10

Not long now, just wait it out.

Wearing – Nothing at all.

Listening to – perfect silence.

You don’t mean anything to me. Not anymore. It used to be something, and now it’s nothing. I stand naked at the edge of the Earth, and I don’t love you anymore.

We begin this story in a dining room. She’s doing the dishes in the kitchen, and I’m watching TV in the lounge. If you were the dining room, you would be a table. You would be a couple of chairs. A fruit bowl. A painting. A telephone on the wall. A light fixture and a couple of electrical fittings. You would look from your window to the house next door, and your gaze would fall on their television. The same channel I am watching in the lounge. You would hear a breaking newscast – world is going to end. If you could feel, you would feel a little sick to your stomach. But you wouldn’t have one. You would hear the news talk about the complete destruction of the world. And then you would hear silence. For just a few moments, you would hear nothing, in the deafening roar that is your existence; you would hear nothing at all. You hear a dish break, and the girl in the kitchen walks into you. I stand up in the lounge and you would see me go to her. I say ‘come here.’ The two embrace, there is a small pop, and you cease to exist.

Six months, they say. Six months, that’s all the time there is. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. In six months, all of creation will cease to be. I expect to get my orders, but word comes that there is no point. That we should just be, before that is no longer an option. I don’t understand. Why now, why would He pick now, of all times. I want to ask, want to scream at him and tear my hair out, and I want to know why. But there’s no point. He wouldn’t tell me anyway. So I stay where I am. And I be.

“Honey, there’s something I need to show you.”

You think this would be perfect for me. For the Emos, this should be like all Christmas and all birthdays come at once. But I just don’t know. I’m going to miss everything. I know I’m only a few years old, but I really am going to miss waffles and sneezing and sex and eggs benedict. I check my messages. There’s nothing. Not that I thought there would be, I doubt I would be able to get Him to change His mind. Once He’s made it up, there’s nothing really that you can do. And I love Him all the same.

There’s so much here. Everywhere I look. Lights and cars and music and tables and cups of coffee and grass and children and I know I’ve seen it all before, but looking down on things from a million billion miles isn’t really the same.

I know I should be perfect, but it’s a little hard right now. What am I saying? Nothing is hard for me. I just float alongside and watch, I don’t change anything and I don’t consort with humans.

I know we’ve only known each other a short time, but I really love you

“I love you too.”

Here I am. I want to see the thing just one more time, before it goes. But I can’t go back, can I? No, I’m just going to have to do this the old fashioned way. I go onto the back balcony of my apartment and take off. It takes a long time to do this manually. It’s great to think this would have once been the fastest way, but now over half the humans can jump. Of course, if I was a human, I would have a little trouble breathing at the edge of space. So in about ten minutes, I’m there. It isn’t really that much time, in the grand scheme of things, but now that all of creation has an expiry date, travel time isn’t really something I want.

There’ssomethingwrongwithyou,you’reflawedandyou’’triskhavingyouhere,..’.

And so there I am. Catapulted out, flawed and alone. I am on Earth and I don’t like it at all. There’s something wrong here, I can feel it in the air. It feels diseased, it feels like oil on my skin. I think I feel nauseous. The air tastes thick and repulsive. I don’t want to breathe it in, I don’t want to taste the bile sickness. How do you people tolerate this everyday. I fall to the ground and cough my lungs out, eventually throwing up some mucus. I can see a river nearby, but I’m hesitant to swim. If the air is like this, I can only imagine what the water must be like. I have to go home! I spread my wings and jump, and I make it a few hundred feet before He must see what I’m doing. My wings fold out from under me, and as I fall back to the barren, rotten earth I know I’m not going home, and I know that it was stupid of me to try. This must have been why I was sent here in the first place. I hit the ground and it doesn’t hurt, but it still feels disgusting. I have to enter the river, it must be better than this. I wander over and fall in. The tarry, gelatinous, filth washes over me and I feel a little cleaner. I sink to the bottom and just sit there for a few hours, thinking. Hours turn into days turn into weeks and eventually I decide I have to get out, I have to go and do something. I want to dig a hole and crawl in, but I know it wouldn’t do any good. I remind myself not to breathe when I leave the water, and I slowly float to the surface and clamber out. I don’t really know where I am, or what to do, or where to go, or anything. I remember enough to tuck my wings under my shoulder blades, humans don’t have them. And I’m naked. This might be a problem. I walk. I walk across the grass, and I can feel my feet. I can feel my feet on the earth and the grass and on sand and mud and puddles of water. I can see the rain falling down my hair, falling down my back and my legs. I don’t like it. It feels like chemical hammers on my skin. I gesture with my hand, but the rain keeps falling, keeps hitting me. I need some clothes. I gesture again, and I’m still naked. I hate this fucking place. And I don’t like Him too much right now, either. What am I saying? I love Him. He must have had a good reason for doing this. Right? There has to be something I can do about the clothing situation.

