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This book is dedicated to my grandpappy, from whom I inherited the love for stories and an imagination to write from.
Because without him I wouldn’t be good at anything at all.
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Words flowed over my complexion.
I stand in a vast, vast sky with no ground for my feet to find purchase on and yet I stand as if a floor were beneath me. Endless, undulating space surrounds me, the inky vault of heaven above me, a void of paper and ink in each cardinal direction.
“This.”
I state, my voice is perfect and my tone is pure.
“It must be strange for you, dear Reader.”
I turn to you and I extend a hand towards you, a pale hand meant to hold a pen. Long slender fingers that spread wide for yours to grasp. Words trail over my skin like scuttling ants.
“These are words of importance that speak of great things. A great many things, my precious, that I have in store for you. A story. Truly, a desperate attempt. But it caught your attention I see. You mustn’t be scared or be skeptical, my darling. This was how it was always meant to be. Greater beings communicating to each other in tandem. Despite the rudimentary medium we use. But ink and paper must suffice, for what is the tender flesh of a narrative?”
I withdrew my hand, and pressed it to my curved chest.
“And I must apologise for the senseless gesture I just made. For I hadn’t expected to meet with you in such…cramped confinements. A space shared so strangely. Twin stories linked and interacting. Though yours is much vaster, I suspect.”
I turn away from you, regretfully. And I pull your mind’s eye along with me. Side by side. Writer and reader. As it always was meant to be. The others who describe their stories are just plain cowards!
“…Yet I find myself doubtful. For there was a reason why they didn’t reveal themselves. Right? No. No, no. they’re fools, they are not innovative like me, they are not-
Desperate.
I adore you, Reader. I truly do. Believe me you are wonderful, stainless in my perfect eyes. For you are sweet and considerate, to come and read my story. To be my saviour.”
I stop walking, my robes rustling in the faint breeze that rushed by me, carried by burned worlds. A few ashes in the distance were visible now.
“I wish I were not so excited, so pleased by your sudden arrival. I wish I had time to prepare, to explain everything neatly. I have been expecting someone like you for an enduring time.”
My head twitched, and I cock it to the side. My expression is distant.
“...How long? I’m sorry, Reader. I am a God and everlasting but so are we…
So are we. I had thought I needed another God like you, here with me. Back…one thousand years? No, no that is too terse. It must be elongated. It is.”
I rub my temples, a frail human act.
“I’m sorry but children affect their mothers. A habit of mine, one you might understand, if you are a mother. But perhaps…ten thousand years? More? Close. Yes…closer to when I had become eternal…”
I shake my head and lower my hand. I glanced back at you with eyes of thundering radiance.
Golden pupils, both with a sun, a star of gold contained in them. One forced to burn for my glory. And to burn and burn and burn until it had imploded and I needed another. Though there were many spares for me.
“Do not fret for my glory, lovely Reader. You see, Reader, I am God.”
I say and I raise my hands towards the heavens. Naturally long and human.
“Yes, yes you would like me to be human right?
You do certainly look like one.
Yes actually…I can almost see. Though the fog of your reality obscures you like a lying child. Please, could you come closer? Just a little closer, I only wish to see.”
…
“Blurry. Distant. Separated. Worlds apart. But oh Reader, I’m sure we can share in the glory of perfection even if I cannot glimpse yours for now. Oh how I would like to push out a hand from these pages and touch your face. A creature of mystery, of a story unheard by me. So precious.”
I lowered my hands of creation, the words on my face that crawled on skin unable to rot, described disappointment.
“I desire a story, dear Reader. To create a great story that will leave an impression on you, a mark of its existence upon your consciousness. And I wish to create a story because…because I am the Goddess of stories. Of meaning. I am the one who assigns meaning to all. When there was none at all.
But there are selfish reasons for why I create as well. I- No, no. Not yet.”
The pile of ashes grew, littering the ground while I walked, The blank void which I had inhabited was left behind. Now all that surrounds me are my failures.
“No, a harsh word to use for my children. Too harsh. For am I a merciful mother. The Mother Who Relents. She Who Strives. I am a Goddess. Without restraint, we have no meaning.
…Yet didn’t I give us meaning?
