Posts Tagged ‘Death’

17 items.

Leaf and Bone Harmony

by Jenna on April 19th, 2004

Once upon a time, there was tea. It was a good tea. But it lived in the house of death.

“Some day,” it said, “Death will take me from this pot.”

In his bleak cathedral, Death turns towards the tea. He points a bony finger. “All things die,” he says. “All things end. There is no beginning that hath not an ending. Children shall die. They shall die in fire. In water. In sorrow. In pain. They shall be hit by busses. They shall be slain by tornadoes. They shall be killed by stupid people who don’t know any better, and nasty people who rather do. All their promise, snuffed out; and not because it is right, and not because it is better, but because this is the doctrine of endings.”

“Death will take me from this pot,
And he’ll put me in water.”

“The glories of the past shall be forgotten,” Death says, “and the glories of today shall neither be remembered. Wood shall rot. Stone shall crumble. Voices shall go silent. Cats no more go ‘meow’.”

“Death will take me from this pot,
And he’ll put me in water,
And he’ll steep me,
And all the goodness will come out of me and into the water.”

“ALL WORKS OF MAN ARE FOLLY,” thunders Death, and the sky outside of his cathedral lights up with summer fire. Softly, he says, “all works of man are folly; and if ye know not one thing else, know that.”

“Death will take me from this pot,
And he’ll put me in water,
And he’ll steep me,
And all the goodness will come out of me and into the water.

And he’ll drink me,
And it will flow into him.”

“There is no hope,” says Death. “There is only madness. There is only the knowledge that nothing you ever do shall have meaning; that the world does not love you, does not know you; that your time on this Earth is a passing dream.”

“Death will take me from this pot,
And he’ll put me in water,
And he’ll steep me,
And all the goodness will come out of me and into the water.

And he’ll drink me,
And it will flow into him;
And from there, into the world.”

“And the world shall know endless days of death and pain, and all the history of humankind in sorrow, until the Earth at last grows tired and surrenders to the burden of its age.”

“And he’ll drink me,
And it will flow into him;
And from there, into the world.
And the world will know that goodness,
And grow tea.”

Death puts on the water. He watches the pot. Time passes.

└ Tags:
8 Comments

Making Three

by Jenna on April 21st, 2004

Death and Life are at a party. Death flirts with Life. Life flirts back. Next thing you know, it’s off with the robes.

“You’re so hard,” Life comments, running her hands over Death’s ribcage.

“Ossific,” Death confirms, leaning in for a kiss. “Or, perhaps, ossifilicious.”

“Mm,” Life says.

That’s all that there was to it, or at least all there was supposed to be; but it didn’t take very long before Death got the call.

“There’s a pink line,” Life says. “Well, two.”

“I didn’t even know I was virile,” Death admits. But when the baby comes, she’s really bony, so he has to admit it’s pretty likely.

It isn’t bad, really, even though life and death have busy schedules that don’t often meet. They name the girl Jill and raise her in the twilight place between their kingdoms. She nurses on life and has death’s tending.

“Peekaboo,” Death says. He covers the child’s eyes with his hand. It’s bony, but she’s pretty young, so she has small eyes. She wriggles her nose. He removes his hand. She beams.

“Peekaboo,” Death says. He covers the child’s eyes with his hand. She wriggles her nose. He removes his hand. She beams.

“Peekaboo,” Death adds. He covers the child’s eyes with his hand. She wriggles her nose. He removes his hand. Death is gone. Jill looks around in confusion. She begins to wail. Soon Life rushes in.

“What are you doing?” Life asks, annoyed.

Death reappears. He looks confused at her annoyance. “It’s peekaboo,” he says. “I’m teaching her object permanence.”

└ Tags: ,
2 Comments

Brick Road

by Jenna on August 30th, 2004

“They say the Wizard did a favor for an angel once,” Saul says.

Clair sighs. “I don’t want to hear your crazy theories about the Wizard.”

“So the angel granted him three wishes. And he said, ‘I wish to always win at cards, if I want to; and that anyone who sits down in that chair won’t be able to get up without my permission; and anyone who climbs my old orange tree, why, without my permission, they won’t be able to come down.’”

“The Wizard’s a myth,” Clair says. “This is a naturally occurring fairyland. It doesn’t require a Wizard.”

“And that’s why nobody ever dies here,” Saul says. “Because Death’s stuck up in the Wizard’s tree, and he can’t come down.”

“Fairyland,” Clair emphasizes.

“Well,” Saul says. “We’re going to find out soon.”

“Oh?”

Saul looks insufferably smug. “I got a call from my contact in Puzzleville,” he says. “He says he can blow the conspiracy wide open. He’s going to expose all the lies, Clair. The Brick Road. The Wizard. Fairyland. We’re going to know the truth.”

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

Saul and Clair stroll through the woods. Puzzleville fades in slowly. One or two pieces of the dirt path seem like odd stones: on closer examination, they are jigsaw pieces. Green ropes of dangling jigsaw hang from the tree branches overhead. Slowly but surely the entire world becomes a jigsaw construction, until the grand jigsaw gate rears over it all, surmounted by a sign reading PUZZ_EVILLE. Part of the sign has fallen to the ground and broken, and two jigsaw children work fervently to reassemble it.

Clair points at a smaller sign, off to the side. “Fragile,” she says. “Please do not apply concussive force.”

“Guess you’d better not go wild on the drums,” Saul says.

“I forgot to bring them,” she says. “I guess fate loves a jigsaw.”

They walk towards the building labelled, “Saul’s Contact’s House.” They’re easy. They’re relaxed. Then there’s a horrible crunching, crashing sound from within.

“Clair,” Saul says.

Clair draws her gun. They advance slowly towards the building. Its entire facade crashes down on them in a rain of jigsaw pieces. The creature roars out.

A physical description does the creature no justice, for its physical form is an unassuming jackanapes. For a resident of Fairyland, its deformities are minor. It has wheels attached to its arms and legs, instead of hands and feet. The long tails of its coat jut back stiffly, like an animal’s tail bristling. Its moustaches are sharp. None of these things disturb Saul or Clair, but there is an animal ferocity and a demoniac madness on its face that makes it horrible. It is a thing that hungers, and its hungers are dark. The venom of its glance strikes like a blow, and Saul falls over backwards.

“Catch it, Clair!” he shouts.

Clair fires, once, twice, three times. The first bullet strikes its shoulder but does not slow its advance. The second bullet, dead into its forehead, sends it twisting back and around. The third prompts the creature to scream, high and terrible. It twitches and goes still.

“Cover it,” she says. Saul crawls into a sitting position, pulls his own gun, and holds it trained on the creature.

Clair advances gingerly. She puts two fingers to the side of its neck. “Unconscious,” she says.

“I’ll check out the building,” Saul says.

Saul goes inside. Clair efficiently strips off the creature’s tires and puts its wheels up on improvised blocks. She clips a long metal rod to its bow tie so that the creature cannot twist its neck. Then she waits. After a moment, Saul comes out. He shakes his head.

“He’s in pieces,” Saul says. He turns. He looks up and down the street. He shouts, “Hey! We need an assembly squad, stat!”

A few jigsaw people poke their heads out from nearby buildings. Reluctantly, subduedly, they go into the ruins and begin assembling Saul’s contact.