I take the back streets home. I don’t have any real power to speak of anymore, so it’s nice just to see the homeless and the gangs and the glue-sniffers and whatever back away as I pass. They know to leave me alone.

I take to walking home this way most of the time now. I’m spending a lot of time in bars. I don’t really know what I’m doing here. The air, the water, this place doesn’t feel as viscous as it used to, and I’m beginning to cope. I’m beginning to spend a lot of time in bars. I can see why so many people find their solace in alcohol. And cigarettes. I thought the air here was foul, but there’s something so sublime about doing it on purpose, about breathing in that ruining warm smoke and blowing it out. I know I shouldn’t, but what else can he do, right? It’s not like I could hurt any harder. This place, this place, this. This. Fucking. Place. This is not a happy place. There’s so much going on, all the people here hate everything so much, I don’t understand. I have seen perfection, and I have seen here and I can’t imagine what hell would be like if it’s supposed to be worse than here.

This fucking place. This fucking. Godamn. Goddamn. I hate it here. I like this bar though. This place is as close to heaven as I’m going to find in this dismal shit hole. Shelley is always nice to me, she sometimes gives me drinks on the house, not that it matters, and she tells me when I’ve had too much and she sometimes lets me stay till she’s put all the chairs on the tables and locks the door behind her. And sometimes, I walk her halfway home, till it’s time to split up and I go my way and she goes hers. I’ve placed a little protection on her, because I like her. I couldn’t give a damn about any of the other fucking cunts crawling around, dragging themselves around by their cocks and wallets, but I like her. She’ll make it home safe from now on.

One day I’m walking home from the bar, and I hear a scream. I’m drunk and I don’t really know which way is up, but I can hear her cry out and I can find my way around the corner to where she is. There’s a woman there, trying to pull her handbag back of some asswipe excuse for a carbon based sentient (fucking hah) lifeform. There’s a few others around and they look like they’re going to hurt her. One guy has his hand in his pockets and I’m pretty sure he’s playing with himself. I want to walk away, I want to let this happen, because this is what people do to each other, and it’s not my place to interfere, but she looks up and for a second she sees me, and because I know by now that He’s not going to do a goddamn thing, I go sort it out. The alcohol flushes from my head as a stalk towards them. I don’t say anything, but one of them sees me, and they stop molesting the woman for a second. It’s just long enough for her to grab her bag and make a run for it, when one of the guys punches her square in the face and knocks her to the ground, unconscious. He spits on her.

“This isn’t over, you fucking bitch. Don’t move a muscle, we’ll be back in a second.” I take a moment to contemplate the fact that he’s talking to a woman who can’t even hear him, but maybe he’s too stupid to get that, I’m not really sure.

There are six of them. They walk in a line towards me and a couple of them pull out weapons. Okay, I might not have much power left, I may have been shunned and abandoned by my creator, but I can still beat the crap out of these guys. I laugh a little on the inside, and it feels good to be back in my old field of expertise. It reminds me of the old days. I erase my jacket and shirt, and the gang does a collective double take as the clothing disappears. I let my wings out for the first time since I got here, and it feels so good, like stretching a leg you’ve had in a cast for six months. I have to say, it must be pretty impressive. The gang does another double take and they begin to look a lot less sure about their chances of beating me here. But they’re too close, and too proud to back down now, so they keep coming. This is too easy. They’re all so angry, so confused, and so on fire. It takes about four seconds for the last one to stop screaming as his body burns down to nothing. The woman begins to come to. She looks up at me, dazed, and I need to not be so half-naked. I gesture, but nothing comes. I am going to have to start writing down what power I have left. She looks at me, and my wings are still out, and I figure I should milk this for whatever I can. She stands up uneasily, and asks me what’s going on. I tell her to hold on, we’re catching a ride with the moon.