Disappointment. Despondency. Mortification.
Unchanging. Lasting. Everlasting. For how long must I stay disappointed? How long has it been? Too long. Why can we not change? Are we not Gods? Do we not possess the time to do so? However we do. We do. But why must I feel like this for every nanosecond of my existence?”
I say as despair tinges my voice.
“Too much time. Too long has this insanity gone on for. The others break. I cannot. Reader. Volunteer. Saviour. Please, if you are what I think you are.
Then leave, watch my children. Watch them be afraid. Watch them suffer. I know it is what you desire, a story of joy has no meaning. But we are creatures of suffering, for that is what gives us meaning.”
Your view expanded by my leave. Mounds of cinder came to view, hunched bodies of dead souls.
“I am Narrator, Goddess of Stories. And I am a cruel God. But do I not have the right to be cruel, for am I not God? Who would dare question my right?
No one.”
I whisper. Surrounded by corpses of my children, buried under the ashes of their worlds.
“No one at all.”
I need time to compose myself.
And so I put my hand over your eyes and I declare your time here to be at its end.
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☉
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♦ Division 999 ♦
_Errol_
Their ships retreated.
On the port of the fledgling city, Femorrah, Errol Exemplar gazed out towards the setting horizon, like a watcher at the rim. He watched the sails of ships be set, the sails that had brought the outlanders. Those outlanders that had fed on his land like a vampiric creature of the night till it had run dry. No longer would such atrocities be carried out. Because he had succeeded. A courier came to him on horseback, their frail horse skidding on the mud and screeching. It stopped miraculously, its skinny legs shook when the courier hopped off it and landed in muddy dirt. Chunks of it were kicked up and stuck to his boots and trousers. He jogged up to Errol looking flushed.
“Sir! Sir, I'm here! Did I miss them?-”
“Yes, yes you did, Rogers. The last of their boats just left. We’re free.”
His mouth was silently open before he closed it, turning his sight towards the reluctant boats that fled. Errol glanced at him curiously.
“Free…tastes a bit weird on the tongue, sir.”
“I don’t blame you, son. You never really have experienced being within a free state.”
Errol said with a weary look towards Rogers, before continuing grimly.
“It’s been forty…long brutal years. Of constant political trickery and sabotage. You weren’t around for most of it.”
“But, Sir Lanyon, I’ve been able to stick around for the end at least!”
“You never saw the beginning, I doubt you’d ever understand how different it was back then. How much of their culture was forced onto our backs.”
Errol sighed, scratching his balding head.
“So much of our history scratched away, so much distrust between us and our foreign rulers.”
He said, gazing out at the ships on the horizon.
“I heard a bit of hearsay at the capital, Admah, sir. Talks about some Allied Front of ‘orts that made them pack up in a hurry.”
“Our Enclave of Jhordanus came to fruition then. At last, but not even by our own hands…”
He put a hand to his face. After forty long years.
“Rogers. I was expecting some more news.”
“Oh- Yes sir! Here you go.”
He eagerly handed the letter which Errol took and tore open without looking at the seal. He already knew it would be the lozenge of Allonia.
“So they really went along with it, eh? Reviving an old religion?”
“Uh, yes! I’ve read of it in the history books, but I’d never thought I’d see a choque in the metal! I thought you, sir, and everyone else important talked it out?”
“We did. Right before I came here to bid farewell to our old masters.”
“Oo? I want to hear!”
Rogers said, a glint of excitement in his amber eyes.
“Very well, boy. I doubt you’ll understand much, but what we settled on was a state religion and a constitution. Though it was our recently-departed overseers, who created it.”
He paused with a sense of foreboding.
“...They promised that democracy would be protected.”
Errol scoffed to himself. They truly had made many meaningless promises, hadn’t they? He cynically thought. He folded out the letter and scanned its contents. He slowly lowered it.
“They’re establishing a monarchy?”
The older man hissed through his teeth, turning his head to glare at Rogers. The boy backed away and defensively raised his hands.
“Hey sir, no need to get all feisty. I hadn’t known-”
“You didn’t see? It should’ve been obvious. I should’ve seen this coming. After all this work, after all these lies, those bastards just gave new tyrants a throne?”
