These aren't the stories your mother told you.

No, these are the other stories.

A kiss at the end of all things, written by Daniel Wilcox, narrated by Justin Fife.

There once was a time when the world wasn't so dead.

When birds had flown the skies and the seasons meant something, Before the earth had browned and shrunk like

an apple left out in the sun, and long before humanity had turned from an almighty raucous

to a mouse's whisper, a long time ago now, once upon a time. The roads were endless and barren.

Trotting hoofs echoed and bounced off the hills and the valleys as the knight rode on,

ever on, one man and his steed alone.

There had been a time when the roads had been dangerous.

Who knew when a bandit or a group of starving mercenaries would hop out from the bushes

and hold up an innocent passer-by.

But now, the night rode on without fear.

There wasn't much to fear when death approached from all sides.

Like a puppy in a cage loaded with the most minimal voltages, that puppy will eventually find a way to sleep.

When the pain is all that is known, it is the last thing to be noticed.

Dawn turned to day, turned to dusk, turned to night, a repetition.

Still, he rode on past the skeletons of trees, blackened and dying, past the rivers

and estuaries, which once had chuckled

and flowed with a carefree spirit of a fool, but now, which choked and spluttered in the dregs

of a dying man's gasp, past the villages and houses that had once been overpopulated,

to the point where several families had shared living quarters during the raids, during the riots, when the bombs went off and the smog covered the lands.

...