Posthumous

“I only write when I’m falling in love or falling apart.” – Rudy Francisco

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Author: Jason Thomas aka Xxodia

Genre: Literary Fiction / Psychological Prose

Theme: Mortality

Voice: Lyrical, Introspective, Poetic Realism

Perspective: First-Person, Deep Interior Monologue

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The night cradles me in its vast, unblinking quiet, and at last, the decision comes. Death does not arrive as a thief, but as a lantern in the dark—its light neither warning nor threat, only invitation. It is the hush after the storm has burned itself empty, the tide settling into its slow, eternal rhythm. I am worn thin until nothing remains but the bare frame of who I once was. My rebellions have gone silent; even the small wars waged against my own breath have surrendered.

This is not defeat. It is the final act. I no longer have the strength to resist.

And in that stillness, I understand—some storms never pass. They only teach you to stop waiting for the sun.

I imagine the end not as a collapse but as a slow unraveling—silk slipping from the shoulders. No more questions. No more hunger for what will never come. I think of the years spent clinging to the edges of myself, of the hands I reached for that only tightened the air around me. Somewhere, a clock ticks. Somewhere, a new day stirs. But here, in the hollow between breaths, time has loosened its grip.

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I have been walking toward this moment since I was six. Back then, I knew only death’s shadow—lingering in hospital rooms and family kitchens, stitched into the muffled sobs of adults who thought they were whispering. It pressed its cold, sobering hand against my frantic heart and refused to let go. No one explained. Answers vanished into silence. All I understood was the crying, the absence, and the strange truth that life could disappear without asking permission.

In time, the shadow stopped following and began to lead—down corridors I thought were my own choosing, whispering into the decisions I made. Every goodbye grew heavier, each loss an echo that chipped away at the walls I’d built to keep myself here. I learned to smile with one side of my mouth and mourn with the other, carrying grief like an organ I could never remove. Tonight is not impulse; it is the closing of a chapter that began before I could spell my name.

The truth presses harder in the quiet, seeping in like cold through a cracked window. I am not simply aging—I am eroding. Each year drags the carcass of the one before until my bones groan beneath it. I have grown tired in ways that sleep cannot mend. Age stalks me like a slow, relentless hunter, and there is no outrunning it—only the knowledge that, when it catches me, nothing worth keeping will remain.

What terrifies me is not death. It is the living on—the slow, humiliating unraveling of strength and dignity. The prison of a body that remembers its own fire but can no longer summon the spark. To remain is to watch myself fade frame by frame, as if the years themselves are mocking what I used to be. Life, once a horizon, has become a narrowing corridor. And when the walls finally close in, there will be no room left for me at all.

I am only thirty-two, yet I feel as though I have lived enough lifetimes to wear each one to threads. People say youth is a threshold from which everything good still lies ahead, but I no longer trust the horizon. Death is not, for me, the coward’s back door to escape the machinery of days—it is the clean break before the rust sets in, before the world decides what I will become. I have seen the quiet dimming in the eyes of those who stayed too long, watched their dreams shrink to fit the corners of their lives. I would rather walk out while I can still feel the weight of choice in my hands, before habit replaces hunger and the pulse of living flattens into survival.

Because after a certain point, life becomes a book you keep reading only to find the same ending in every chapter. Loves that turned brittle. Dreams that starved. Faith that curdled. Happiness lost not in great tragedies, but in small, steady failures that pile until they eclipse the sun. I do not fear the blank pages ahead; I fear the ones already written in invisible ink, waiting to bleed through. If my story must end, let it end here, in my own hand, before the world writes me into someone I no longer recognize.

My life plays out not as a single thread, but as a tapestry frayed at every edge. I see the bright patches—small victories stitched in gold—that once carried me forward. The job I thought would change me, the love I believed could save me, the nights when laughter came easily. But between them stretch swaths of shadow, woven from false starts and promises I could never keep. Friendships left to wither. Ambitions abandoned mid-bloom. The beautiful and the broken piled together until I can no longer tell them apart.

I think of my family—my mother’s eyes sharp enough to find a lie in the dark, my father’s absence stretching over twenty-six years. He has aged entirely in my imagination, a face made of memory and invention. We have lived divided not only by miles but by the things we never said. My mother will feel this before she knows it, the way a storm announces itself in the bones. My father will hear my name and flinch, as though it is a sound he has forgotten how to hold. They will inherit my shadow: a plate set for one less, a chair always pulled in, photographs left out longer than they should be. My absence will live in the smallest spaces.

The quiet feels heavier now, as if the air itself knows. My body sits still, but inside, a tide rises and falls against the walls of my chest. Memories gather like uninvited guests. They do not speak—just watch, patient and certain of their victory. I glance around, not searching, but memorizing: the curve of the chair beneath my fingers, the hum of the refrigerator, the scent of detergent clinging to my shirt. Everything painfully ordinary. Everything ready to go on without me. Somewhere, I imagine, someone is laughing in a kitchen. The sound doesn’t reach me, but the shape of it does.

Somewhere in that thought, a strange calm settles. Not peace—peace is too far—but an acceptance, as if the night has agreed to hold me a little longer. My breath steadies, my pulse loosens. I think of my mother’s voice, my father’s absence, my siblings’ laughter. The thought folds itself gently into my chest. I am not running toward or away. I am simply standing at the edge, waiting for the world to grow quiet enough to let me go.

The edges of the room begin to dissolve. Moonlight softens into haze, swallowing corners and blurring lines. I cannot tell where the air ends and my skin begins. Sounds sharpen briefly—the hum of the fridge, the rustle of night wind—as if played just for me, a final performance before the curtain falls. My heartbeat slows, each thud farther apart, each one less urgent. I am sinking, pulled into something vast and warm that welcomes without question. The sounds fade. The light dims. Even the weight of my body slips away.

And then, like a candle giving its last breath to the dark, I am gone—leaving behind nothing but the faint warmth where I once was, and the echo of a life that will not call my name again.

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“Never have I dealt with anything more difficult than my own soul, which sometimes helps me and sometimes opposes me.” – Imam al-Ghazali