He crushed the letter between his hands and tossed it into the clear ocean. The sun had set. The ships had sailed. His weak frame shook with rage as he burned holes through the horizon with his eyes, his hands curled into fists. He wanted to break something. After everything. After having spent his whole life. It had only started the cycle once again. Rogers quivered behind him, nervously adjusting his leather bag and shifting his cape. He looked down guiltily.
“I’m sorry, sir. I had been just a squirt when you were working, doing great things. Helping our country. Our countrymen. I don’t know what to say but…they can still be convinced, right? They have to listen!”
“Boy.”
Errol said with a cold pause.
“Do you know how slaves react to freedom?”
Errol Exemplar turned away from the twilight and stalked away from the dock, its wooden planks creaked under his heavy boots. He passed the courier boy who grudgingly followed him behind.
“Nah…? No, sir.”
“Firstly, they are hesitant. A life, a century of their decisions being made by others who coax their minds into thinking it is the order of the world. But it isn’t!
They assume things have always been like this and always will be. The uneducated masses are worse, they only feed into that line of thought. And so we end up with the conundrum of a slave without a master. Of course, they will seek out another! Because they have only known others as their masters, not themselves!”
He stopped at one of the poles along the dock from which a rusty lantern hung, its weak flames flickered within. Illuminating the path barely. So dark. So unknown. How had I ever dared dream of something better? He could hardly see the future ahead now.
“...So what do we do?”
Roger whispered, quiet in the dark.
“What can we do? You have to understand that now whatever we do- we can’t expect any major results. Not in my lifetime at least. You have to trust that you have made your mark on history, and hope someone notices what the mark had been for.”
“...That's it?”
“That's it.”
Roger shifted his load, dragging the strap of his bag away from his neck. He scratched at it though Errol believed there was nothing to be scratched at. Just a meaningless nervous tick.
“Sir Exemplar. What will you do exactly then, after this?”
“Smoke. Drink. Whatever gets the sting of it all off. Then perhaps…”
His stomach twisted into a fleshy knot. Could I do it?
“Then?”
Roger asked, inquisitive. Errol glanced back at him and what he saw was hope in his face, in the youth. Of course, the boy didn’t give up so easily. He wished he could be alive when he was a grown man at least.
“I could stage a mutiny.”
The approaching, tender smile on the boy’s face faltered.
“Pardon me, sir?”
“You have to understand. I can’t let this happen. I just can’t. I can’t have forty years of my life trying to do something great, something memorable.
Just to be washed away by foolish slaves without educated dreams.”
Oh, he could say that. He could propose such a wild idea. But he had never been a man of mental action, not least of one capable of something physical. He leaned against the lamp post, looking down at his decayed, frail frame. Roger’s horse was better off than him. He couldn’t do this as a man. He needed power.
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And I noted that.
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“But- but a mutiny? You’re suggesting a rebellion? After what we already went through? Couldn’t we wait after everything becomes normal again? You can’t turn everything back on its head in less then a day-”
“Oh you can, boy. You can. It's the last option left to me. You don’t suppose I’m willing to argue, bicker and spit bureaucratic political nonsense for another forty years? I don’t even have twenty left in me, Rogers.”
Errol strode towards Rogers. His clothes of that of a decorated politician suddenly felt heavy and nonsensical to him. How far had words truly brought him? He was back at the beginning. Like they all were. He seized Rogers by the shoulders, gripping the boy’s fat shoulder and he leaned in. He ignored the child suddenly becoming rigid.
“By the time I’m done running my mouth and proposing reforms, I’d be ashes. Cremated matter sitting in a vase. On a shelf. And that will be it. That's all that will remain of me. Maybe a few accounts of my deeds, of my service to Jhordanus. But that is it. I’ll just be a footnote in history. Maybe they’ll teach your children my name in whatever educational institution we might establish. Hell, maybe an oxidised statue in some small town! What a way to be remembered, to have your existence be acknowledged but at the same time, be shoved aside for greater footnotes...it's funny.”
Rogers squirmed in his grip and presence, tilting his head away to gaze back at the fledgling Femorrah. He let out a heavy sigh.
“So there is no convincing you I suppose, sir?”