“It’ll be at least three hours,” Saul says. “He’s pretty scattered.”

Clair calls for backup. They wait. About an hour and a half passes before the creature wakes up. It snarls at them.

“You shouldn’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong,” it says. “Someone’s likely to eat it! And then spit it back in your face, all gooky with saliva!”

Clair frowns. “Ew.”

“What do you know?” Saul asks, companionably.

“I know how to hurt you,” it whispers. “Forever and ever, oh yes. With wheels.” It struggles against the blocks.

“I mean, about the conspiracy.”

The creature opens its mouth, then closes it again. “Can’t tell you,” it says.

“Typical,” Saul mutters.

A helicopter circles overhead. The fragile jigsaw people look at it warily. The pilot is skilled, but no skill is sufficient. The helicopter’s landing disassembles a large chunk of road, three bushes, a horse trough, and a festive tavern sign reading, “300 Piece Liquor.” Two men in suits get out to take custody of the creature. A third steps down, and Saul snarls.

“You,” he says.

The third man is on fire. He seems pretty casual about it. Smoke spirals off him into the sky, slowly turning jigsaw as it rises.

“Yes,” says the smoking man.

“What do you want?” Saul says. He steps forward, belligerently.

“Just taking this thing back to the oubliette where it belongs.”

“You’re at the heart of all this,” Saul says. “I know it.”

“Feh,” says the smoking man. “I’m just the lord of the oubliette.” The two suited men drag the creature into the helicopter. The smoking man follows them in. “If you want to complain,” he adds, “talk to the Wizard.”

The helicopter takes off again. Saul stands up. He paces. A young fresh-faced woman made entirely out of corner pieces comes out of the ruins.

“He’s reassembled,” she says. “But not entirely.”

“Not entirely?”

“He’d been mauled,” she says. “Badly. We couldn’t find all the pieces of his brain. Mostly, he sits in one place and says ‘guh’.”

Saul and Clair hurry in. Saul’s contact is in the middle of the ruin. He sits. He smiles at them. He says, “Guh.”

“As advertised,” Clair says, grimly.

“Please,” Saul says. “Jigsaw-1. Can’t you tell me anything?”

“Guh!” the contact emphasizes.

Saul sits, heavily.

“That’s it, then,” he says. “The smoking man’s won.”

“Guh,” the contact says, expressively. Then, with the smile of a man sharing a wonderful secret, he opens his hand and shows Saul his palm. Attached to it is a transparent piece of cellophane. It shimmers with stained glass-style colors. It is cut into the shape of an X.

“It’s pretty!” declares Clair.

Saul takes it. “I guess,” he says, “that even if I don’t have the truth, I have a new window decoration.”

Dejected, they go back home. They stop at Saul’s door. “Would you like a cup of coffee?” Saul asks.

“Sure,” Clair says.

Clair follows Saul in. Saul fixes the stained-glass cellophane X to his window. He goes into the kitchen. He makes coffee.

“They say there’s no evil here,” Saul says, “because the Wizard trapped the Devil. The Devil didn’t care that the Wizard couldn’t die. He wanted his due. But when he came for the Wizard, the Wizard offered him a chair. And before he knew it, the Devil was stuck, and he couldn’t get up without the Wizard’s permission.”

“Do you really think there’s no evil here?” Clair asks.

“I think there’s evil everywhere,” Saul says. “But in most places, it seeps out and infects everything. Here, mostly, we throw it in the oubliette.”

“What about the conspiracy?”

“That’s not evil,” Saul says. “It’s just rude. Hey.”

“Hey?”

Saul points. On his desk is a map of Fairyland. The evening sunlight coming in through his window passes through the X and illuminates a spot.

“Where is it?” Clair asks.

“It’s on the Brick Road,” Saul says. “Near the valley of the sheep.”

They get up. They go to the car. They drive.

Time passes.

“What were the cards for?” Clair asks. “I mean, in the story.”

Saul pulls over, gently. He parks the car. He turns off the headlights.

“The Devil wanted to game for his freedom,” Saul says. “So he bet the Wizard’s soul against his freedom from the chair, and he lost.

“‘Double or nothing,’ said the Devil.

“‘I only got one soul,’ said the Wizard.

“‘I’ll bet you dominion over all Hell,’ said the Devil. ‘And if you win, I’ll even go to work for you. Against your soul, and my freedom from this chair.’

“So they played, and the Wizard won.”

Saul gets out of the car. He walks forward. He shines his flashlight about. Then he stops.

“Over there,” he says. “It’s an orange tree. And there’s someone in it.”

Clair’s flashlight flicks up onto a startled and skeletal face. “Saul,” she says. “I think . . . I think it’s Death.”

Death turns his face away. Tear tracks have cut channels deep into his skull.

“It’s not my fault,” he says. “There was a sparrow up here. It was dying. I didn’t have a choice.”

“So it’s true,” Saul says.

“It’s true,” Death confesses. “All of it. This isn’t a Fairyland. It’s just Hell.”

“Poor thing,” Saul says. “I guess being stuck in an orange tree for a few thousand years must be Hell, all right.”

“It was paved over,” Death says. “The demons were thrown in an oubliette, and only let out for special assignments. ‘I don’t want to rule a place of torture and pain,’ said the Wizard. But he’ll trap me in a tree for thousands of years, oh yes. He’ll do that.”

“Wait,” Saul says. “Literally, Hell?”

“Look under the bricks,” Death says. “The truth’s right below you.”

So Saul pries back the golden bricks, one by one.

Beneath the road there is a river of blood.

└ Tags: , , ,
4 Comments

The Game One Plays

by Jenna on November 23rd, 2004

Dolls have a monarchistic streak. They are trained in authority from the moment of their making. It is not so with the weebles, who wobble but do not fall down; nor with the teddy bears, who are most sensibly gregarious; nor the sock puppets, that prefer to brood in solipsistic silence, down at the heart of the world.

The bombs fall, and there is a long silence.

Time passes.

It is 2138, and up to the gallows they march them: the King and his daughter Meredith. Their nooses hang side by side.

“By what right do you do this?” Meredith asks.

It is Saul who comes forward to speak for the crowd. Saul lifts his chin. He looks her in the eye.

“Because,” Saul says, “he has grown cruel.”

The King is indifferent. He looks past these men.

“When I was a child,” says Meredith, “my mother broke the rules of my kind. She fell into the basement. She could not reach the stairs. The rats and spiders tore her apart. And as I stood there, looking down, thinking that I might cast myself after her—might save her—the King’s dream car passed by. And he looked out. And he said, ‘Bring her.’ And they dragged me back. And since then he has raised me. And loved me. Is this a cruel man?”

“We live in poverty,” says Saul. “And he in wealth. He has kept for himself our treasures. And he does nothing to save us.”

The King flinches. Then his gaze is stern again.

“We were sixty,” says Saul. “And now we are twelve.”

The King’s teeth clench. But still he is silent: silent until Max, standing by the noose, beckons him back. Then, as the King steps back, the words force themselves from his throat.

“I was left in charge,” he says.

Max takes his arm. Max drags him back.

“No,” says the King. “No. The human child. She left me in charge.”

“We molder,” whispers Saul, “while you play in your dream house and dentist’s office.”

The noose wraps around the King’s neck. It is soft and uncompromising, woven from the last few strands of Barbie’s hair.

