what had been. Of who had been. The corpses didn’t bother him anymore. They were all dusty bones and bundles of ratted dry cloth. Not even worth pretending to talk to. He didn’t dare speak out loud anyways. He didn’t dare make a sound at all. Every noise he made felt like a fire alarm that rang out into a giant empty world patrolled by one very terrible and perceptive predator.
No, quiet was the only way to live. Rare small fires that burned dully, hidden away in the basements of the remnants of humanity were his only short lived companions. It was the only life he could possibly know and still be alive to experience… as dreadful of a life as it was. As pointless as to keep living seemed to be. For some reason he felt compelled to keep going. He knew he was the last. He was sure of it. Just like that black rhino all those years ago. So much effort had been made to preserve it and carry its species on only for it to be euthanized by the very people who were trying to protect it. The poor bastard.Considering the choices though, Philip thought perhaps that that would be the best way to go: Peacefully, not hunted down by something horrifying and insane. Not by something that wanted his destruction simply to meet their own agenda. If it came down to it,if he really had to, Philip had decided that maybe it was better that he went out on his own terms rather than become the final victim of humanity.
He cleaned the last bit of bone and threw it into the fire. The flames lapped at it with sickly greasy pleasure.
Yes, fire. You get a last meal too. He thought.
He stood and brushed wet fingers across coarse and dirty rags he called a coat. He took a slow, quiet breath through his nose and let it out silently. He stooped over and scooped dirt and debris into his hand ready to douse the life of his only friend.
There was a scrape. A shuffle of feet. A slight crunch of the sole of a boot on old plaster, dirt, or cement. Tiny chunks of old building scattered and clacked off of corners and walls somewhere out of sight. He held his breath, his eyes wide and casing his surroundings. The knuckles of a fist-like heart pounded violently into the back of his sternum. Faint moonlight fanned a doorway through some fissure in the floor above. Dust floated lazily through its beam. Suddenly a silhouette appeared there. Philip froze.
The figure stood for a long unmoving moment. He could feel it staring at him from behind its shadowed facade. It took slow weighted steps forward from the cold silver of fuzzy moonlight into the dull orange of his campfire.
It was him. Of course it was him. There was no one else left in the world.
The Overman had finally found him.
The man was still wearing the suit he had worn all those years ago. It’s once pristine white cloth looked dingy and gray, smudged with years of soot and grime. His red cape was wrapped around him like a giant scarf. His dark hair and beard were long and unkept. He almost looked like Jesus. A large Jesus with muscles that rippled just under the surface of his suit. The man stepped closer to the fire and bent down to his haunches. He stretched his hands out over it and splayed his fingers.
“Nice fire. Feels good on a cold night like this.”
Philip stared, his eyes felt watery.
“Can you? Feel it?” He croaked.
He realized that these were the first words he had uttered in more years than he could remember. Possibly not since he had not even reached twenty and he had begged his father not to die as he took his last shuddering breath. After all they had been through, it had been pneumonia that claimed his father’s life. But he still put that blood on the hands of this man in front of him. This monster who had destroyed the world.
“Pardon?” the man raised an eyebrow at him.
“On the news. I remember. Military hit you with a nuke. You shrugged it off like a water balloon.”
The man smiled a bemused smile. “You have a long memory.”
“Goddamn right I do.” Philip frowned deeply and painfully.
The man turned his hands over the fire, “I thought I would try to put you at ease.”
“At...ease? Why? Calming your prey before you murder it?”
The man stood quickly, rubbing his hands together. He turned towards a broken wall for a moment and then turned back.
“The last time I killed someone was nearly nine years ago. I thought that perhaps they were the last one, but… there was always a nagging feeling someone else was out there. And here you are.”
Philip was trembling. He wasn’t sure if it was with fear, anger or because he was cold. Probably all three.
“So finish it. Get it over with.” He said coldly. Even with his heart thudding he was trying to maintain some confidence, some dignity in what may be his final moments.
The Overman shook his head. “No. Nine years is a long time to be alone with one’s thoughts.”
“Try twenty three.”
The Overman’s eyes widen for a moment.
“Has it… really been… twenty three?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I didn’t realize… so much time has passed.”
“Really? Because I felt every god damn second of it.”
The Overman nervously rubbed a hand across his mouth. He crossed his arms, leaving his hand resting just under his nose, covering his lips. He seemed to be contemplating. Silence hung for long minutes. The Overman paced as Philip stood in statuelike repose.
“What’s your name?” the man in dingy white asked finally.
“Why.”
“I just would like to know.”
Philip considered this behind cold unblinking eyes.
“Philip.”
“Where are you from, Philip? Originally that is.”
“Nowhere. You turned it all into graveyards.”
“Fair. How old are you, Philip?”
