Footprints in the Sand
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Footprints in the Sand
One night, a man had a dream. He dreamt that he was walking across a beautiful, deserted beach. Seagulls wheeled overhead, waves crashed against the white sands, and the wind blew gently in his hair.
As he strolled across the damp sand, the sky began to darken. The sun faded, the clouds scudded away, and above his head, a million stars began to glitter like pinpricks in the tarpaulin of reality.
Suddenly scenes from his life began to appear, one after another in rapid succession. Each scene faded as quickly as it had come.
Soon the wind began to pick up while overhead the stars flared into supernovae and galaxies themselves burned and died. Before long, the sky was jet black and all that lit the beach was a pale sickly light, a corpse-light, a light that illuminated nothing because nothing was the only thing to be seen.
But then, in the distance, just visible against the eery darkness of the sky, a robed figure appeared, casually strolling along the sands as if out for an evening walk.
The man hurried to catch up with him.
“Excuse me, sir,” he shouted over the howling of the wind, “would you mind waiting for me.”
The cowled figure paused, leaning on what appeared to be a wooden walking stick.
The man caught up with the stranger, then turned to look back across the sands he had been walking across for the past few hours.
“That’s odd,” he said. “I’d expected to see …”
“EXPECTED TO SEE?” said a voice like granite slabs grinding together.
“Er … well, footprints? Isn’t this the point in the dream where I look back and see two sets of footprints, except at the point in my life where things were toughest, which is when you say: ‘My son, those are the times I carried you.’”
There was an awkward silence.
“THIS MAY NOT BE THE MOTIVATIONAL POSTER YOU WERE LOOKING FOR,” said the robed figure, throwing back his cowl to reveal the smooth, white form of a grinning skull. It might have reminded you of a billiard ball, if billiard balls had perfect teeth and eye sockets with small flames in them.
“Are you … are you … Death?” asked the man timidly.
“I AM HE,” said Death. “I WOULD HAVE THOUGHT THE SCYTHE WAS A CLUE.”
The man stared. It hadn’t been a walking stick after all.
“I DID TRY AN ELECTRIC STRIMMER ONCE,” remarked Death, conversationally, “IT’S GOOD TO MODERNISE. BUT THE LOOK WASN’T RIGHT.”
“The Death? I mean, the grim reaper, the harvester of souls, the destroyer of worlds?”
“I PREFER TO THINK OF MYSELF MORE AS A SNAPPER-UP OF INCONSIDERED TRIFLES,” said Death.
“What do you mean, ‘inconsidered trifles’?”
“WELL,” said Death, scratching his head with a bony digit. It sounded like the finger of fate being dragged across the blackboard of reality. “ABOUT THOSE MISSING FOOTPRINTS …”
“So I’m … dead? Not just … asleep?”
“SLEEP? AS IN PERCHANCE TO DREAM. OR, IN YOUR CASE, PERCHANCE TO DIE OF A HEART ATTACK AT 3AM.” Death offered out a paper bag full of sweets. “JELLY BABY?”
The man shook his head and looked back across the empty sands. There was nothing to show he had ever walked that way.
“Did my life really leave no trace?” the man asked, plaintively.
“NONE. NADA. ZILCH. OTHER SYNONYMS ARE AVAILABLE IF YOU WISH.”
“But my friends, my family, surely they must have remembered me?”
“HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF THE WORD ‘AEON’?” asked Death.
“Aeon?”
“‘AEON’,” repeated Death. “FROM THE LATIN ‘AEON’. WHICH MEANS: ‘AEON’. IT’S A LONG TIME. YOU WERE REMEMBERED—BRIEFLY. BUT THEN THEY DIED. THEIR DESCENDANTS DIED. HUMANITY DIED. NOW THERE IS JUST ME. DEATH. THE LAST WORD.”
“But that seems unfair,” protested the man, “death—I mean, you—can’t be the end. What about justice?”
“THERE’S NO JUSTICE. THERE’S JUST US. AND YOU NOT FOR MUCH LONGER, YOU’RE ALREADY FADING.”
The man looked at his arm; it was indeed slightly translucent.
“I can see the sand through it!” he cried in alarm.
“WOULD IT INTEREST YOU TO KNOW THAT WHITE SAND LIKE THIS IS LARGELY THE POWDERED SHELLS AND SKELETONS OF WHAT WERE ONCE LIVING CREATURES?”
“This is no time for trivia!”
“I HAVE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD. LITERALLY AND METAPHORICALLY,” said Death. “WHEREAS YOU HAVE ABOUT 30 SECONDS.”
“But are you saying that life—my life, human life, all life—is pointless and worthless and was just for—just for this,” the man cried, sweeping his hand across the empty beach and the void of the sky.
“YES.”
The man was scrabbling desperately for any lifeline now. “What if I said I don’t believe in you? I’ve no time for God and all that religious stuff.”
“GOD?” said Death. He tipped his head on one side, thoughtfully, as the flame in his eye sockets grew a darker red. “THERE I CAN’T HELP YOU,” he said. “FINAL OBLIVION IS MY DEPARTMENT. THAT AND TAXES.”
“Was that a joke?”
“PROBABLY. YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED I AM ALWAYS GRINNING.”
There was a long silence.
“Is it too late for a death bed conversion?” pleaded the man.
“I DON’T HAVE A BED,” said Death. “I TRIED ONE ONCE BUT I JUST LAY THERE, FULLY AWAKE, AS AGES ROSE AND FELL AROUND ME.”
“This feels all wrong,” said the man, beginning to weep. “I mean—I’d always told my friends that when it came to death, there was nothing to be afraid of.”
There was a final, even longer, silence, before Death spoke one last time:
“NOTHING IS PRECISELY THE THING TO BE AFRAID OF.”
~ + ~
Author’s Note
I owe a nod of thanks to Terry Pratchett (from whom I borrowed Death’s use of capitals). I also owe a tip of the hat to Andy Kind, who has a version of this same idea in his brilliant book of short stories A Blanket of Embers. I’d been playing around with subverting the Footprints poem for years (as I have a natural aversion to inspirational posters). When I saw what Andy did with it (and I think his version is even darker than mine) I knew I had to finally put pen to paper.
And if you’re thinking: “Wow, this story was bleak!” then here’s a thought: short stories written by Christians don’t always need to have happy endings. Sometimes a bleak or dystopian ending can be as powerful—and perhaps our natural instinct to protest “It shouldn’t be like this!” is a clue to a bigger story.
If you’d like to explore that bigger story, do check out my book, Have You Ever Wondered? More on that here …
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