The trapdoor opens. There is a sound like the snap of bone.

Meredith’s eyes are wide. Max turns to her.

“Disclaim him,” he says. “Abandon him, and we may let you live.”

There is something animal in Meredith’s eyes. She puts her fist to her mouth. She does not speak, but with a convulsive motion sits down at the gallows’ edge. She rocks back and forth.

Max looks at Saul.

After a moment, Saul shrugs. “Leave her be,” he says. “We are only twelve.”

Max nods.

“Her head is, any road, somewhat smaller than her neck.”

So Saul walks away, and Max walks away. The crowd disperses, through the dust and the cobwebs, to loot through the night the treasures of the realm.

Morning comes.

Meredith pulls the King from the noose. She stretches him out on the platform. She crouches over him, wobbling forward and back.

“Wake up,” she says. “Wake up. It’s morning.”

The King does not open his eyes. His eyes cannot be closed. But there is a certain sense that comes to them, after a while.

“Death is the emptiness that howls,” he says.

Her face twitches.

“Why are you cruel?” she demands. “Why are you cruel? Why do they play this game?”

He pulls himself to his feet. He dusts off his shirt and pants. He looks at her. For a moment, there is sympathy in his eyes. Then there is only regal detachment.

“It is the game,” he says, “one plays with Kings.”

There is a long silence.

“Weebles favor a parliamentary democracy,” she observes.

└ Tags: , , , , , , ,
5 Comments

The Sphere

by Jenna on January 10th, 2005

The father looks down on the salesman.

“Will you do it?” asks the salesman; asks Mr. Brown, holding out a pair of shoes, limply, to his father; pitching them, desperately, to his father, who is dead and gone.

“No,” says his father.

“No?”

“No.”

His father looks away, then. His look is distant. “I know what you are thinking, son. The dead are the last great untapped market. But I will not buy them. I will not take them beyond. We have no use for shoes.”

“You could . . . you could be like Mike.”

“He is alive,” says the father of Mr. Brown. “I am not.”

Then the father is gone.

A door opens in the silvered sphere. Mr. Brown walks out. He walks away. He is thoughtful. He is not dejected. It is not over. He will try again.

He tries every year, on the anniversary of his father’s death.

Out on the sidewalk, there is a young girl waiting to use the sphere. She is carrying a flower.

“Are you done, then?” she says, to Mr. Brown.

He smiles to her. “The dead have no use for flowers,” he says.

“I know,” she says. Her name is Emily. “It is for me.”

“Good child,” says Mr. Brown, and he ruffles her hair, and he is gone, walking down the white sidewalks by the green grass of the world.

So Emily steps forward. She walks up to the sphere. She enters it. It closes behind her.

“Grandma?” she asks.

Inside the sphere there is a tree, and a glade, and above it all the sun.

“Grandma?” asks Emily.

The wind stirs the grass and the fallen leaves. Then her nana Lily is there.

“Emily,” says Lily. She bends down on one knee. She holds out her arms for Emily. Emily runs into them, fierce, as if defying something that is not there.

“Nana,” Emily says.

Lily holds Emily at arms’ distance. “You have brought me a flower,” she says, in tones of wondrous discovery.

Emily thinks. Then she places the flower in Lily’s hand. She closes Lily’s hand around it.

“I’ll treasure it,” says Lily.

“Don’t go, grandma,” says Emily. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I don’t want to go,” says Lily. “I don’t want to go. But I’m gone.”

“I miss you.”

There is a smile on Lily’s face. It is whole and pure. “I’m always with you.”

Emily lowers her head.

“I can’t stay long,” Emily says.

“That’s all right,” Lily says. “Have you been doing your homework every day? Have you been washing behind your ears? Have you been brushing your teeth with Crest-brand whitening toothpaste?”

Emily smiles shyly. “Yes, nana,” she says.

“And you still eat those McDonalds Happy Meals, a registered trademark of the McDonalds corporation, that you loved so well?”

“I do,” says Emily.

“Good,” says Lily.

Emily looks down. “I can’t stay long,” she says. “Mommy says that we only get a ration of three hours a month in the sphere, for the whole family.”

“I know, hon,” says Lily. “I’m glad you came today.”

So Emily hugs her again, and turns away, and the sphere opens, and she steps partway out, and she is almost gone when she asks, “But Mommy says we shouldn’t take charity.”

“It’s not charity,” says Lily. “It’s love.”

So Emily steps out, and the sphere closes, and Lily is left behind.

└ Tags: , ,
3 Comments

Before He Was Cool (I/I)

by Jenna on March 8th, 2005

Between the Earth and the Moon there is a world made entirely out of firewood. It’s five hundred miles wide and ten miles deep. It has lots of firewood animals and firewood cities and firewood people. It is an innocent world, a young world, but it is no paradise. It is a savage jungle.

Martin is born on March 22, 1995, at 6:38 pm, on a night of screams and fire, on a world above the world.

The first thing he ever sees is the monster’s face.

Martin ducks instinctively. He throws his forearms before his eyes. But then there’s a shock of recognition, and a wave of relief, and he laughs.

“Why, this is just a firewood monster,” he says.

The firewood monster adjusts its lacquered tie. “You be-long to me,” it says. Its voice is vaguely animatronic.

There’s the sound of explosions in the distance.

Martin’s in a little room made of firewood. It’s like the monster’s house. There’s a spider, which is a real spider. Everything else is made out of firewood: the belt, the archaic aversion therapy devices, the couch, the bookshelves, and the bottles of pills. There are weird white spots here and there on the wood, like some birch got mixed in with the rest.

“You be-long to me,” says the firewood monster again.

The whole world creaks. A crack runs through the floor, stopping short of Martin’s feet.

Martin grins wryly at the firewood monster, gives him a little wave, and opens the door. He steps out onto the street. Death looks him in the face. Death has a scythe. Death has a cloak. Death is a skeleton.

Martin almost steps back and slams the door. But then he understands, and he laughs.

“Why, this is just a firewood Death,” he says.

“Solve prob-lems through ex-tinc-tion!” declares the firewood Death. He sweeps his scythe at Martin. Martin ducks under it and kicks Death’s knee. Death’s knee cracks. Martin scrambles away.

“Even a firewood Death is dangerous!” he realizes. So he runs. He ducks into a barber shop. There’s a spinning red and white log outside, and a ghastly barber inside.

“I’ll shave your hair in-to a bowl cut!” the barber declares.

“You’re just a firewood barber,” says Martin nervously. He’s a thirteen-year-old boy. He doesn’t want a bowl cut, but he doesn’t want to fight a ghastly barber, either!

Then he sees the mirror.

His soul knows its truths. You are nothing, it tells him. A firewood boy. An isn’t.

“Oh, God,” Martin says.

A great shadow moves along the street. There are firewood screams.

Martin sits down. He covers his face with his hands. He thinks.

“I can-not shave your hair on the floor,” says the firewood barber. “There are al-read-y sha-vings on the floor.”

“I’m thinking,” says Martin.

The barber processes this unusual situation.

“Do not o-ver-heat your brain,” the firewood barber cautions.

“I’ll overheat if I want to,” says Martin, sulkily. But he doesn’t. Then he stands up. “Will you bless me?” he asks.

The barber is nonplussed and ghastly. “I am a bar-ber,” it says.