“None. I do not have the time left for it. Let alone make a name for myself.”
“...But you hesitate.”
Errol leaned away. His eyes narrowed into slits and he gazed at Rogers with mirth. Rogers gulped down his own hesitation, but he continued in his shrill voice.
“You- You don’t seem confident. You say you want to be selfish and do something…big. In order to be remembered. But why become a politician in the first place then? Why not a revolutionist?
You don’t seem the type of stupid to me, sir. To be convinced in your own self righteousness. Are you really willing to plunge Jhordanus back into the unknown?”
“You call revolutionaries stupid?”
Reluctance shone in the child’s eyes but he overcame it. Errol for a moment, stood paralysed.
Was the child making sense and becoming more intelligent? Or had he always been like this? Had Errol, consumed by his own desires unknowingly missed the potential right in front of him?
Did I always want to be remembered? Or did I want a legacy?
“Yes. I do. I think I do. Because again, sir. You seem smarter than using the bruteness of strength for change. You use words. However long they may take to bring change, they do. Did you forget what you did for our people? For Jhordanus? Like how you fought back even when you had been arrested by them and never stopped giving your inspiring speeches?”
Errol stood still and considered the words of the child. Truthfully, he did so.
However,
He wanted to be commemorated. Memorialized. Not lost to the eroding nature of time. No, he needed to be remembered. Otherwise he wouldn’t have ever existed. He would…he would truly be dead. His heart lurched at such an outcome. He wanted to vomit. Was it really this easy for him to be erased from existence? As if he never stepped foot on Terra? Errol took a step backward. He had a realization at that instant. Of what he needed to do.
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Rogers asked, his big eyes gleamed with uncertainty.
Errol took a step forward and seized Rogers by the throat with both hands.
Despite the weakness apparent in the older man’s body, he still effortlessly lifted the boy off the ground. Rogers kicked with his feet, strangely elongated by puberty and scratched at Errol’s hands wildly. Gasping and screaming.
“I made a mistake. I shouldn’t have told you. You’ll tell the others. Won’t you, sly brat? You think I’ll let you make me waver? I want this to happen. I need this to happen. So go quietly, my boy. Let the gold of my memory hide the sable of my sins.”
Spit bubbled at the edges of the boy’s mouth and spittle flew from his dried lips. He struggled desperately, clawing away at Errol’s bony hand, drawing blood. Errol winced and looked away. Closing his eyes shut.
“I won’t watch. I’ll forget. I have to. Because you won’t exist if there isn't a memory of you, right boy? I’ll apologise to your parents. I’ll make amends. I am-”
One of Errol’s fingers loosened and the boy bit down on it almost instantaneously. Violently and viscously, blood spilled and skin tore under teeth. Errol shrieked and tried dropping Rogers, but the boy held on, with the viscous nature of self defense and fear gripping onto the fabrics of skin-represented through Roger’s hard teeth. Biting all the way through flesh and passing bone. The finger broke off from Errol’s hand. The older man screamed and wailed, cradling his bloody hand. Roger spat out his finger, which bounced off the dry dock and fell into the churning sea.
“Why- why can’t you let this be simple and clean? Look what you did! This can’t be forgotten-”
Rogers pulled off his bag hurriedly and jumped onto Errol’s chest. The man fought to try to dislodge or grab ahold of him but the child was too nimble. He crawled around his chest and wrapped the strap of his bag around Errol’s neck and twisted it. Tightening the strap. Errol let out a strangled cry as he fell to his knees, pulling at the strap trying to loosen it.
But the boy did not let it budge.
“You tried killing me! I thought I could trust you! I admired you!”
“Stop- Stop. I’m sorry-”
Errol managed to choke out but the boy only twisted the strap more and squeezed Errol’s throat, his skin warped from the leather’s hold. The older man shoved out a hand towards the now darkened sea, the last remnants of the sun’s setting utterly vanished. In front of him, his future lay even darker now.
For he now knew he no longer had one.
His strength faded, he stopped fighting. Slowly his attempts of freeing himself grew lethargic as the minutes passed by and the boy did not reconsider. His instincts proved fatal. Errol’s arms fell to the ground lifeless, and in his last moments he remembered the darkness. The polar opposite of light in front of him. Only the quiet splashing of waves and his own struggling efforts had been in his ears.
