Month: February 2024

• Deities of Decision

  

  A black building with windows of orange light played sentinel over a dark blue river at dusk in a city I did not know. It may have been Riga, Latvia or Baku, Azerbaijan or maybe even Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There were other buildings, old buildings of red and sand-colored brick defaced by time and the scourge of man. There were long, straight streets and bridges and rows of perfectly manicured trees, rows of imperfectly born maniacs. There was smoke rising from the vessels of the wrinkled people that sat in the carnival-lit squares. I got lost in the lights and the noise as the night pressed down. I came out of a machine.

  The very next morning I woke up in a silent yet humming hotel room overlooking the guts of a different world. I ate a quiet breakfast in a warm lobby. A pale woman from another time watched from the shadows between the back and the front. She spoke mystery through the dust in the sun like a rain of whispers. I went out to take a walk and I was wearing a long western gunslinger coat and it was somewhat cold. I didn’t understand what anybody was saying. I couldn’t read the signs. But I had other things on my mind. I was thinking about murdering God.

  When I walked into the old dusty church with the golden strands of morning light filtering through the stained-glass hands of Jesus, he was waiting there for me at the end of the velvet thoroughfare. His back was turned, and he was looking into a complicated machine that looked like a technological pipe organ. He seemed to be studying the world, many worlds, the entire universe perhaps in his sight. The multitude of multi-colored planets floated like marbles in an ocean of amniotic fluid. He tapped at various points on the large screen before him. He laughed deeply as an explosion materialized somewhere, a clear vision of man and war and other untidy things of those particular worlds — Earth and Earth 2.

  He then spoke deep without turning, as if he were a mighty mountain gazing off onto a distant land with a different set of eyes. He was hairless, large, and pale, draped in a single covering of universal brown flecked with gold. “If you plan on killing me, you’ll have to do better than a dull machete. I’m incredibly powerful.” He shook his hands as if he had just finished washing them. The screen he had been working on dimmed like dark mode and he finally turned to face me like the preface of an Old West duel. His face was contoured and cruel. He looked broken. “What is your complaint?”

  A crow descended from somewhere and sat on an ancient stone.

  “The world is on fire with hatred. You let people die. You let people suffer. You let me suffer nearly every day.”

  “And you blame me?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I have nothing to do with any of that.” He turned back to his machine and tapped on some keys. He was searching for something. He groaned like he was exhausted. “I have no control over the faulty wiring of your world or any other world. There are no guarantees for any living being.”

  “I thought you had control of everything. Everything! You supposedly created it all, yet you just leave it to derail and burn.”

  I looked up at the looming statues at either side of his cybernetic altar — one a wooden caballero wearing a full-metal bandolier and cast in a wandering, far-off stare; the other an Asian egg man dressed in the colorful armor of a misplaced childhood. His wide eyes moved side-to-side and ticked like a clock.

  The lord of the universe stepped down from his elevated space and walked upon the velvet path of forest green toward me. He must have been eight feet tall, the bottom fringes of his cloak swayed against the carpeting as he moved. He raised his arms in the air and lifted his chin of white granite flesh and bone and he spoke to the sky even though his words were intended for me. “So, then your intention is to reprimand me for the whole of my creations? Infinitely impossible. You are wasting your time here. Go off and leave this place.” He lowered his head and scowled at me as he waited for my reaction. His eyes were an unnatural green.

  “What planet are you from?”

  Just his eyes glided upward. “I am a member of every single one. There is a propagating drop of me in each spinning stone I placed. But it’s gotten away from me. I can no longer control it.” He turned and gestured with an outstretched arm. “Even with my device… I cannot stop the exponential madness of men and all the other beasts out there.”

  He suddenly had a fragility I did not expect. He read my thoughts. “I am, even as you are,” he replied. “Imperfect.”

  “Then we are all doomed? Every ounce of this universe… Doomed?”

  He repented. “That was never my intention.”

  “But rather your conviction it seems.” I threw the machete to the floor. It made a muffled thud upon the carpet. “Then it would serve no purpose to do away with you, would it?”

   “None… There are a trillion and infinite more just like me.”

  “What do I do now?”

  He motioned to the doors at the vestibule. “Go back out into the city. Walk. Breathe. Eat and drink life until the end. Love everything without flinching.” He turned away from me and returned to his apocalyptic chancel. He made motions with his hands and the entire universe ignited once more before him and he resumed his endless work.

  END

  

  By

  Aaron Echoes August

• The Baker

  

  The murals of human clouds. Bakers in bakeries thinking of what it would be like to not have to wake up so early. What would it be like not to have to press out into the day when the sun has barely begun to breathe, and the world is painted a worrying, cold blue.

  He moves along the sidewalks on Huron Street. Those gray linear sidewalks, pathways to the chores of life, pathways to work, pathways back home. Some of the cement squares are buckled by tree roots pushing up from below. For they want life, too. They do not want to be merely trampled upon by the egregious notions of men, woman, children, politics, war…

  His hands are stuffed deep in coat pockets. His breath shoots out, lingers with the cold, and creates his own brand of human fog. He stops a block from the bakery. He looks up and down the street… Michigan Avenue. A few cars sputter by in the growing icicle dawn. The entire world feels encased in cold. Instead of turning right to go the bakery, he turns left and walks toward the lake. The big lake. The lake that bred life here. The lake that made this town so many years ago.

  He stops at a 24-hour diner. He decides to have coffee and a sweet roll. A sweet roll most likely made by someone he knows. The place is mostly quiet. There is the periodical clanging of cups of plates in the back. There is some soft talking. Someone is rustling a newspaper and clearing their throat. A new day of life. But why? He wonders. He sips. He takes a bite. He places his hand to his heart, and it is still somehow beating. Why?

  He puts money on the table and bundles up. He pulls his knit winter hat from a pocket and straps it to his head. He makes sure he covers his ears, so they won’t freeze to death and just fall off. He needs to hear things. He needs to hear the lull of the lake waves as they drift across its own body on its way to touch the shore. He pulls on gloves. He brings the zipper of his coat to the very top, turns up the protective collar. He smiles at someone, nods his head. “Thanks,” he says, and he walks out the door. His nostrils fill with cold air. He walks east.

  He stands on the frozen sand of the shore and looks out at the water. It looks incredibly cold. He is beginning to feel incredibly old. He ticks off his lifelong accomplishments in his head and is unimpressed. But still. What are accomplishments if they cannot be shared with the absolute perfect love of your life? he thinks. His eyes reach out across the dark gray waters as far as they can go. There is no other side. It is like looking at an ocean except it isn’t an ocean.

  The funeral will be in two or three days. He isn’t sure he can take it. She is everything to him. He never figured he would ever have to utter the words, to explain to anyone why there was no one by his side… But she is suddenly gone. Like a lightning strike. He misses her terribly. He suspects the terminal ache will never pass. How will he ever be able to go on in this sort of a world without her. Where will he live? He can’t. It will all be too much.

  Then someone touches him on the shoulder. He turns and there she is. His love beyond love. She is slightly opaque but glowing. She is beautiful. She is alive on the other side. But which side? She smiles as she looks at him through the plastic barrier. He can see the love in her crystal ocean eyes. Her lips move. “I’ll never leave you. Even now. I love you.”

  END

  

  By

  Aaron Echoes August