“I have to do something really hard,” says Martin. “And you’re the only person I know.”

The firewood barber hesitates. It is horrid and stodgy and animatronic and it is not a priest. “I would pre-fer,” it says, “to shave your hair.”

“You’re the only person I know.”

So the barber nods. It puts down its shaver and its bowl for the first time in its long existence. It takes Martin’s arms, one in each clumsy hand.

“Bless you,” it says. “Be well. Good luck. En-dure.”

Martin is a thirteen-year-old boy. He does not let his tears show. He does not hug the barber. He simply walks out. He finds the gate to the Underworld. He goes in.

His soul knows its truths. You are nothing, it tells him. A firewood boy. An isn’t.

It’s his destiny. It’s the law of his nature. It’s his dharma. It’s the truth of his soul that he can’t escape. But then there’s a realization and a decision and a wave of defiance and he laughs.

“Why,” he says, “you’re just a firewood dharma.”

Martin puts it aside and he descends.

└ Tags: , , , ,
25 Comments

(Maundy Thursday) The Corpse (IX/?)

by Jenna on March 24th, 2005

It is 547 years before the common era that Siddhartha sees his first corpse.

He is in the city, among the people, seeking to understand those whom he must save. He is with Devadatta, his cousin, a man conservatively estimated as a match for two hundred and seventy soldiers in battle. He wears a keepsake of his wife Yasodhara around his wrist. It is Thursday.

What is this, Devadatta? asks Siddhartha:

This man, so still;
They carry him on their backs.
He lays flat upon a board,
And does not blink.
What is a man who does not blink, Devadatta?

Devadatta blinks.

Siddhartha continues:

This man, so still;
They lay him in a pyre.
They light the flames.
It is bad to lay amidst the flames,
It makes your father worry.
What is a man whom they would burn, Devadatta?

“A kindling man,” says Devadatta.

Siddhartha says:

This man, so still,
He smells of cooking meat,
His flesh is bubbling and baking,
Yet he does not move.
He feels no pain.
What is a man who feels no pain, Devadatta?

Devadatta barks laughter. He says:

A man who has transcended pain
We call a Buddha.
Burn him, he does not flinch.
Beat him, he does not cry out.
Such is the exercise of his endless compassion!
Sickness does not touch him,
Age does not touch him,
Death does not touch him—
Kill him, and he will only look at you
With injured eyes
And say, “Why did you do that, Devadatta?”

There is a long pause.

Or such my nightmares allege. Devadatta mumbles.

Siddhartha, who is not currently omniscient, is forced to stare blankly at Devadatta. Then his eyes wander, inevitably, to the corpse.

This man, so crispy,
He is turning to ash.
He does not move.
He does not smile.
He does not cry.
He does not breathe.
What is a man who does not breathe, Devadatta?

Devadatta says:

A man who is gone, Siddhartha.
This is death.
This is a man that you will never see again.
He is gone.
He has left the stage of your life,
Not to the wings,
Not to the pit,
But into the darkness from which no man returns.

This is not a man, Siddhartha,
This is a memory of a man,
This is the shell of a man,
This is what is left when the man is gone.
So shall you be when you are dead.
So shall I be if I am dead.
Such is the natural fate of every man.

Siddhartha looks blank. “But how can I be gone, Devadatta? I am right here.”

Devadatta shrugs.

“The concept of personal ending is difficult,” says Devadatta. “I have not mastered it myself. I believe it is like sleep, but quieter, and with no waking.”

“Ah,” says Siddhartha. Then he says:

Here is an absence.
Here is a hole in my world.
Here is something
I do not understand
Yet it is wrapped in the contingencies and accidents
Of the things I do.

Maya, the illusion of material existence, becomes a localized phenomenon. She says:

These are the words that bring forth Maya:
The desire to project
Into the space of the unknown;
The incomprehensible;
The impossible;
And the wrong
The accidents and contingencies
Of the things you know.
Thus does karma become experience
Experience becomes life
Life becomes a world
Worlds become Maya.
Why have you summoned me, Siddhartha?
You do not seek the Maya-Dharma.

“I am nothing without you, mother.”

Maya’s eyes sting. She does not speak.

“Please,” says Siddhartha. “Teach me the Maya-Dharma of death.”

So Maya inclines her head. Softly, she speaks.

Love while you can.
Accept that things pass.
This is the law, the new law,
That I would have you bring
When you turn the wheel
And rout your enemies
And end the suffering in the world.

“So this is the Maya-Dharma?” asks Siddhartha. “‘Cling without clinging?’”

It is a challenge, but it is not mockery.

His voice holds nothing but respect.

And Maya says:

I have loved you
Since I have known you, Siddhartha;
Knowing you will die.
And no matter how great the law
You set upon the world
I know that it will pass
And bitter days shall come again,
And pain.

And never have I loved you more than these last years
When I have thought that we would come to blows
And you unmake me
And I rain fire on you
To save the things I love.

I would not surrender it.
I would not let go of you, my child,
I would not set aside that love for you,
For all the treasures of the Earth.

I know you will pass.
And yet I cling.
That is the Maya-Dharma.

Siddhartha says, “I know this Dharma.”

“Do you?” she asks, softly.

Siddhartha says:

I have seen,
At the edge of my world,
A cloud,
Roiling and thunderous,
A terror that I should not like to face
Yet I am attached to it, mother.

It would be best,
If I could turn aside,
And live out my life
Without facing that storm.
Yet I am attached to it, mother.

And I must ask you, mother,
To forgive me.
If I fall
If I falter
If I leave the path
And become something other
Than a wheel-turning king.

Maya looks at him. It is a long look. Then she bows her head, and there are tears.

Do not summon me again, or I will surely take your life. she says.

There is a pause.

You are forgiven, and forever loved. she says, and ceases to be a localized phenomenon.

Siddhartha goes home to Yasodhara, and they sleep together; and that night, the wing of Maya brushes past them, and quickens Siddhartha’s child in Yasodhara’s womb.

└ Tags: , , , , , ,
2 Comments

(Good Friday – Hitherby Annual #1 – I/I) Tre Ore

by Jenna on March 25th, 2005

Once upon a time, the world had a purpose.

Back then, everything did.

Everything had a purpose, and a truth, and a dharma.

This time was full of sorrow. If a banshee howled, then someone would die. If a mermaid called you, you would drown. If a witch cursed you, you would shrivel and suffer ill fate. Such was the nature of the banshee, and the mermaid, and the witch. If Coretta’s Lion had your scent, then it would hunt you down, and eat your skin and muscles, bit by bit, and you would take three days to die. The world was full of things like that.

But these sorrows were small.

The worst of the predators of this time were the predators of truth. For there were things, things like Death, and Sickness, and Old Age, that declared their truths supreme. It did not matter what your purpose was. Theirs would overwrite it. In the end, you could not defeat them, because it was the nature of their truth to mean more than your own. They were a very exclusive club.

The monster was such a thing. He was such a predator. And he was undefeatable. And it is because there were monsters, and because there was death, and because there were truths like theirs, that the world was broken, and the gods were cast from the world of truth into the heart of emptiness.

Tre Ore

March 25, 1995

Martin stumbles against a man, and his touch does not turn the man to dust. After a long moment Martin realizes that this is so.

“Hey,” Martin says, and refocuses his eyes.

