Savior of a World
An Edgy Catholic Five-Sentence Horror Story
By Joseph Cillo, Jr.

The fires continued to burn, like the everlasting flames of Satan's infernal realm, though no one remained alive to dispose of the infected corpses. They who once fed the inferno with that grisly fuel, those who would have been charged with cutting off the abundant flow of natural gas from the seemingly inexhaustible source piped in from wherever such supplies are held, had themselves expired, victims of the plague they had fought so hard to contain, and now they lay rotting where they had fallen, unable to turn the valve and extinguish the flames of this mockery of hell.

I walked alone among the fallen, the stench of death filling my nostrils, my sins unabsolved, with no priest left to hear my confession, last of my kind, the loss of so many souls laid to my charge, the extermination of all that was human, the guilt heavy upon me, my only hope, perfect contrition. Unfathomable divine mercy, I had tested its depths, and now the dry cough, the fever, the plague of my design, would lead me to the judge to make my plea.

For all these sins yet on my head, I had, after all, saved the planet.