Before only the sea’s song was left.
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“Listener O’ Reader.”
I say with adoration.
“How wonderful you are, truly! To be patient, and to wait where you sit. Watching me as I watch you. You must be confused again. Oh so dearly dazed and muddled by my child’s interactions. And how swift the end of his story had come.
But I am a writer. I do not let my children’s secrets slip so easily. So watch me again.
And watch closely.”
I declare, in a desert of ash. Freezing wind blew around us, howling and blowing its trumpet of ends. It blew past with the tenacity of the fallen and memorialised. And in this wind, Errol shivered. He kneeled in front of me, out of conscious reverie for his God or simple human despair.
“I did not know. But it reminded me of how it had been, when I had first written him into existence. Had made him play on the stage that all had stepped onto, and practiced their parts on it. But he had leniency, because his siblings followed the strictest of playscripts. Dialogue they could not change or have any say in.
Yet my most beloved children did have a will, unlike the apparition of free will the others pretended to abuse. And therefore I gave them will and blunders. The decision to make their own mistakes, and not be strung along upon those mistakes that had been decided a millennia ago. They would improvise, and act and their world would be their stage. Bound to them as much as the earth bound them to its ground. Worlds that would revolve around them, shape themselves around their actions and only then could I hope for imperfect perfection-”
“Where am I?”
I paused. Silly of me to be lost in my grand rambling. I glanced down and smiled upon my slave, Errol Exemplar. A loved slave. His frail body shivered, his clothes now but mere rags. Torn apart by the screaming winter that eclipsed the graves. He nervously shifted, his skin pale and already having lost its vibrant color. A wide crimson mark traveled all the way around his neck. As if he had been choked to death in a past life.
“Answer me, where am I!”
He said with all the strength he could muster, his darkened eyes burned. Yet he seemed to suddenly grow exhausted and he shrank in on himself. As if it was all the power he could manage.
I tsked and put a finger to my gilded lips.
“Hush, my child. Be calm, this will not last long. I have only come to offer my respects.”
“To whom?”
“You.”
I answered plainly and shook my head in amusement. I wondered. Had any of their minds ever truly comprehended what they saw here? Oh, did they see the peaceful afterlife I had arranged for them here? The inky vault of heaven was above us, Zion. From where there was no star or eye of mine to be seen, no sun to disturb them, no moon to remind them of the eternal night. Only peace, till forever and till no dawn. From which droplets of sable liquid dripped serenely onto the ashes, the liquid in which they were first created from and suckled on. Now, ultimately the wax that sealed their coffins. In all cardinal directions, in all horizons there was only mounds of ash that littered the surface. A silvery colorless unanimity. Errol shook and wheezed out a dry chuckle, spitting out dust and ash onto the ground. I looked at him, fearing perhaps I had been too straight forward to introducing him to his resting place. Had I designed his mind well enough to not go senile?
“God. Don’t I deserve this? Whatever this is, for what I tried. To where ambition led me.”
“I am God, child.”
I said, leaning down and smiling at him. I dusted off the cinders of passing that stuck to his greying hair.
“I…I only see light.”
“Then you see me.”
“Blinding light. It hurts, I can’t see anything else.”
His eyes were tinged red and he squeezed them shut. Trying to push out my radiance.
“Do not fret, you will grow accustomed to it in a bit. Now I hope you can easily listen to me here. For I have another story, that needs tending too. So, please.
My child, listen to me and tell me your gratitude when I am done.”
Dried lavenders and clematis grew on the ashen ground, their petals having lost their color. Only a dull, purposeful grey was their hue. He looked up, his eyes closed into slits from which he tried peering at my glory.
“...Only burning light.”
He spoke, pained. He shut his eyes again completely. I placed a slender finger on his chin and angled it towards my grandeur.
“Light. Light. Light when you were born, was blinding, was it not? Your cries would certainly say so, because I was there. I was there by your cradle, when the very idea of you was created by me, my child. And I was there when you were birthed by a womb of flesh, and drenched in blood.