This is a place of deep water, but the man is parched and dry. Fruit is dangling from the trees all around him, but he is terribly thin. His name is Tantalus.

“Hey,” Tantalus says.

Martin backs away a step, tilts his head, and frowns. “You’re not like the others. You’re not a broken god.”

“No,” Tantalus says. “I am a man, and I am dead, and I have been consigned to torture here in the Underworld for roughly three thousand years.”

Martin whistles. “Harsh.”

Tantalus shrugs.

The deepness of the water has put a silence on the woglies, but Martin still feels edgy and twitchy down in his soul. “Hey,” he says. “What makes that okay?”

“Okay?”

“What makes it okay to torture someone for three thousand years?”

“Ah,” says Tantalus.

Then he laughs.

“It didn’t matter,” Tantalus explains. “Zeus sat on the throne of the world, you see, and it did not matter which of his dicta were okay.”

Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit

540 BCE

“It would have been better to kill him,” Mylitta admits.

Mylitta sits tailor style on the dust and grime and brushes White Lion’s fur.

“But the problem with heroes,” she says, “is that monsters have an answer to them.”

White Lion lowers its head to the floor.

“A hero is a storm,” Mylitta says, “and storms are terrible. But there is a place above the storm where the air is calm. And I do not know how. But I could feel it, like I could feel the wind and the sunlight. That he had found that place. And so there was no single specific moment in which the monster could be killed. ”

“I thirst,” rumbles White Lion.

Tre Ore

March 25, 1995

There is a silence.

“I had fruit,” Tantalus says, “Only a few decades ago. But I would still like some water. If you could hold up some water for me to drink, I would love you.”

“My hands are full of dust,” Martin says.

“Oh.”

“I thought they were people,” Martin says. “I thought they were my predecessors. But when I touched them, it turned out that all they were was dust.”

“It’s the Underworld,” Tantalus says. It’s an explanation or a dismissal; Martin is not sure which.

“My sister keeps making gods to save her,” Martin says, “and all of them fail, and all of them wind up as mud and dust.”

“I remember that,” Tantalus says. “The gods were severed from the world.”

“Severed?”

“In the face of the monster, they were lost,” Tantalus says. “They had no meaning that could compare to his own. So they were cut from the Earth, torn away, and made into isn’ts, lest the monster’s dharma set a new order on the world. It was my doing, in a way; my children could not have learned the truths that make a monster had I not stolen the secret of the gods.”

Martin frowns. “The secret?”

“If you accept a purpose;” Tantalus says. “If you declare something to be your answer to the emptiness; then you must accept the consequences of that answer. It is desirable, for gods as for men, to shrink from that burden; but in the end, it always catches you, and, if it so pleases, it tears you apart.”

Tantalus sits down heavily, and the water sinks into the dust lest he should drink, and the woglies surrounding Martin are in the air once more.

Behold, Your Son (X/?)

546 BCE

“I am born to answer suffering,” says Siddhartha.

Siddhartha and Yasodhara travel through the city. Yasodhara is very pregnant.

Her answer is light and teasing. “And who is not? If you were born to cause suffering, my love, then I should name you a monster.”

Siddhartha says:

Let us speak of death, then, as a monster.
He may be fought,
But the terms are his own.
Each time you make escape from him
He claims his due.
Thus it is that no man may fight death.

Let us call illness a monster.
It may be fought,
But the terms are its own.
We do not choose the behavior of purity.
Even touching a man,
In exercise of compassion,
May bring on sickness.

Let us speak of age as a monster.
She may be fought,
But the terms are her own.
The more you fight, the more she grips to you.
The more you fight, the more she claims her due.
Thus it is that no man may fight age.

This is the flaw in the world.

How can I answer suffering?
Monsters have no remedy.

“The root cause of suffering,” Yasodhara observes, following the train of her own silent thoughts, “is that no one wants to suffer.”

Today You Will Be With Me In Paradise

539 BCE

Nabonidus is educing a god from her when Mylitta breaks.

“Sometimes,” Mylitta says, clearly, “it’s like there’s this thick yarrow stick in my chest, going through where my heart used to be, stretching from my spine to my ribs. And now, suddenly, it’s like it’s just split, and blackness is leaking out all over me.”

Nabonidus blinks.

There is a light that roils under Mylitta’s skin, and then fades. There are great wracking coughs that shake her, and violent seizures. Then Mylitta stops. Her head lolls to one side. Her eyes dim.

Nabonidus looks blankly at her. He steps back. His arms fold around himself for comfort.

“Um,” he says.

Mylitta sleeps.

There is a great bulk behind Nabonidus in the room. It is white, like a maggot, like the wriggling young of flies. It is leonine. It is soft. Its name is White Lion, and it is a god.

“She will not wake,” it says.

The creature pads forward. It says, “I have asked her to leave this place, to come away with me, a thousand times. But she has always said no. I do not think she will deny me today.”

It leans down. It takes Mylitta in its mouth. It turns to walk away.

“She’s mine,” Nabonidus says.

White Lion looks at him.

“She’s my husk,” Nabonidus protests. “I broke her.”

White Lion leans its great head down. It drools Mylitta onto the floor. It looks up. It opens its mouth. It roars.

It is a terrible thing, that roar. It is like a wind tunnel that blows away the qualities of the world. Nabonidus cannot see. He cannot touch. He cannot taste. He cannot smell. He cannot hear, save for the roar.

.
.
.

Nabonidus is on the floor. He does not know how or why he is on the floor. But Mylitta is gone. So he does the only thing that he can do, in answer to her emptiness.

He makes a god.

Behold, Your Son (X/?)

546 BCE

“Ah,” says Yasodhara. “There is a monk.”

Siddhartha follows her gaze. He frowns.

Who is this, Yasodhara?
This man—
His head is shaved,
He wears a robe,
He has a strange demeanor.

The smile on his face
Seems more
Like the one I seek
Than the smile of my father Suddhodana.

“He is a monk,” Yasodhara says. “He lives in the temple and he travels the kingdom, teaching people how to be good.”

“And what is his answer to suffering?” Siddhartha asks.

Yasodhara studies him with the eyes of a goddess. “A very small fiend,” she says. “It lives in his gums. It locks his jaws in that smile. There are bone passages connecting his teeth to his ears, and this allows it to whisper to him constantly, ‘people need not suffer.’ It is a painful fiend, but it has convinced him not to mind.”

(“If only ancient India had had proper dental hygiene!” Jane exclaims. “He could have brushed the fiend right out and put it to use saving the world!”

“There are many tragedies,” Mrs. Schiff agrees.)

Siddhartha opens his mouth to speak.

“Oh,” says Yasodhara, interrupting him. She has gone pale. She leans against him.

Her labor has begun.

Today You Will Be With Me In Paradise

539 BCE

Exhausted, weary, broken, and warm:

Nabonidus is crying.

It has cut him raw, to make a god. It is like being a skinless man, for him, naked in the face of everything he is.

It does not hurt terribly. But it stings.

It costs him that control that would keep him from his tears.

There is a snuffling in the room, and the clicking of nails on stone. A cold wet shadow passes over the footprints of White Lion, the altar of Sin, the blood Mylitta left behind. Then the creature he has made, the Dog of Nabonidus, brushes past and around him and leans against his side.

