The Persistence of Kronos
this is hardly quality work, but i might as well own up to it. man, my productivity in fandom is on a serious decline.
prompt: How every character eventually dies. Think "Six Feet Under" finale.
Nash’s skeletal frame is found in an alleyway. His face is caved in, caked with dried blood and shards of bone. No longer recognizable. The coroner places a call when the dental records finally come back with a name.
No-one answers.
+
Saito, for all his careful crafting, is killed instantaneously. An accident, when tires skid sharply on black ice. The chauffeur cries out as he slams the break and loses the wheel. The car flies off the road, into an embankment. Saito’s body is crushed and folded into the base of a snow-covered tree. Circuits snap and his thoughts are cut to nothing.
+
Eames hangs himself, with the help of an extension cord tied around a basement pipe. Speculation spreads like wildfire among those who care and those who don’t. It could be murder set up as suicide. It could be debt. It could be fading glory, a curse among men past their prime. But even in death, he remains just as elusive.
+
Yusuf is trampled to death. The utter misfortune of attending a football game where a stadium fire breaks out. Bodies surge in a mass of confusion. Panicked hands push and pull, and the hard stomps of feet break his fingers first. Then squeeze his lungs until breathing becomes impossible.
His cat misses dinner that evening.
+
Cobb dies in his sleep. Doctors shake their heads, murmuring about sudden blockage and pulmonary embolism. His children huddle together like mute ghosts next to his body. His face is wan and aged and grave. Traces of regret, though they go unnoticed by all who are present. On a Sunday afternoon, he is buried next to his wife.
+
Robert puts a gun to his head. When he wavers and starts to lower the barrel, it misfires. The aim is enough to send parts of brain matter to the other side of the room. Distant relatives call for an open casket and a flawless reconstruction. The funeral is everything he never would have wanted.
+
Ariadne, hands too stiff with pain, fails to clutch the banister and falls. The finality of a sharp crack and a low moan, from the bottom of the staircase. White hair, stained pink with blood. Her face is turned towards intricate, complicated models in glass cases. Eventually, they are sentenced to the attic by her apathetic daughters, where they become forgotten.
+
Arthur, who could not have known, is the last. He doesn’t question why death has remained silent for eighty years, when by all means it should have arrived at thirty. He merely waits. Assets and beneficiaries and testaments, already settled decades before. The terms have been changed only once.
The morning begins beneath plain cotton sheets on a plain wooden bed. A small, sparsely-furnished apartment. A push of the bedroom curtains reveals the brick wall of the adjacent building. Slow, heavy steps to the kitchen. A pot of coffee, no creamer, no sugar. He starts reading a well-worn novel through wire glasses. Dogears the page he’s on, when an unfamiliar onset of fatigue creeps into his shoulders. Joints creak and slowly, slowly he slumps onto the table.
He ends as he perhaps began, mouth slightly open, air lost in an exhale.
His abandoned coffee grows cold.
prompt: How every character eventually dies. Think "Six Feet Under" finale.
Nash’s skeletal frame is found in an alleyway. His face is caved in, caked with dried blood and shards of bone. No longer recognizable. The coroner places a call when the dental records finally come back with a name.
No-one answers.
+
Saito, for all his careful crafting, is killed instantaneously. An accident, when tires skid sharply on black ice. The chauffeur cries out as he slams the break and loses the wheel. The car flies off the road, into an embankment. Saito’s body is crushed and folded into the base of a snow-covered tree. Circuits snap and his thoughts are cut to nothing.
+
Eames hangs himself, with the help of an extension cord tied around a basement pipe. Speculation spreads like wildfire among those who care and those who don’t. It could be murder set up as suicide. It could be debt. It could be fading glory, a curse among men past their prime. But even in death, he remains just as elusive.
+
Yusuf is trampled to death. The utter misfortune of attending a football game where a stadium fire breaks out. Bodies surge in a mass of confusion. Panicked hands push and pull, and the hard stomps of feet break his fingers first. Then squeeze his lungs until breathing becomes impossible.
His cat misses dinner that evening.
+
Cobb dies in his sleep. Doctors shake their heads, murmuring about sudden blockage and pulmonary embolism. His children huddle together like mute ghosts next to his body. His face is wan and aged and grave. Traces of regret, though they go unnoticed by all who are present. On a Sunday afternoon, he is buried next to his wife.
+
Robert puts a gun to his head. When he wavers and starts to lower the barrel, it misfires. The aim is enough to send parts of brain matter to the other side of the room. Distant relatives call for an open casket and a flawless reconstruction. The funeral is everything he never would have wanted.
+
Ariadne, hands too stiff with pain, fails to clutch the banister and falls. The finality of a sharp crack and a low moan, from the bottom of the staircase. White hair, stained pink with blood. Her face is turned towards intricate, complicated models in glass cases. Eventually, they are sentenced to the attic by her apathetic daughters, where they become forgotten.
+
Arthur, who could not have known, is the last. He doesn’t question why death has remained silent for eighty years, when by all means it should have arrived at thirty. He merely waits. Assets and beneficiaries and testaments, already settled decades before. The terms have been changed only once.
The morning begins beneath plain cotton sheets on a plain wooden bed. A small, sparsely-furnished apartment. A push of the bedroom curtains reveals the brick wall of the adjacent building. Slow, heavy steps to the kitchen. A pot of coffee, no creamer, no sugar. He starts reading a well-worn novel through wire glasses. Dogears the page he’s on, when an unfamiliar onset of fatigue creeps into his shoulders. Joints creak and slowly, slowly he slumps onto the table.
He ends as he perhaps began, mouth slightly open, air lost in an exhale.
His abandoned coffee grows cold.