Grant Me Death

A mercenary seeks atonement after his body dies

Created on Midjourney

Forever cursed, Leonid wandered a barren world, long after the rest of its inhabitants were gone. In life, he had been a mercenary, fighting at the behest of despots, never caring for the lives he ended or those he ruined. He had seen himself as a soldier.

But when he, himself had fallen on a battlefield far from his home, he had somehow risen again. His heart did not beat. His lungs did not breathe. Yet he rose, a relentless need to make amends driving his inanimate corpse.

That had been so very long ago. Civilizations had risen and fallen while Leonid pursued his hopeless quest to right his many wrongs. He had been shunned, hounded, harried. Dogs had eaten his flesh and what they had left had long ago rotted away, leaving only his skeletal remains.

Yet this was not enough to end his miserable existence. Still he wandered; still the need to atone drove him, though where his consciousness came from without a brain, he had long ago given up wondering.

He neither thirsted for water nor hungered for food. Only an absolution for his crimes would allow him to rest. An absolution that would never come. Eventually he went mad. He found an old phone booth. Though there was no phone attached, he stood beside it, “calling” all he had killed or otherwise harmed, begging forgiveness.

But forgiveness was not forthcoming and never would be. Leonid was damned, and this was his private hell. Eternity stretched out before him, as even the phone booth began to crumble. Eventually, there would be no sign, other than his own existence, that sapient beings had ever existed on this world. Perhaps then, he would be allowed to rest.

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This is a dark one. I created the image for this story many months before writing it. I used the title for another story “When Death Comes Calling” for the image prompt. If you missed it, you can read that story here:

When Death Comes Calling

You can read the comic version of it (Illustrated by Jason McBride of Weirdo Poetry) here:

When Death Comes Calling The Comic

The skeleton in the picture looks to me like its wearing the remains of an old suit of armor of some description. I asked myself what a skeleton would be doing at a phone booth. Given what’s happening with mercenaries in Putin’s war, I thought up a character who was cursed to forever atone for his war crimes.

I deliberately didn’t say why Leonid is left alone for eternity. Did the inhabitants of his world die off? Did they destroy themselves? Or did they abandon their birthplace, migrating to other worlds?

Let me know what your thoughts are on this story in the comments. Is Leonid getting his just desserts, or should he be let off the hook now that everyone else is gone from his planet?