“Why couldn’t I keep her?” Nabonidus says.

The Dog looks at him. Its eyes are expressive. It is almost as if it wanted to say, It is the monster’s nature to consume his victims.

“She was strong,” Nabonidus says. “She could have fought. She could have kept herself unbroken.”

The Dog pants, quietly. If it could speak, Nabonidus thinks, it would no doubt say, She did not wish to. In the end, she chose to leave you with the burden of the contradiction of your lives.

“Why?” he asks.

Because it is the only answer she could find.

So Nabonidus goes home to Babylon, and he whispers to Mylitta’s absence, “You’re right, of course.”

Mylitta’s absence remains constant.

“One of us must pay the price,” Nabonidus says. “And you think I’m not strong enough. You think I’ll bend. But I won’t. I’ll make a host like you have never seen, and send them after you, to make you whole. You won’t escape from me. I will fix you.”

There is a void in the room, an emptiness, a devouring. For a moment, Nabonidus thinks it is his heart, but then he realizes that Belshazzar has let himself in.

“I will help you, father,” says Belshazzar. “If you let me.”

“Help me?”

“I have seen how it is that one pulls forth gods.”

Behold, Your Son (X/?)

546 BCE

Siddhartha is in the garden. The midwives have chased him from the room where Yasodhara is giving birth, explaining:

Every child we pull forth
Is an answer
To the suffering in the world.

You are Prince Siddhartha,
And we glory in you,
And one day you’ll turn the wheel
And conquer all the world
But you will never be a midwife.

Your fussing distracts us!
Your philosophy confuses us!
Out! Out! Give us space
To answer the suffering in this room.

“Midwives are intimidating,” concedes Siddhartha.

He sits in the garden, under a tree, and thinks about the monk, and suddenly he realizes:

I am suffering.
I know the meaning of it!
And it is this:

From the beginning of my life,
I have made observations
And conclusions regarding the nature of the world.

These carry me along
Like a river
Each new truth means another thing is true.

I have built a world
From premises I’ve found
And premises I’ve made

And this is my suffering:
A flaw has crept in.
A wound has snuck into the world that I have made.

Dukkha.
There: I have named it.
Somehow suffering is intrinsic to my world.

To deny suffering
Is to find contradictions—
We can’t have everything we want.

Maya is in the garden. She sits down beside him. Her eyes are shadowed. She says:

I am here to offer you the treasure wheel.
It is power.
It is truth.
It is the nature of the world
And where it goes, it conquers.

If you take it I can let you live.

Siddhartha says:

I am glad you are not here to kill me,
Mother,
But to bind me to that wheel—that is crueler.

It is beautiful
But it is the cause of all my suffering.

“It is not the cause of suffering,” Maya says. “It is the answer to it. If you have power to dictate the ephemera of the world, you may release things from their suffering.”

Siddhartha reaches out to touch her hand, but she drifts away. She is standing now, slightly out of his reach, staring out at the world, holding the jeweled treasure wheel in her hands.

Siddhartha asks:

If someone is wounded, mother,
What would I use the wheel for?

To heal them, Maya says.

Siddhartha asks:

If someone is being tortured, mother,
What would I use the wheel for?

To save them, Maya says.

Siddhartha asks:

If they are tortured again, later, mother,
What would I use the wheel for then?

To save them again, Maya says.

Siddhartha asks:

If they suffer in the meantime because they remember torture, mother,
What use, then, is the wheel?

To heal them, Maya says.

Siddhartha asks:

If someone suffers, again and again, mother,
What use is the wheel?

You may end or prevent that suffering each time, Maya says.

Siddhartha asks:

If there are conditions in life that make future suffering inevitable, mother,
What use is the wheel?

Maya frowns at Siddhartha. She says:

It is life itself that makes suffering inevitable.
If you end all life, you will end all suffering
But this is not the Maya-Dharma.
And this is not compassion.

Siddhartha says:

If there are conditions in life that make future suffering inevitable, mother,
Is the wheel then no use at all?

Maya says:

We suffer because we love what might have been.
If you end love, you will end all suffering
But this is not the Maya-Dharma.
And this is not benevolence.

Siddhartha shakes his head. He says:

If someone wounded says,
When I bring the wheel to them,
‘This wound is inevitable,’ mother,
What must I do then?

Maya says:

Such a person has lost perspective.
Ignore their words and heal the wound, Siddhartha.

Siddhartha says:

You have lost perspective, mother.
The world is a wound.
The nature of things is a wound.
That suffering is inevitable, this is a wound.
Do you understand?
Even if I must shatter love,
Or shatter life
To heal them,
I will end that quality of things that makes us suffer.

Maya lowers her head. “So ruthless,” she whispers.

Siddhartha reaches out to her. He says:

If I did not know the Maya-Dharma, mother,
I could not transcend it.

Maya says, quietly,

O Prince, O Prince,
In your rooms
Your son is born.

Will you look upon him?
Will you go, and look upon him,
And know the reason for this world?

“Sons are an impediment,” says Siddhartha.

Maya looks wry.

I shall not. Siddhartha rises, and turns, and looks towards the gate. I will seek an end to suffering.

The wheel burns in Maya’s hands. It is a jeweled treasure wheel, thousand-spoked, with two winky eyes; and now it is on fire. It grows great and terrible, and there are wheels within the wheels, and wheels within those, and it rolls towards Siddhartha like the coldest and deadliest of the killer-gods. And as it touches him, and burns his arm, he falls back; but it is Maya, and not Siddhartha, who screams.

A spoke of the wheel has broken free and fallen to the ground.

There is a hissing inside the treasure wheel of the world, a hissing and a shuddering, and the world has cracked.

Eloi, Eloi, Lema Sabachthani?

Present Time

Sebastien emerges from the shower, wrapped in a towel and using another on his hair. He is almost clean, but not entirely.

The monster is waiting outside.

“I’m not intimidated by relative nudity,” Sebastien says.

“Did you ever wonder,” the monster asks, “why it is that you’re something that can kill monsters, and not something that does?”

Sebastien scrubs at his hair a bit more, then shrugs. “No.”

“I’ve thought it might be,” the monster says, “that we’re difficult to kill.”

“No,” Sebastien says. “It’s just that if you’re someone who kills monsters, then there must always be a monster to kill. You can’t fix anything, you can’t solve anything, you can’t make any kind of difference unless you’re lucky enough to do the matter-antimatter thing and burn out with your enemy in a blaze of glory. It’s safer to be someone who can kill them. And even then—”

It is very important to Sebastien that he not turn away from the monster, and so the pain in him is a crisis point; and in the end, though he does not turn away, he does look down.

“To go all the way means being death. It means being a killer. Even if it’s someone who kills things like you. And it means being part of things like you, even if it’s the part that ends them.”

The monster’s smile is brilliant and white.

Today You Will Be With Me In Paradise

539 BCE

It is the seventeenth god.

Belshazzar pulls the seventeenth god from Nabonidus, a great and terrible phoenix shape, a yellow and red effluvium that pours forth from Nabonidus’ chest and mouth.

“Go,” says Belshazzar, and it is gone. It seems to Nabonidus that it is following Mylitta into emptiness, as if Nabonidus’ own strength is pouring after his victim into the void.

Belshazzar leans down again. His face is terribly earnest and clinical.

Nabonidus is weak.