“Stop.”
“Stop?”
“Stop using my name like we’re old friends, you murdering psycho.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just trying to…”
“Trying to, what? Act like you didn’t commit omnicide? Trying to get to know me before you finish me and leave this world as one big burial pit? What is it? What exactly are you trying to do here?”
The Overman rubbed his cheek and knelt next to the fire again. He added some old dry twigs that Philip had gathered next to it and then rubbed his hands together.
“I’m not… I can’t expect you to…” he took a deep breath and let it out slow. “I wanted to tell you... I’m sorry.”
“You’re… sorry.”
“Yes.”
“For killing every person on the planet.”
The Overman lowered his head and stared into the fire, saying nothing.
“You can’t possibly expect forgiveness, can you?” Philip said through gritted teeth.
“No! Of course not! I just wanted you to know that I… I had time to realize what I’ve done. That I’m not unaware. And I’m not unremorseful. Not anymore.”
Philip licked his lips. The anxiety he was feeling was excruciating.
“‘Not anymore? Not anymore? You’re fucking with me, aren’t you? This is some kind of sick joke you’re playing. This is you’re way of amusing yourself before you torture me and kill me, isn’t it?”
“I…”
“How about this? How about you answer some of my questions now, hmm? Why don’t we start off with, oh I don’t know...How about ‘why the fuck did you wipe out my entire species?’”
“I wish I knew where to start. I wish I could say something that you would understand.”
“Me too. I wish I knew what turned the world’s greatest protector into it’s mad executioner. That’s the question that’s haunted me for more than two decades. Explain that to me.”
The Overman grabbed one of the loose twigs and started half mindedly tracing lines in the dirt of the floor. Without looking at Philip he began to speak.
“For a long time I tried to bring peace. There were so many wars, so much hatred, but I tried to play by the rules. I tried to prevent death and protect lives. But no matter how much I tried to save people, to help, to make the world a better place, people continued to be violent and filled with hate. They blamed me for their failures, but always called upon me to save them from their mistakes. They became so irresponsible. So careless. Surely, you could see that, couldn’t you?”
Philip shifted his weight. His legs felt stiff from the tension running through his body.
“Yeah. Some people really sucked. Some of us were real pieces of shit. But you didn’t get to decide how they should be punished for that. And you sure as hell didn’t have the right to judge everyone equally.”
“The right to? Probably not. The desire and the ability to? Yes.”
“You know how insane you are, right?”
“In my eyes, in that time, I couldn’t see any redeeming qualities in humanity. For every one good person I saved, another hundred bad ones would fill the world with pain. For every deed I did in the name of all that was good and in the effort to save just one life, a war would rise and kill thousands.”
“Wars start and end. It's part of life. There was always a chance we could’ve found a way out of it. We could have found our way to peace eventually.”
“But you didn’t.”
“You didn’t give us the fucking chance to find out!”
The Overman picked at a frayed edge of his cape, pulling a long worn thread from the tired material.
“The moment I made my decision…”
“I know the moment. I saw the video.”
“Crowds of people protesting. Yelling. Screaming. Addicted to their stubborn opinions to such a degree that they would harm anyone who disagreed.”
“I said I saw the video.”
“I was above it. Trying to disperse the crowd. Begging them to calm down…”
“I said I saw it, god damn it.”
“And then one guy. One guy who had been wandering around with a jar of his own piss the entirety of the protest, threw it right at me. Got it all over my uniform. Glass and piss just dripping off of me and falling…”
“You need to shut the fuck up. I don’t need you to paint this picture. It's burned into my brain.”
“And I snapped. That was it. Done in by a bottle of piss. I never screamed that loud before. I didn’t know what it could do. I was just screaming and it killed, what? A hundred people?”
Philip turned and violently kicked his pack that was sitting next to the fire.
“I told you not to fucking remind me you great white fuck! I saw it! And I saw that you didn’t stop! You wouldn’t stop!”
“I took everything down. I swept the crowd, the buildings...everything with energy rays from my eyes.”
Philip collapsed to his knees, “Stop. Stop you sick bastard. Stop.”
“I buried them in rubble. Hundreds of women, men, kids. Protestors, cops, people just watching the conflict…”
“WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU YOU SICK FUCK?” Philip buried his face into his pack, gripping its straps and wringing them with all his strength and rage.
“The smell. My god, the smell! You know my senses are ten thousand times more acute than yours, right? I could smell every drop of blood… every wisp of smoke. I could see every scattered visceral remain down to the tiniest atom!”
“WHAT IS YOUR GODDAMN POINT, ASSHOLE?” Philip screamed again into his pack.
“My point is… that you need to know that I remember all of it. Every single person. Every face. Every execution. Over seven billion faces etched into my mind. I see them all in every reflection. Every waking moment.”
