After the Apocalypse
by Cordelia Finch
Based on a concept by David Paul Harris & the drabble by Peter Blakey-Novis
After the apocalypse Eli Harper’s spirit drifted through the wasteland of his former life. It was a barren expanse, a purgatory of twisted steel and crumbling concrete, where the only color was the grim, sepia-toned palette of a world gone to hell. His specter wandered aimlessly, an ethereal witness to the nightmare that had unfolded.
Eli’s death had been abrupt. A heart attack in the early hours of a day that would come to signify the end of civilization. When he awoke to his living-death the sky was already scorched and red. Humanity was finally on the brink of annihilation. The Dead had risen. Eli’s own corpse was among the reanimated, a mindless predator among the ruins.
Now Eli observed his rotting shell stumble through the rubble of what had once been his home. He watched his zombie-self lurch through the desolate streets, ever hungered. The twisted irony of his fate was not lost on him. His body had become a monstrosity of divine indifference, a cruel twist of providence that mocked his former existence.
The cold wind howled through the hollowed-out remnants of society and Eli’s corpse detected a flicker of light, a beacon of life in the otherwise dead landscape. A small family huddled together in a makeshift shelter, their faces illuminated by the warm glow of a candle. Eli could feel an intense connection to this scene, a strange resonance that seemed almost preordained.
The family, mother, father, and a young son, had found a semblance of safety in this fractured world. Eli’s specter drifted closer, drawn by an inexplicable sense of urgency. He could see the father’s hands trembling around his child, a look of resigned terror on his face.
Eli’s incorporeal form yearned to warn them, to somehow intervene, but the weight of divine providence pressed down upon him. He was bound by an inescapable fate, a cosmic joke that seemed to mock the very idea of justice. He was a mere observer, a prisoner to the whims of a universe that had grown indifferent.
His corpse moved with an almost deliberate grace toward the shelter. An unknown force guided its steps, an awful synchronization that suggested a dark plan beyond human understanding. Eli’s heart, what remained of it in the realm of the spirits, ached with the realization that his presence was a sign of something far more sinister.
His zombie approached. The father’s eyes met Eli’s gaze, a silent plea for salvation that cut through the layers of eternal damnation. Eli’s spectral form wavered in response, but no miracle came. Instead, the family’s screams filled the night as the cycle of horror continued unabated.
In the aftermath, while the sun rose over the desolate remains, Eli bolstered above the wreckage. The family was gone, their lives snuffed out by a fate that seemed to mock the very concept of divine providence. Eli was left with the hollow realization that in this twisted new world, providence was a mere illusion, a cruel design that bound him to an endless cycle of witnessing his own monstrous deeds.
The days turned into an unending cycle of despair. Eli Harper’s ghost remained a silent witness to the horrors his undead form wrought. The idea of divine providence was a cosmic script lacking redemption. For him there was only the unrelenting torment of an eternity bound to a fate he could neither change nor escape.
