Swamp Thing - The End (Fan fiction)

For those unfamilair with DC's Swamp Thing...it would take too long to explain properly. Suffice to say he is part man, part earth elemental and the last time I read the comic, he had effectivley become the world -spirit.

This story imagines the last ever Swamp Thing tale and is presented for amusement only (ST is of course copyrighted by DC and was created by Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson).............

4 billion years have passed and the traveller returns. He spent long-short years travelling the narrow confines of the Milky Way , has seen the best and worst that the Andromedans could offer and visited the galaxy clusters in the constellation Virgo.

As he re-enters the solar system at near light speeds he carves a wake through space/time that shakes new Comets from the Oort cloud and judders the outer planets in their orbits.

He feels the pressure of the solar wind. It pummels his face and shoulders until he slows down sharply in a cascade of tachyons and bremsstrahlung radiation.

Within hours he passes the asteroid belt and reaches the inner circle of planets.

The sun is bloated.

Its face is fat and red. It’s middle has expanded to fill the orbit of venus.

The earth remains. Its atmosphere tattered. Its magnetosphere engulfed by the savage embrace of the sun.

And yet life clings.

In deep valleys between the feet and toes of glaciers.

In deep caverns below the desert at the waist of the world.

The travellers lands in the far north.

His old fortress is long gone.

He sculpts a new home from the ice. It is as elegant and intricate.

A snowflake born of the fire from his eyes.

Something quickens within the earth itself.

A consciousness re-awakened by the presence of sentience.

Glaciers rumble, their long road to the equator paused for a moment while the parliament of ice convenes.

Between them fungi, molds and mosses grow and spread.

The traveller hears his name whispered on the wind and on the wall of his lonely fortress a fairy ring of strange mushrooms grows. Spurting and puffing with ancient forms, it takes the shape of a man.

For the traveller , this interruption is at once welcome and a bore. The creature forms and moves with glacial slowness. Years seem to pass (though they are only minutes) before it opens its mouth and starts to speak.

“You missed them” “they’ve all gone” “ all of them” “Long ago” “Gone” “Gone” “Gone”.

“I got distracted” says the traveller sadly. “I came to say goodbye to the only place that ever felt like home. And it’s changed beyond reckoning”

The EarthThing shrugs “You were always more human than Kryptonian.”

There is a long pause before it goes on

“ No-one who leaves can ever really go home. Those of us who stay are changed or worse , we stay the same. Trapped forever in the ice of our own choices”

“It’s good that you came back Clark. Otherwise I would have slept and missed the ending”

“It could be months or even years away” says Superman.

“No” says the earththing.

“Look up”

Above them there is no real sky. The swollen sun fills the void with red.

At it’s heart a huge hole has appeared. A black pit in a fiery hell.

“The sun is drawing breath” says the EarthThing “When it exhales, the Earth will die and so will I”

“Come with me” says Superman “You’ve left before. The universe has many wonders”

“No” replies the EarthThing “I was too much Alec Holland then and did not know my place. I’ve slept for a long, long time, but still I’ve lived too long and seen too many triumphs and too many tragedies. I am beyond tired.”

“But what of you, no other creature has lived so long”.

“I have travelled far and fast. So fast, the years slipped by between the blinking of my eyes. I’ve seen much. But not everything. I wanted, once more at least, to see the Sun that first gave me my strength.”

“ It’s been good to meet a friend when all that I expected to see were ghosts and memories buried beneath the ice.”

They talk and reminisce of heroes and villains from the past. The EarthThing tells the tale of man and his successors. But it cannot last for long.

Doom hangs over them and far too soon the EarthThing senses a change in the Suns magnetosphere. It resonates with his remaining aura and causes pain or the closest feeling he can ascribe to it.

“It’s time” says the EarthThing. “Goodbye” and dissipates in a flurry of broken fungi. The moss and lichen fall into the snow.

“Goodbye”

As Superman leaves the earth he turns and looks below. Eyes the size of continents seem to look back at him. They twinkle in the red light of reflecting ice.

By the time he reaches the Asteroid belt, the hole in the sun has begun to invert. The magnetic pool, filled with burning hydrogen becomes a slingshot and flings it’s contents into the path of the Earth.

For an instant, the Earth is gone. Then it returns.

Its surface licked clean of features

All life extinguished.

All vestiges of humanity erased.

No earthly thing remains.