Philip sniffed. He hadn’t realized that he had started crying. He whisked away wayward snot from his nose with the cuff of his sleeve.
“So you remember them. What does that mean to you? Can you feel them? Can you feel all of those deaths? Do all of them cause you any pain? Does even one?”
The Overman, who had still been mindlessly scribbling in the dirt with a twig while he talked, stopped mid stroke. He sat there for a moment staring at it.
“No.” he said and wiped away his doodle with the palm of his hand.
“Then why are you telling me this?”
The demi-god dusted off his hands and stood.
“I just wanted you to know that I never forgot. That I know what I did.”
“And that you’re sorry? Man, you’re really not selling this apology here.”
“I don’t think you understand what I’m apologizing for.”
“No, I don’t think I do.” Philip raised his head and looked at the god made man. He was still afraid, but at the same time he needed to meet the Overman’s gaze. “Why don’t you tell me then.”
“I’m sorry that you all failed. I’m sorry that this was the only way I could save you from yourselves. I’m sorry that I didn’t end it all sooner.”
“Oh you are sick. You are fucking evil incarnate.”
The Overman took a step towards Philip, his foot landing in the small fire. He didn’t even notice.
“You’re the last one. That means that the human race still suffers. It has been suffering all these years. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t have found you sooner. I could have given you peace and saved you years of pain.”
“This is what you call peace?”
“I hope you don’t mind that I do this slowly. You’re the last and I want to savor this.” the man god took another step closer.
Philip’s eyes widened. He was still leaning on his pack and quietly he slipped his hand inside. He pulled out a small gold jewelry box and held it in front of him.
“Is that a weapon? Feel free to use it on me if that makes you feel a moment of hope. But ultimately it’s useless.”
“I found something in the ruins. I think it belongs to you.” Philip said, his voice quiet but direct.
Slowly he flipped the tiny latch and pulled back the lid.
“No.” The Overman said breathlessly.
There, resting on a small black velvet cushion was a shard of rock. It had a dull metallic luster, like pewter but not gray. Its surface was a dark purple, almost black in the low light of the basement. Ribbons of orange light from the fire glinted off of its surface . An almost imperceptible aura surrounded it that was colorless, but warped and shifted the lid behind it like a mirage in the desert.
The Overman took a step back.
“How… how did you get that?”
Philip stood to his feet and held the box out closer to the god. The Overman took another step back. His eyes were wide. Shock and fear was impregnating his face. Philip had never seen such an expression on this being before. He didn’t know it was possible. It pleased him.
“I wasn’t fully sure this would work. But I’m glad I was right. This is from wherever you’re from, isn’t it? A piece of your world?”
The Overman began to tremble. His stance began to sag. It was like watching uncooked spaghetti go limp in boiling water.
“That shouldn’t be here. It can’t be.”
“It is though. You see, I had a lot of time to think about you. I thought about all the ways I would kill you if I could. I thought about what it would be like to be like you. To have power beyond man that I could use to crush you and break you. But it was impossible. And yet some part of me still held out hope. And I thought about your weaknesses. I thought about how you didn’t seem to have any. The only flaw that anyone ever saw was the novelty of your vision. You could see through walls and peoples and stone but… you always had trouble with gold, didn’t you?”
The Overman’s spaghetti legs boiled through and he collapsed to his knees. He lifted an arm towards the jewelry box, but it was weak. He could barely lift it before it fell back to his side. His mouth was slack and agape. Sickness seemed to overtake the shock in his face.
“I found this box in a mansion. It was one of the few buildings early on that hadn’t been completely demolished. Whoever lived there had all kinds of expensive things and works of arts. All of it rendered meaningless. But then,” he lifted up the box more and looked at it with almost a loving adoration, “I saw this beautiful little thing in a case. It was like it was just waiting for me. The craftsmanship is impeccable. I think it's pretty old, maybe early seventeen hundreds, but it had been well cared for through the ages. When I saw it and saw how small and beautiful it was, I remembered your one flaw. Having this meant that I could still keep something small from you. Your all seeing eyes would never pierce it. Whatever was inside was mine until you tore it from my dead hand and opened it.”
The Overman sagged more. He was fully seated on the ground, slowly tipping backwards. Philip brought the box closer.
“And I used that concept to try to protect myself. I started threading pieces of gold into my clothing. I kept gold coins in my shoes. I don’t know if that actually helped or not. I liked to believe that I was fooling you, but I think I was just really good at being a needle in the haystack of the world.”
Philip gently pulled the metallic object from the box and turned it in his fingers, watching the firelight flicker across its many crude facades. The Overman was now on his side on the ground. He was moaning. His mouth was frothing.
