He could smell his own feces as the smell wafted around him. There were clumps of it from where he defecated himself, his resolve to keep any decorum of decency having long vanished. This was him now, alone, lost and forgotten, dwindled to nothing, and covered in his own shit. He was shit, and he was just waiting for this godforsaken nightmare to finally be over. 

Even the flies were dead. Everything around him, it was all death and decay. The flies that came to hover over his shit were all now corpses among corpses along the floor. 

He wept for them. Jesus wept for us all, and he wept for flies dead on the floor.

It’s not just the flies. Everything that gets near you dies. Who gives a shit? You are a plague of death cast upon this land.

“Tick-tock, tickety-tock, soon I’ll be dead and left to rot. Who gives a fuck about what is left upon this world.” He said aloud but in the small kitchen where he sat behind the island, he was alone. Always alone. It didn’t take long before the alone man started having conversations with himself and it became the only conversations he had. 

He laughed as he looked at the fresh pile of shit, still warm from having just left his anus. The wreak of it was already mixed with the stench from the other piles, unable to be distinguished upon them.

“This isn’t you…”

He heard the voice and knew it was among of the many voices he heard every day. Some of them yelled at him, others demanded his suicide. Some voices spoke softly and tried to offer him solace. He recognized this voice as one of them, as it was the voice of his long dead wife. 

She was always worried about him. Was he eating enough since her death, was he bathing? If she could see him now, she would scream in revulsion and yell at him to get dressed. He should take a shower. She would be horrified at the shell of what he was.

She had never known the real him. The him that he would become. The covered in shit creature that sat upon the floor would disgust her and drive her away. It would drive anyone away. It has already driven away his sanity, the little of it he had held onto.

“Get out of this house. It has become your curse. Get out of there.”

“Yes,” a chorus of voices shouted, “Come out of there. Come out to your death. Let us tear you apart.” 

“Demon”

“Asshole”

“Death dealer!”

“Murderer!”

The last name. The one that was the most apt for what he was. He killed people. The house was his sanctuary away from death and killing though he knew better… The dead never stayed away. He could hear them for Christ’s fucking sake. 

“Ignore them. Get out of the house. Take a walk in the woods. Get away from this.”

They would always be there, waiting for him, waiting until he could take it no more and would finally make that final walk? What was he waiting for? What reason did he have to keep going on like this? It was torment. Why should he suffer for so long? 

He couldn’t think of an answer. Some days he had one, but the more his mind slipped away, the more the reasons went with it. Why didn’t he walk out there? Who cared what was waiting for him? 

Pain, yes… Toment, yesss…. But eventually death, and with it, escape. All he had to do was get up, walk out that door, and that would be it. Death, and then escape. He just needed to stand up and walk out that door. They were waiting for him. Death was waiting for him. What did he have left to sit there for?

He stood, finally accepting that now it was time. He couldn’t remember what it was that had kept him waiting for so long. Seemed like it had all been a waste when it could have been over so long ago…