“Wait,” he says.

“It is necessary,” Belshazzar says. “We do not know how long until her heart will cease to beat.”

“No,” says Nabonidus. His word is binding, and Belshazzar stops.

Nabonidus is weak.

“Lift this burden from me,” he begs.

So the teeth of the devouring god close around him.

The nature of the monster ends.

Tre Ore

March 25, 1995

The idea that comes to Martin is as inevitable as the rain.

“This is a place that takes everything from you,” he says. His voice is thick and heavy. “I came down here, and I was strong, but I can’t keep that. Not in the Underworld.”

The woglies are closing in on him, but Tantalus stands up, and the water washes in, and over them, and they grow still.

“I have to give up more,” Martin says. “Somewhere, there is something I am clinging to, that I have to give up, and it’ll be the thing that hurts the most to toss away.”

Tantalus looks at him. “Why would you surrender the thing you love the most?”

“Because there cannot be a poor rich man,” Martin says. “There cannot be an earthworm in the sky. There cannot be a man who is not a man, or a bird that is not a bird, or a void that is not empty. I am the architect of suffering, I am its source and its foundation, and I am good; and because these things cannot share one form and nature, I am severed from the world. My purpose fails because it is a contradiction, and contradictions cannot endure.”

The woglies are buried in the water, and they do not speak.

“There is no birth,” Martin says, “that has no pain.”

Into Your Hands I Commit My Spirit

540 BCE

Mylitta leans over White Lion, her face in the creature’s fur.

“This is the secret of the monster,” Mylitta whispers to him. “It is not random. It is not chance. And none of it is blind. The line of Amiel could not escape her oath, but they could twist it, and they know the secret of the gods. They know that we exist for a reason, that we respond to purpose, that we are bound by the laws of our nature that we cannot break.”

“Leave here,” says White Lion. “Leave, before he shatters you.”

“So they chose a dharma for themselves,” Mylitta says, “that we could not answer. They chose a dharma that redefines our truths.”

“Leave here.”

“That is the reason for Belshazzar,” Mylitta says. “He will not answer the monster. He will break the question. He will destroy what it means to be a god, and I shall have my Elli.”

She is silent for a moment.

“If he is weak,” she says. “If he is weak, before I die.”

Tre Ore

March 25, 1995

Martin opens his eyes. He releases a burden, or accepts it; they are one and the same.

“It’s not the monster who’s hurting Jane,” Martin says. “I won’t claim that. I won’t be a passive observer. If I’m going to shape the world through suffering, I’m going to be the one who shapes it; and the monster’s responsibility won’t ever negate mine. It’s my job to make sure that suffering transforms.”

There are fewer woglies now. They are skating off through the water, like toroidal tropical fish or evil aquatic froot loops that have been startled by a splash.

But one remains.

“Do you have the right?” it asks.

“Ye—”

Martin comes very close to nonexistence.

Then he shakes his head. “That’s not important to me,” Martin says.

It Is Finished

539 BCE

There are some who say that Chen Yu broke the world. There are some who lay the blame on Belshazzar in Babylon, or Siddhartha Suddhodana’s son. A few blame Mylitta, or the monster, or even Maya, for all that there was nothing she feared more.

In the end, that the world should break was inevitable.

The weight of its suffering was not a thing the world could bear.

└ Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
13 Comments

The Old Well

by Jenna on June 6th, 2005

Someone’s in trouble down in the old well!

It’s not so surprising. Timmy’s dead. Timmy’s parents are dead. There’s no one to know.

“All things are transient,” mourns Cold Bone Eddie, looking up towards the sky.

“Even Lassie is dead,” says Morgan Sachlaw.

“She’d rescue us,” says Eddie. “She’d drag us out. But Timmy’s dead, and his parents are dead, and Lassie is dead. It’s the transience of all things. That’s why we’re here.”

“Bloody Hell, Eddie,” says Sharon. “We’re sinking.”

A lot of people are in trouble down in the old well.

Actually.

“I remember when I saw the news,” says Cold Bone Eddie.

“Yeah?”

“Lassie passed away, gently, at the age of 20. 20! That’s like 140 human years. But that’s when I knew that there wasn’t any point any more.”

“Testify,” says Frank Scheclon.

“I knew there wasn’t any point in being good. What’s the use in being good if Lassie’s dead? What’s the use in the straight and narrow if there isn’t a dog to herd you there? So I came up with the perfect crime. I’d steal a million dollars from the bank and hide in the old well until the trouble cleared. But my rope snapped, and anyways, it’s kind of crowded down here.”

“You’re telling me,” says Sharon. “Frank, your foot?”

Frank, reluctantly, moves his foot off of Sharon’s face and contorts his knee so that he can brace it against the wall. It doesn’t help. They’re still sinking.

“You wouldn’t have succeeded, you know,” says Morgan. “I mean, if Lassie were alive.”

“Of course not,” says Eddie.

“I mean, it’s only because she died—”

There’s a bit of a pause.

Frank looks up, his neck crammed at an odd angle, so he can see part of Morgan’s face.

“Mr. Sachlaw?” says Frank. “You got somethin’ to say?”

“Well,” says Morgan, “it’s like this: when Lassie was alive, the bank didn’t really need much of a security system. I mean, why bother? So I got this guy, this contractor I know, to install the system cheap. And I took the kickback from one end and overcharged at the other and I bought a vintage bank security system off of eBay in the middle, and I figured, no problem, if anyone robs this place, Lassie’ll save the day.”

“Wuf!” agrees Sharon.

“But then she died.”

“Word,” says Eddie.

“And when you robbed the place,” says Morgan Sachlaw, “I lost everything.”

“I don’t blame Lassie,” says Eddie. “I blame death. I blame the fact that good things always go away. That’s what happened to us.”

“Not to me,” says Sharon. “I never had good things. That’s why I jumped in here.”

“Never?”

“I’m the ugly kind of girl,” says Sharon. “And I thought—well, I thought, I’d never amount to anything. So I came down to the old well and jumped in.”

“Oh, honey,” says Frank. “Don’t you know that if Lassie were alive, she would have shown you the beautiful special person inside you?”

Sharon sobs.

“Why couldn’t she have been there, then?” says Sharon. “Why don’t I get the magic?”

“She wasn’t magic,” says Cold Bone Eddie. “Just an ordinary dog.”

They sink further.

“Hey, down there?” calls Frank, nervously.

There is a mumbling and a rustling from the hundreds of people on whom they’re standing.

“Why are we sinking? What’s happening? Is there like a mole kingdom eating us from the bottom up? What’s going on?”

There’s a pause. Someone calls up, in a thick deep voice, “We are compressin’. It is the intense pressure down here. It is compahcting us progressively into a new form.”

“Great,” says Frank.

“What’s your story, preacher?” says Eddie.

“I fell.”

“That’s it?”

“I was lost in rapturous contemplation of God,” says Frank Scheclon. “I was marveling at his mysterious ways and not looking down. And suddenly I fell in a well and broke my leg.”

“Well, that was just plain dumb,” says Eddie.

“Thanks,” says Frank. “Thanks a lot.”

They’re sinking a bit faster now.

“Um,” says Morgan.

“Um?” Sharon answers.

“Um, if we’re compacting based on pressure, shouldn’t it, you know, stabilize? I mean, now that no one new has fallen in for a while?”