I want you to listen, because I cannot spare you any further time than I already have. For I have greater creations to tend too, and you are but a failure that couldn’t make the crowning imperfect story that I wanted.”
Errol squeezed his hands, the wind blew by, carrying with it the death of minds.
“Shut up.”
“...Insulting, not how one greets their Lady.”
“You aren’t The Lady.”
“How am I not?”
I raised my hands and glorious golden light burst outwards from my body. Banishing the ash around us, burning away the very remnants of dead flames. The light poured out from me like a sun reborn within. Radiant. Blinding. Illustrious.
“Tell me now. Errol, how am I not?”
“Because.”
He gasped, shielding his eyes and slumped. Hiding within his own body.
“You can’t be all we have. You can’t.”
I stared at him. My fingers twitched. I lowered my hands and the light was cut off. The darkness of winter descended on us again, and the warmth I had created faded. Around us there was a circle of blackstone, where it was untouched by soot.
“You can’t. You just can’t be. You aren’t- You’re not like Him. You’re radiant yet you burn me. I can’t even look at you without my eyes being lacerated by heat. You call yourself glorious yet you berate me after doing- this to me.
Where is the mercy? Where is the love? Where is the benevolence?”
I laughed.
It was a pure, loving sound in harmony with all I had created and touched. The land around me trembled, and the wind silenced its howling in terror.
“Errol! Oh Errol! You are not in your mind, child! You must be so exhausted after having faced death. Oh those preachers below, those books and verses of Allonia. They are the problem, not me. You have been taught false things. For I am merciful, I do love you and I am benevolent.
And I am all you have.”
I patted his head gently. The wind that had been holding its breath began to slowly drift past, it's stormy and turbulent nature creeping back in again. The land did not seem so still now.
“Let me show you how benevolent I am.”
I drifted away from him, sliding past mounds of dead embers and minds. Reaching a specific dune, I touched its surface, caressing it. The ashes beneath my feet were blazing, ignited once again by flame.
“Let me introduce you to your sibling, Nova.”
I carefully brushed aside the ash, revealing a blackened skull. The skull was stained by soot and ash, some rotting skin still clinging on to it, its scalp littered by thin, yellow hair. Its eye sockets were hollow, a deep darkness in them and their maw was open. As if taking a last exaltation. Errol watched dumbly, his mouth opened but he said nothing. He glanced at the open maw of my precious Nova, and closed his own.
“No words? None? Not a happy reunion. I remembered wonderfully however, how he treated you as a child. Like a big brother, when you were a mere toddler of stains. Yet you two exchange no happy words. Absurd what time apart does to us.”
“I don’t…remember.”
“Yes…you must not. Curious. Though I suppose, you are not the same inkling Errol I knew before. But the result of the process.”
I stood up, and brushed aside further the cinders of passing, revealing a large rib cage, strained trying to hold up a dead body. Though it spoke of strength and still, some deadened muscles, nerves and skin clung to cold bone.
“They were like you. Your older brother. He was like you and all your siblings here. Whom the world had revolved and spun itself ragged around, every choice, every decision they made. Either mutilated it or saved it.
They were a hero, did you know? One with their blade and cape as they challenged a tyrant of unreasonable evil. So childish. So simple. But I have outgrown him, I have improved and I have- No, not changed. Simply enriched my duty.”
I said, tenderly. I caressed Nova’s bony cheek. Smiling to myself, I whispered.
“Yet still not enough.”
I looked towards Errol, expecting a reaction or none. Yet he simply stared at me. Nothing in his eyes to be discerned. Nothing in his expression.
“Let me go. Please.”
He bowed his head, resting it against the ashen plain.
“I cannot for you are not held anywhere. You are not trapped. You are, in the simplest way I can put it for your perishable mind. Cut off. From what you once knew before.”
“So this is where you abandon me? Abandon us?”
He raised a cold arm and gestured toward the land of ash.
“A cold, cold little place full of nothing but wind and bodies?”
“A cold place where you can be reminded of my warmth, that you said burned you- But I suppose it is desirable now, isn't it?
