Content Warning: Gore, death, suicide.
He came to us suddenly, in a purple blaze of glory and with promises of salvation. He left just as suddenly, with another promise: to do to the universe what he had done to us. We were glad to see him go.
It was no strange day when Thanos arrived. Beggars roamed the streets, and those who had houses to go to stayed there. Having shelter was the only thing that distinguished them. Each house held twice its intended occupancy, and cars could no longer traverse some of the roads: the ones packed with tents, such that people had to crawl over each other to get to their tattered, makeshift homes. And when he landed on our planet, we gave him all we could: a bed, a tin cup, and directions to the ration lines.
In the evening, he joined the groups of families huddled around small fires. It was there that I first saw the gleam of the two-pointed dagger he quietly fiddled with, glimmering carnelian in the light of the smoldering embers, a ruby between the blades. And I was not the only one to see it.
“Do you want to hold it?” he murmured gently to the small girl who padded towards him. She nodded with bright eyes and grabbed it, running her fingers along the blades on either side. After a minute, Thanos coaxed the knife from her hands and placed the rubied hilt over the pad of his first finger, slightly off-center. The knife wobbled precariously, leaning to one side. “This is Zen-Whoberi—your people,” he explained. “Unstable, imbalanced. There are too many of you, and not enough to go around.” Then, shifting the knife to horizontal, he whispered, “This is what stability looks like. This is what Zen-Whoberi could be. Let me show you.”
The wonder in her eyes and in mine quickly turned to horror as he spun around, clutching the knife firmly and driving it into the heart of the man behind him. Then he slit another’s throat. I shut my eyes, feet frozen, and felt the thud of bodies hit the fire-warmed ground. I heard the cries of alarm multiply, voices silenced swiftly by a whistling blade.
The deaths piled high, until he had killed more than starvation would that day. Fifty people were lost by the time he came to me.
“You have welcomed me, and I will give you this boon: you shall not be killed.” He smiled at me, a look of expectation dwelling in his eyes. All I could see were the deaths of my neighbors. I said nothing.
“I will be back,” he promised, and was gone.
After five years, he made good on his word. We were the final stop on his crusade, a return to the beginning of his grand experiment. He took another half of us; he looked dead in the eyes of the girl he had murmured to by the fire as he killed her parents. She didn’t understand, merely accepted numbly when he told her he was her father now. And as quickly as he had come, he left, taking her with him.
He was right about one thing: with half of us gone, the food was plentiful. Meals were served three times a day, and everyone had a place to sleep and a wage to live on. It wasn’t long, though, before the depression set in. People didn’t go to their jobs. Some never moved out of the street; to get up and move inside took too much effort. Children starved and died of neglect, with parents unable to provide for all of them. Not that the parents had the emotional bandwidth to care for them in the first place. Funerals and vigils were held nightly, until all those killed had been honored. No one could sleep, for the visions of the subconscious were worse than the numb depression of daytime.
After depression came suicide: waves of self-inflicted deaths that were done in homes, in streets, in public squares. Strangers held hands and wept in each others’ arms as they fell into sleep with no intention of waking.
Those who were strong enough to keep going found themselves without the knowledge to keep the crop fields alive, without the resources to build wells or find water. Soon, we were all starving again.
The last five people of Zen-Whoberi found each other eventually. All of us were too old to make a new generation. We inscribed our laws in stone, in the hopes that someone would eventually find them. We scrawled words of wisdom on old, worn walls and printed the history of our people on every surface we could find. Then, we waited for old age to take us.
It was in my ninety-seventh year that a ship landed on our planet. I was the only one left. As the hatch opened, I saw green flesh—the same shade as mine. I saw a gleaming knife with a hilt of ruby. I saw saddened eyes meet mine: still bright, but duller; curious but weighed by knowledge. The little girl, grown, stared back at me.
And finally, I let go.
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