You start with yourself.

Before anything grand can happen, you have to make a decision. A vow of dedication to your cause. Your ideals. Your path to reforming the world. The one that won’t forget you to the last seconds of your life and far beyond in neither heaven nor hell. Now that you have picked your door in the corridor of choices, you walk in, and the door locks itself behind you. The exhilarating click of devout commitment.

You start with a person.

It’s surprisingly hard to wield a knife properly, but your palms aren’t sweating. Cool and clenched and excited. Confident, too, that you can achieve what you set out to gain. You finish, and the curtains are raised on the show you’re about to steal. The things you do are nothing short of theatrical and grand, just like a musical with marionettes as actors. You are the planet’s new puppeteer.

You work with the world.

They’re afraid. They’re amazed. They’re in love. Their cries of pain and adoration are stuffed in a blender and create the result of a song you can’t stop listening to. The sound of the world’s new ruler, you, is the most fantastic smoothie flavor. And because you think so, the world agrees. The world would agree even if you told them to stick their heads into working ovens. But you don’t have to tell them; they’re already doing it by themselves.

You’ve crushed your enemies.

They’re gone. Rose colored goggles are banned and your vision is mandatory. There is nothing louder than the pleased squeals of your ego rolling in fits of glee and gold, because there is no one more powerful in the world than you. Acknowledging that fact creates a manic high in which you’ve never been greater. You enjoy green days of autocratic cocaine, and this is how it will be for the rest of your glorious life. The world is a ball of clay in your hand, and you have shaped it exactly to your dreams. Goals. There was no other way for the world, you think, and your way is the perfect one. You are the perfect one. You have succeeded. You are atop a mountain of corpses. The thought nearly makes you swoon in delight. You are the king of all kings, king of death; you can kill anyone you please; that is how powerful you are; that is how you got so powerful. You have killed, and the blood adds a finishing touch to your crown.

And then the smell hits you.

Looking down from the dizzying height of hundreds of thousands of bodies piled up, you finally recognize who you have ended. The people who are equal in death along with the people you held a sentimental streak for. Blood leaking out of their mouths, X’s on their eyes, limp arms and hands you touched not so long ago. Mouths that were talking, eyes that were darting, and arms and hands that were moving beside you, now rotting. Is this guilt? It isn’t; it’s fear and desperation. Because it’s obvious now that you can’t win this fight. The bodies sink into the ground and decompose at a frightening, landslide-like rate, the earth is flooded as it once did in the Bible with blood and sin, and you are falling with the ones you felled. Your throne is yanked from beneath you, you are dragged down by the arms of the vengeful dead, your cape and fancy embroidery are dyed in death, and your crown sinks with a plop in the gristle and mud as if it had never been important.
And then you are falling. Such a long fall. You scream for the gods above, but none answer, for there was no one higher than you. There is no hope for you any longer, you just have to accept the fact of failure…

All you can hear now are clicks. Plenty of clicks. A promise of the past you now die with, fullfilled but not completely. For everything and everyone, no matter how great or how puny, are equal in death. You are the same as the next guy, and you cannot bear the thought of that. It is worse than nothingness itself; it is worse than betrayal; it is the feeling of your intestines having arrived in death before you have. You have no second chances, second breaths, or second lives. Only the face of failure.

And you die, and there is nothing beyond that.

It ends with yourself.