Short Story: Darknesses & Glories
You think you know so much with your modern science, with your particle accelerators and missions to Mars. You think you can somehow capture the Universe in one of your telescope lenses, like some kind of screwed up peeping tom spying through a window.
Well, I hate to break the news to ya, Sport, but your cool, sane Universe is really one big chewy gum-ball of fucked-up chaos.
Long, long, long time ago there was this thing, this Seed, more itself than anything ever has, can or will be. It had always been that thing and would never not be that thing. It was perfect. And at that point, it was the only thing that could be said to exist at all.
Nobody knows what happened next, but something did. How do we know? You numbskull, look around you. We know because all this shit exists! Flowers, muggings, dope, Jesus, calculus and American Idol. The whole kit-and-kaboodle is here now, Pandora’s box is empty, and it’s goddamn for sure not because of nothing. So get your head outta your ass and pay attention.
Like I was saying. Something happened and nobody knows what, but afterwards things existed and started moving around. For the first time ever, the Universe was… different.
Things started simply. At first, there were only two things, the two most special things that ever existed. They were brothers. Sisters. Friends maybe. Who knows.
The first sibling to wake up was Darkness. And Darkness looked out over all the nothing and found nothing lacking. He found it utterly perfect and rational. For a long while, he wandered the Empty alone, content and fulfilled.
Then one day, the first Darkness had ever noticed, he saw something in the distance and was alarmed. For one, he was not used to seeing, as there had never been any light or the need for it. Two, such a thing as distance struck him senseless and unnecessary, a horrific division of an otherwise perfectly knit void. Nevertheless, he found himself drawn to it and began to drift towards it.
When Darkness laid eyes on Glory, it was love at first sight. I know what you’re thinking. It’s nasty, a brother thinking that way of his sister. But this was different – they weren’t related in the genetic sense people are, people are related in the cosmic sense that they are. They were the first relationship. The first conversation. It went pretty much the way all such conversations have since.
“You new around here?”
“Sure, I guess. You?”
“Nope, been here a long time. Seen everything.”
“Yeah? Well, then, what’s to do?”
“We could go walking around. I could show you everything.”
“OK.”
The thing was, as the Two started off walking, Darkness immediately noticed something was different about everything and though secretly terrified he did not want Glory to know. After a while of just walking, he asked, “Well, what did you think?”
“Think? Of what? We haven’t seen anything.”
“I know. Isn’t it beautiful? It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen… until today.”
“You calling me beautiful?”
“Sure.”
Make a long story short, they ended up falling in love and moving into together. Of course, Glory wanted to decorate, so she starts making things. At first, Darkness thinks her creations are interesting, if juvenile, and indulges her, but gradually as the making of things began to take up more and more of her time, he started to get jealous. One day he found her in a garden and confronted her.
“What are you making now? What is so special about all these things?”
“They are living things. They can know and enjoy things. They love and fear. Aren’t they beautiful?”
Darkness looked at the things around him. Small, puny, frail and pointless. They grew, they divided, they fought and they died. He could find no meaning in it. He could find no beauty in the passionate brevity of their lives, how desperately they struggled to remain alive, to last a few more moments before the inevitable end.
“Why have you made them so frail? They do not last.”
“You taught me the beauty of nothingness. My creatures come from nothing, it is only right they return there. My creatures are your children too.”
Darkness was aghast. His children too? Could it be? Was some part of himself in these weak, transitory beings? He didn’t know. Darkness was no great thinker, he only knew what he wanted.
“Don’t you still love me?”
“More than anything, my love.”
“More than your creatures? If so, then destroy them and return home with me.”
“I will not do that. I love you through my creatures. I am not complete without them. You cannot have me without them.”
Darkness thought powerful hard about it, but not long.
“Then I will love them too. Though I see no value in them myself, I will love them for you.”
“That is enough.”
Things were good for a while. Happy almost. Darkness and Glory had many children – gods, men, animals and spirits of every kind – and there was order. Darkness grew to love his children for their heroism in the face of certain doom, for their relentless spirit and determination. It was very strong, this spirit within them, it reminded him of Glory, his love.
Then one fateful day, without warning or herald, Darkness awoke and found his beloved gone, nowhere to be found. He called out to her but heard nothing back. He beseeched all his children to help him find their Mother, but none could find her anywhere. As the realization that their great Mother was missing slowly set in, a kind of desperate madness began to grow within their Father.
Darkness set off, leaving All There Is for the even greater, vaster emptiness beyond, certain in some inexplicable part of himself that he was guided. Through unutterably desolate space, Darkness surged like an irresistible wave of desire. There was no thought beyond To Glory. To Glory. To Glory.
God knows how long he went on that way. We simply cannot reckon it. But on he went until he went beyond Everything There Ever Was and came out to a new place. Only then did the madness leave him and he let out the longest and most terrible, bloody shout that Ever Will Be…
“GLOOOOOORRRRRRRRYYY!!!!!”
And then he sat down. Then he fell asleep and dreamed a strange dream. Of an Unsown Seed, a beautiful girl with eyes as bright as stars, and other strange things he couldn’t figure. He dreamt so long he forgot he was dreaming, until his dreams were of nothing but darkness, darknesses and glories, and slumbering things in the void.
The first one to wake up was Darkness…