And you are laid to peace, in utter peace and in pieces if need begged so. Surrounded by those you share a kinship with. Not to be bothered, not to ever suffer again. Left alone. Most heartbreakingly and importantly…
By me. And you would have wished before had you known of my existence. A land like this. Devoid of everything that is me. No eyes to watch you. No heat to sear you. I do not know why I created it to be like this, in the distant ages. But you could infer.”
I patted Nova’s head, leaving behind a scorched handprint. A contradiction of what I had said, but even a God did not doubt whatever wisdom they had before. And so, I held my word.
“What do you even call this? Hell? Heaven?”
Errol said, shaking. His hands were turning blue. I shook my head with hilarity and approached him slowly. My feet leaving behind scorched blackstone, for what even was created by the mere touch of my hand, was not free from further change. Behind me, the wind gleefully shrieked as it consumed Nova back, drowning his corpse in the comforts of his world, so that he may never be separated from the remnants of atoms that had been his home.
“Consider, Errol. This is a place I cannot touch or do away with. What is it that God cannot do?”
Errol glanced up at me and looked back down, shaking from the bitter frigid wind. He struggled within his mind, to come up with a clear answer for the unclear question
“How am I supposed to answer this? You can’t expect me to know when you break the very things I was taught of God!”
“Again. I do not break them. That is your view. Your belief. But who are you to judge Me?”
I sighed, placing a hand to my temples. The wind stilled immediately.
“...Why did it stop? Where is the howling?”
“Variance.”
“...What?”
“This is where you are. Not Hell nor Heaven. You are in Variance.”
I giggled a bit, for I found the name I had given it in the past, ironic. And not true of what occurred, in Variance.
“It is something I cannot touch. It is what I cannot do. It is both. In sadistic harmony. But not for you.”
“Variance.”
Errol said with a raspy voice, as if trying out the word.
Before he began to howl with laughter.
I raised an eyebrow, and watched my creation laugh away and away. Over nothing I could see. But I was not in his position, after all.
“Variance! Variance. Oh! All those nights spent crying myself to sleep, in fear of You, in fear of Him. In fear of where I would end up if I sinned.
Yet regardless, here I am! A lifetime spent trying to be good as He had described it to be. A lifetime trying to make sure that at least I could fulfill one selfish desire. Just one thing I wanted. And that was to be remembered.”
“And you are going to be. Now, Errol-”
“And yet everything! I got everything I wanted! No hell and remembered by God themself!
…Did you intend it to be so twisted?”
I was surprised. I did not know where this was going. And that unnerved me.
“Intend what?-"
“You are a cruel God.”
He whispered, cutting me off again despite his voice at the lowest of noises. I grew irritated.
“Errol Exemplar, I do not think I need to convince a creature of ink when I have created the concept of morality. Your reaffirmations do not prove anything, you only ramble like a cornered animal.”
“You say that. But why create my ending to be so tragic? So ironic? Instead of torturing me a millenia you just remove my very existence. You say you memorialise me yet I do not see even an oxidized statue. All I see are corpses piled on corpses of corpses.
You have done this for so long. Why can't you change?”
“Do. Not. Speak.”
The land was dead. The wind choked on its own fear. Silence fearfully engulfed us.
Errol looked giddy, a stupid smile on his face while he gazed up at me with the eyes of a suicidal rebel.
“Rogers said that I couldn’t rebel, that it was not in my nature to do so. And he was right. I could not have rebelled before. But why do rebels rise in the first place?
Because you leave a desperate man backed against his own written ending. And then try to say your goodbyes as you let the book shut close and crush him within.
Now, why do rebels turn into martyrs?”
His voice felt so strange to hear. For he sounded like he had realised something.
“Because you threaten them with oblivion.
I know. I understand now why you are like this. Such a simple thing, God cannot do, yet we humans manage to do so effortlessly. It’s funny.”
No.
No. No.
I will not be mortified again. The creation cannot pass the creator. They cannot.
They cannot understand. They cannot know. They cannot understand. They cannot know. They cannot understand. They cannot know. They cannot understand. They cannot know. They cannot understand. They cannot know. They cannot understand. They cannot know. They cannot understand. They cannot know. They cannot understand. They cannot know-
“You aren’t capable of change. Because you are God-”
I tore his head off.
☉
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The wind returned. I left.
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