Eternity

The story of Afterbirth, North Dakota first came to my attention through back issues of the Bismarck Daily Sentinel, which I was reading for my own private purposes. This was before the Great War, of course, and many of its pages were concerned with the tensions that anticipated it, but the paper still made space for local occurrences. Many of these were of little import: the winners of local contests, the highlights of a fair, a new building being erected to house the blighted state’s government, and … a stray mention of Afterbirth, found abandoned at high summer.

This is the deal that you will make with the endless void in the moment of your death: you will fill it with the fruit of your soul, and when you have nothing more to give you will be part of it. The void is as large as the world and as small as a teaspoon, and at first it does not seem like such a hard thing to fill it. Perhaps you will last longer than your predecessor. ...