“After that, I got smart. Or you got sloppy. I managed to put a few things together. Your false identity, your human one, got out after you started your rampage. I believe it was the woman you were engaged to? You wouldn’t stop and she was trying everything she could to get through to you. And you… you killed her. You killed her like everyone else. And you killed your own parents and everyone that supposedly mattered to the human you were pretending to be. And I remembered all this. I remembered who they were. I remembered what town they lived in. I remembered what they’re house looked like from the interview. I remember because of how scared they were. Just a couple of old fashion small town folk worried about the boy they raised. Frightened at the monster their son had become.”
The Overman gargled, “Do...don’t...talk...about…”
“And you killed them. Vaporized them. I know because when I went to their home, I found their remains. Right out in the front yard. Two piles of ashes and bones. Julia and Marcus Rathburn, mother and father of one Raymond Rathburn… the Overman. I buried them for you by the way. You’re welcome. I thought they deserved better. And then I went into your house. I wanted to see who you were in secret. I wanted to see what I could find that you didn’t think there was anyone left to find. I went into your room. I saw your baseball card collection. I saw the pictures of you as a kid. Everything was completely untouched. Is there a reason why, Raymond? Did it still have some meaning or did you care so little that you couldn’t be bothered to destroy your childhood along with everything else?”
The Overman rolled over on his back. The foamy spittle was dripping down the side of his face. His face was a pallid yellow green. His eyes were bulging with dark green veins.
“I searched the whole house. And then I searched the shed. There had to be something. I almost missed it. I almost missed the fake floor, the random assortment of junk that disguised a hidden door. Probably your father. And I went down there. I saw the pieces of your ship. And I saw this strange shard laying on a pile of old newspapers. It was half unwrapped. I wonder if your father had picked it up, turned it over in his hands trying to decide if he could actually take the life of his own son. But he made a stupid decision, I guess. I bet he thought he could still get through to you. He probably thought that the son he raised was still in there somewhere and if he could just talk to you that his paternal love would win you over and pull you back from the madness that had gripped your mind.”
“S..stop…” the Overman gargled.
Philip brought the stone near to the demi-god’s face.
“It’s too bad your father’s love blinded him. Too bad it made him stupid. But I’m not stupid. And I definitely don’t love you. This looks like it really hurts.”
Philip gently, almost tenderly, caressed the Overman’s cheek with the stone. The man god screamed feebly. Philip wrapped his fingers around the stone, making a fist.
“Fuck you, you goddamn murderer.” Philip said and smashed his fist into the being’s face. The consistency of the Overmans’ body had changed drastically. It was like punching a grapefruit.
Again he struck him. The skin on his face gave way. Sludgy green tinted blood oozed out.
Again he struck him. The Overman’s teeth shattered like sugar glass.
Again he struck him.
And again.
And again.
The Overman’s nose broke almost clean off.
One eye was pulverized while the other popped out of its socket.
Again and again he beat the man god’s face. Now a slurry of gore, it was like punching a bowl of stew. But Philip didn’t relent. He kept punching. Even though his fist hurt. Even though his own hand was probably broken and bleeding, he just kept punching until the being’s face was a smear of skin and meaty carnage. He didn’t care. He had to make sure it was over. He had to make sure this monster was really done.
Gradually his punching slowed. The impacts reduced to almost miming rythmic knocking into the wet space that was once the Overman’s head. The pulp of his face had splattered across the sooty floor, up a broken wall, across debris and was painted up his arm. When he finally slowed to a stop, he sat there on his knees looking down at what remained of the man who murdered the world. Philip’s breathing was heavy and rapid. He had probably barely taken a breath the entire time he was beating him. He let it out slow, taking deep breaths through his nose and trying to release it in one long steady exhale. His heart rate gradually easing.
When he was calm, he gently laid the stone next to the body. He stood, with legs shaking, to his feet, never taking his eyes off of the husk of the god before him. A thin smile crossed his lips. And then a greater one. And then he was grinning, rotting old teeth glistening in light of the dull fire. He bent over and grabbed the hem of the Overman’s cape and with a tug and careless toss, dropped it into the fire. It seemed to like that. Quickly it walked its way up the worn frayed material. Greedily it’s toothy flames gnawed at it as it climbed its length and began to spread to the body. Hot glowing cloth peeled away from skin and fat and hair started to smoulder. Soon the whole body was alight, popping and snapping in the quiet evening.
` Philip sat back down next to his pack. He held the gold box in his good hand, flipping the latch up and down with a finger as he watched the blaze overtake the thing that was once a god. He continued to smile from ear to ear as he would throw an occasional dry twig into the ribbons of red and yellow heat writhing in front of him.
“There you go, my little friend. Enjoy your meal.” he said to the campfire as it licked at the bones with pleasure.