Suns and Lovers

Freddie Mercury sipped his Ricker bourbon. The black sun’s purplish halo cast eerie obscurities all over the empty space. He set his spaceship, The Astro-logger, to a crawl using the ‘explore mode’ auto-pilot feature. Rechecking all the controls and meters and finding the readings satisfactory, Freddie climbed to the upper deck to gaze into the nothingness.

He connected his ancient iPhone 97 to the deck’s stereo system and selected a song and clicked play. Kurt Cobain’s mournful voice filled the space.

“… I searched for form and land

For years and years, I roamed

I gazed a gazeless stare

At all the millions here

I must have died alone

A long, long time ago…”

Freddie could relate to these words. After all, to his knowledge, he was the only living being in almost all 235 discovered galaxies. Eons ago he was exposed to a Magnaron radiation which had stopped his aging and had made him completely immune to almost everything. Freddie Mercury looked 40, but in reality, even he had forgotten how old he was.

Most of his past remained forgotten, however hard he tried. He didn’t know if he ever was married or if he ever had any kids. He remembered few of his recent lovers, but memories of them remained hazy. There was this ravishing Byzovian woman in a distant planet belonging to the Andromeda galaxy, the thought of whom made him smile. He used to go by the name Angus Young then. He couldn’t for the world of him remember her name or how she looked. All he remembered of her was that she was a demon in the sack. Their lovemaking sessions usually lasted days, with one unforgettable session lasting almost a week that nearly killed them both. He filed that precious memory for later perusal.

His reverie was broken by a distant boom. He rubbed his hands with glee and focused his powerful Pylor telescope towards the general vicinity of the noise. The black sun was devouring one of the two last remaining planets in this galaxy. It was a surreal sight, the gigantic dying sun engulfing planetary mass with its all-consuming purpose, but one which he had witnessed many a time.

His stomach grumbled. He grinned slyly, his eyes taking in the spectacle still unfolding.

“Soon. I will satiate your hunger, my friend. We have all the time in this universe.”

He fixed himself another stiff drink – A Zancagian brew this time, potent enough to knock an elephant cold. Elephants! Where did the thought about those long-extinct creatures come from? His stomach’s rumbling suggested that it would have digested a whole elephant.

“Mmm.. the Zancagians really knew their drinks, yeah”, he took another sip from his glass, savoring the burning sensation it caused as the drink trickled down his throat. He remembered his first time drinking the brew, it’s potency almost knocking him out. His Zancagian lover had laughed at him and then promptly kissed him.

‘Elt’, His lover used to call him, short for Elton John. Freddie, as was the norm these days, couldn’t remember his lover’s face or name. All Freddie remembered was his four muscular arms and his ripped body. He remembered the wonderful, passionate moments they had spent together. He also remembered how his lover tasted. It was such a pity that the Zancagian died so young. All his lovers were dead, well, all living creatures were dead. Most of the galaxies were dead as well. And here he was, all alone in the M101 galaxy also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, and he was here to witness its extinction. By his estimate, the Black Sun would cease to exist in eight to ten days and he would be off to some other forsaken Galaxy in search of life and hopefully some companionship. That was all that remained of him – Hunger and Lust, though he didn’t find the difference between the both anymore. All the other basic emotions had been eroded away by the ceaseless passage of time.

He sifted through his song library. It was time to change his name again. He’d been Freddie Mercury far too long. He had a plan of renaming himself Michael Jackson, but a random listening of ‘Rainy Day Blues’ had made him lean towards Wynton Marsalis.

“What’s the whole bloody point?”, he wondered aloud. “Who’s gonna call me by my name? I could start referring myself as ‘Lone Space Donkey’ for all I care.” He flung the crystal whiskey glass towards the wall of The Astro-logger and smiled with grim satisfaction as it smashed into smithereens, not unlike how whole Universes and Galaxies ended, dissolving into the all-consuming nothingness.

The distant boom increased to a loud crack. The planet was almost gone. One last planet to go in this Galaxy and then the Black Sun would be history. His stomach grumbled, protesting violently.

“Ah! Well, a little snack wouldn’t hurt. Also, it would be good to see… eh! Can’t remember her name as well.”

The ‘her’was his most recent lover – the last human being ever. Freddie wiped his mouth, he didn’t consider himself human anymore. He was one with the Universes – or at least what remained of them. He bolted down the stairs to the pantry and opened the cryo-freeze unit.

“Hello, My love. How are you doing these days?”

The frozen head of the once-gorgeous human stared back at him with her unblinking eyes. With a longing sigh, Freddie whipped out a carving knife and cut out a couple of fingers from her headless torso. The Black Sun had completely consumed the planet. With a greedy look at the Sun, he started chewing the fingers.

Suns and Lovers – He ate them all.