She can’t see me here. But I can see her, ordering her drink, lighting her cigarette. She’s an idiot, I can’t believe she’s out again, the night after. I hope she’s an alcoholic, otherwise I don’t know what she’s doing.

I’m drunk. I push the knife in and twist a little, it goes in easy. It is as if I were slicing through nothing but air, if not for the soft moan coming from her lips. I hold her close to me and I twist harder, severing arteries and rupturing major organs. She is going to die reasonably slowly, and it will not be painless. My mouth is dry, I need a drink.

I want to quell my suspicions, but all I can do is lie in bed at home and imagine her out, with someone else, drinking, dancing, smoking, kissing, fucking some other guy, riding him and letting him ejaculate his poisonous human seed into her. All I can see is her nude body rocking, her hands on the headboard banging and banging. All I can hear is her desperate cry. All I can smell is sex, him and her, the sweat and the liquor and everything. All I can see is them, their bodies rocking and slamming against each other. All I can taste is the stale smell of sex, the cigarette smoke and the empty glasses, I can taste bile in my mouth, and the air feels thick and rank, and I am reminded of when I first came to this forsaken place. If I ever questioned Him, if I ever was looking for a reason why; I think I just found it. He has a fucking awful sense of humour.

They finish up and she showers while he smokes in bed. She wipes herself off with a damp towel and makes her excuses. He doesn’t care, he got what he wanted. And she’s left, she’s in her car and here she comes home. It takes 58 minutes for her to drive back here. I get very, very drunk in that time.

Okay, so you know what? Fuck you. Just fuck. Fuck. Fuck you. You think you’re so smart, you think you’re so, oh you know everything. Well fuck you. I fucking hate you. You throw me down here, why? Why? So I can learn something? When I do I get to come back? Well you know what, Mister I’m-So-Much-Better-than-Everything? You fucking know what? I don’t want to go back. Hear me? I don’t fucking want to go back. I want to stay here, with booze and smokes and sex and fucking everything, in this vile place you made, yeah, you fucking made it, and now I have to live in it. Like you’re too good for your own fucking little ant farm, aren’t you? Aren’t you? Fucking answer me you son of a bitch! No you wouldn’t, would you? No you fucking wouldn’t. Because you’re too good for me now, aren’t you? Admit it, you self righteous stuck up son of a fucking nothing. Admit it. You think you’re better than all this. You throw me down here on this fucking planet to live out the last months of existence in this disgusting pit of filth so what? What are you trying to prove? I’ll fucking tell you what. Nothing. That’s what you are, a big stick up the ass nothing who finally figured out he has no fucking power anymore, and you’re doing the last thing you know how, you’re fucking pushing the big red Do Not Push button because you’re too scared to do anything else, to admit that you might have made a fucking mistake. Like you said you made with me when you threw me down here. I’m glad you did, now I know what things are like outside your realm of perfect bullshit, and I met a girl and I like fucking her, so there. So fuck you. I fucking renounce you. You hear me now, you gutless asshole? You fucking hear me now? I renounce you, I renounce your name and everything you ever were. I’m going to live here for the last of it, and you can do what you goddamn well want. And if oblivion means not having you looking over my fucking shoulder all the fucking time, then I can’t fucking wait. Goddamn you, you fucker. Are you listening now? Are you paying attention? I bet you can’t even be bothered looking down to see what all the fuss is about, you obese bitch sitting on the couch of dead horses’ bones. Fuck you. Fuck you to hell and all eternity. I hope you like what you built, you leaning tower of Pizza motherfucker. Suck my fucking perfect dick. Fuck you. I hate you, and everything you are. Fiat nihil, you megalomaniacal son of a bitch. Fiat fucking nihil.