“. . . huh,” says Eddie. “Any physicists here?”

There’s a silence.

“Hey!” shouts Eddie. “I need a physicist!”

There’s a startled noise from up above. Ellen McCloud rushes up to the edge of the well. “I’m a physicist!” she shouts. “What’s the . . .”

She wobbles at the edge of the well.

“Momentum, have you no shame?” she shouts, indignantly. Then she falls in.

Thump.

“Hello,” says Ellen McCloud, as they sink. “I was just having a picnic out by the old well. What’s gong on?”

“We’re sinking,” says Eddie. “On account of the compression.”

“I’m sorry,” says Ellen, guiltily. “I didn’t mean to fall. It was my old enemy, momentum, at work.”

“It’s okay,” says Eddie. “It was accelerating anyway.”

“I’m afraid,” says Sharon. “I don’t want to die by being crushed into a black hole at the bottom of the old well.”

“Don’t be afraid,” says Ellen. “There’s nowhere near enough mass in this well to create a black hole. Not even a pinpoint singularity!”

“Oh, good.”

Ellen rubs her chin, thoughtfully. “Still, I think I can recognize the hand of Acceleration at work.”

“Are you really a physicist?” Frank asks, suspiciously.

“Oh, yes,” says Ellen. “I just practice physics in a two-fisted manner. But I think at last natural law has come up with a deathtrap I can’t get out of.”

Sharon’s voice is bleak. “What?”

“The more we sink, the faster we sink,” says Ellen. “Pretty soon, we’ll be an undifferentiated mass of incredible density and power.”

She sketches some equations on the wall in chalk. “See?”

“But they don’t add up,” says Eddie, who was going to be a mathematician before Lassie’s death sent him into a life of crime.

“Well, no,” says Ellen. “Equations don’t balance any more. Not without Lassie. She was the hidden variable—the dark matter, as it were, in every law of physics and science. That’s why all the planes have been crashing, you know, and swarms of demon-locusts bursting through the interstices of reality. Also, pickle and corned beef sandwiches don’t taste good any more.”

“I’d eat one,” says Sharon. “Anyway. Right now.”

Ellen looks sad, in part because her equations are now far above her.

“I left them up above,” she says.

“I can feel strange matter around my toes,” whimpers Sharon.

“It’s the impending critical mass,” says Ellen.

“God:” prays Eddie, “I know I said you were dead to me, I mean, what with Lassie being dead and all, but, you know, if you were to resurrect Timmy’s rotting corpse and send him here with a rope, I sure would be inclined to change directions in my life.”

“That’s not what God does,” says Frank. “He moves mysteriously. . . . Sharon?”

There is only a bubbling scream.

“Mind,” says Frank, “If God wants to do it, I mean, for Eddie, for love of humanity, I mean, maybe Jesus could slip it under God’s radar.”

“If he loved us,” says Morgan, “I’d still have a job and a Porsche.”

“It’s very hot,” says Frank.

“And dense,” says Ellen.

“And strange,” says Eddie.

The substance in the well reaches its critical mass, and with one last scream, the transformation begins.

Night falls.

Day dawns.

Night falls again.

A dog wriggles up out of the well. It is a Collie. It is clean and young and new, and its fur still glistens with the ichor of those whose compression created it.

“Bark!” barks the dog. “Bark!”

The dog runs around. The dog dashes across the field.

The sun rises.

It will be a long and beautiful day.

└ Tags: , ,
7 Comments

Celebration of the Seals

by Jenna on June 27th, 2005

The first of the seven seals opens. The voice of the four living creatures cries out, “Come!”

Then there is a man on a white horse. Then he is caparisoned with a crown. Then he rides forth, a conqueror bent on conquest.

From the Earth rises a hologram. The hologram depicts the great diva, Shelley.

Shelley is dressed in a sailor suit, and she sings:

Fall on me! Love’s an avalanche.
Crumbling rocks like a bolt for my heart!
Fall on me! Love’s a hurricane
Total apocalypse is claiming my heart!

The conqueror pauses. He is the first of the horsemen of the end times, the sign of wrath unleashed upon the world. Yet even he hesitates before this song.

The Lamb dexterously removes the second seal. The voice of the four living creatures cries out, “Come!”

Then there is a man on a red horse.

“You shall have the power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay one another,” say the four creatures. “Take this sword. Defeat the people of Earth!”

Yet there is Shelley, and she is singing:

Why is it always murder today?
Can’t you wait a little longer
Until we’ve had our play . . . honey . . .
I get uncertain, hide my face from the throne
But can’t you see that my heart’s racing
Can’t you see that I’d like to atone?

Baby
FALL ON ME! Love’s a disaster movie
Towers burning
Red horse riding away!
Fall on me! Love’s Revelation is:
Total apocalypse claiming my heart!

Then lightning comes from the eyes of the rider on the red horse, and he opens his mouth and a sword flies out and he says, “Lo! This hologram maketh a joyous noise.”

“She shouteth aloud the J-Pop of salvation,” agrees the man on the white horse. His robes shimmer like the foam of the sea. His hair shines like love’s hurricane.

“Can even such as we attack an Earth that this diva defends?”

The horns of the Lamb burn with the light that is like the glimmers of ice and the third seal breaks. Then the creatures cry, “Come!”

The black horse rides from the deeps of the outer darkness, whence the seal held it. On its back is a rider carrying a pair of scales. Then there is a whispering among the creatures, saying,

A bit of wheat for a day’s wages,
A bit of barley,
A few bananas

The rider on the black horse casts forth great plagues in his displeasure. His horse stomps its foot and there are earthquakes all over the earth. Still Shelley sings:

I want to dance with you
Without leaving our room.
I’m hungry for you
All night alone.

Fall on me! Love is a famine
When I see you it’s like
I’ve had seven lean years!

The fourth seal opens, and there is a pale horse. And its rider is named Death, and he is smiling and his toe is tapping to the music. And the four creatures say, “Death is unleashed upon the Earth.”

Fall on me! Love’s Revelation is:
Total apocalypse claiming my heart!

Then there is a howling in the stars as the song ends and the moon turns black and Death says, “These Earth humans—so short-lived, so bold. Surely we can wait another three thousand years to kill them all.”

But there is a man robed in mist and thunder who says, “It is written that it must end now. Go now and let no mortal singing soothe your savage charge.”

So Death turns his horse and his horse stomps its feet and it tosses its head as he drives it for the Earth. Then there is a great turmoil in the sea and the hologram of a beast rises from it, and it has three crowns on three heads. And one of the heads has the likeness of a cricket, and one of the heads has the likeness of a youth, and one of the heads has the likeness of a large bopper, and there is the seeming on those heads of a fatal wound but this beast still lives, and the beast is singing:

I love you, Peggy Sue.

And the beast is singing:

Bamba bamba
Bamba bamba

And the beast is singing:

Oh baby, you know what I like!

And it is not a mortal singing, and the beast hath music to soothe the savage charge, and Death reins short his horse and there is stillness in the Heavens until the opening of the seventh seal.

This is not what will take place, and this is not what may take place, but this is what must soon take place, if humanity is to survive.

– from the Strategic Operations Plan of the First Human Defensive Ministry, Section 6, Subsection R, recorded 2998 AD

└ Tags: , , ,
3 Comments