Ives reached one million. He finally did it. After one hundred million days, he reached the number one million, after restarting here and there due to the occasional mental breakdown.

He broke down about one hundred thousand times.

Still, the chair held up pretty nicely, if you asked Ives. He couldn’t respond—no, how could he. He was soulless.

It was then and only then that the reaper of reapers No Body visited. He had been waiting.

No Body remained silent. Nothing was exchanged between the two except for cold breaths. Bones crackled like those of a fireplace. Of course, No Body had no skeleton.

Finally, after an eternally long thirty seconds, No Body coughed.

“Ives. Son of Christa and John. Owner of the mighty Rocky. I love cats by the way.” No Body emitted smiling energy.

“I’ve come to clean you up,” No Body said, and as he paced around, he noticed Ives’s eyes were slowly, drudgingly, painfully following. They inched pixels forward and back.

“Good.” He said. “There’s still something in there. Well. Congratulations. You made it to the end times. For us old geezers, at least.”

No Body snapped. They teleported into the cosmos and floated about.

“There’s nothing left for you, Ives,” No Body said.

“Your family and all you care about is dead.

“The other gods were supposed to tell you to leave, correct?

“Yet, you remain. Counting to infinity.

“All that you care about is gone.

“Your family, your pet, even Athena.

He crept closer.

“Even Athena.”

Ives punched No Body in the face. His fist sliced through air and caught a veil. No Body had no body and therefore no contact, but at least Ives thought he had a face.

Ives sighed. He was alone in the universe. Nobody would be coming for him. He may as well float endlessly.

Ives coughed. That was when he noticed he had been sick. Not the cool kind.

Ives gasped for air and found none. He remained permanently on the edge of breath.

It was as if he were stuck forever between panic and drowning. It was as if he danced between the lines of blood loss and unconsciousness. He cried. Every tear stabbed him, driving nails into his coffin. The worst part was that he had nobody around to distract himself with. Nobody except for the five or so apparitions surrounding him, constantly chattering him. They looked an awful lot like him, and when he blinked, they phased into and out of existence.

Was this a dream? Actually, did he ever sleep?

He had no escape. He may as well fall off and disintegrate. Pluto over there looked like a cool option, if it weren’t actually hundreds of thousands of light years away, mocking him.

But then, the words of the goddess Athena returned to him.

Don’t leave that chair—no matter what.

His hands gripped his chair.

How stupid, he thought, and so he continued his numbers game.