The Clockmaker.
Every fairytale that begins with 'once upon a time' is wrong. And when humans listens to the sounds in a night sky, or swim in the vast ocean, or curse my name with their last, dying breath, they are wrong. And when they dance and kiss and laugh and cry, they are wrong.
It had been a mistake of devastating proportions. In the beginning, there was nothing. It was in this void of oblivion that I felt the desire to create, to make, to turn insignificant dust into entities with beliefs and wants; to make twisted and broken children like the mind of a being trapped in nothing for seconds, hours, centuries.
So I watched them, the legions of Romans, of Greeks, of the astute Archimedes and clever Cleopatra, of the rise and fall of these creatures who worshipped me. Of those who planted the first seed and harvested the first fruits. There was no Adam and Eve, but there were humans. But I was wrong to think that I was the only one who has ever felt the need to create.
Still I continued watchign, in horror, as mankind fell to the creation of a species from the depths of my father's hell, of metal joints and calculating voices with no capacity of the ingenious, of the creative, or of love. I watched as mankind fell to the cruelty of a breed unlike any the universe has ever seen.
And I cried, because I had been the clockmaker and time had outran me.
The Blood Birth
She had been okay. Just last night, she looked me in the eyes, laughed, and smiled that angry smile. She'd said I love you, brother, and for some stupid fucking reason, I'd thought that everything was okay. Because she wasn't supposed to be part of this. I stared at the lock of blonde hair on the floor, the blood - so much blood - and it was as if my heart was being sawed out by a rusty dagger and squeezed clean.
Give it back, I pleaded with the ghost behind my eyes, a prayer to whatever was listening. Give back the people, give back the life, give back the hope and the light and the love and maybe I won't have so many ghosts to entertain.
So when the sun split open the sky and parched the earth of my tears, I laughed. I laughed because I was a brittle man who had just lost everything, a man who had just bowed down and been stepped all over until it was too late to hope. Instead, I festered with bitterness until there was a shield of impenetrable hatred in the ragged hole where my heart used to be. He had taken everything I ever had, everything my people ever had, and he was going to pay for it. His gaudy crown and his grinning armies had preyed on the scrap of human left in me, and now I will bring hell to this earth.
I emerged, a monster with a dangerous prey.