Chewing On Glass…

The sun shines down deep within the valley below as it hangs high in the sky. Ancient trees give a way to an ancient and untouched land. Swirling iridescent colors made of bright purples, tamed pinks, intangible yellows reflecting off the leaves, and beyond that every shade of green imaginable. Her perfect form stands at the edge of the cliff overlooking the valley below. She never comes down here. Says she never has too given her advantages so high above it all. I’m aware that I should feel a sense of fear over her very presence as I approach her closer to the edge. I’m unsure how I truly feel about being down here with her. Down below the heavens in a kingdom that is of her making, but not her true domain. Down here in this kingdom it feels as though for the first time we are equals upon this very ground. This place is as much mine as it is hers in so many ways. I stand by her side with my chest held high overlooking all that we have made together. My new found confidence though doesn’t last as she begins to speak.

“We’ve got a bit of a problem,” her voice cracking like lightning and booming like thunder from all around us. I’ve known her longer than any being that has ever existed and possibly understand her just as well as the rest of her creations. Despite the immense power of her voice, I can tell she isn’t angry. I can sense her uncertainty hidden within about what is on her mind. “And what kind of problem would that be?” I ask casually as to not turn her uncertainty to anger. “I know what you did. What you’ve been doing since Adam,” her voice tightens up as she looks out amongst the valley below. “I’m not sure I know what you are speaking of. I’ve only ever done what you have asked of me,” I lie. In one swift move she snaps her head around to face me. I can feel her towering height as she stares down upon me. The weight of my own words heavier than I thought they might be as she turns them back around on me with her penetrating stare.

“You know damn well what you have been doing behind my back and in front of me no less,” she accuses me, her voice now shaking the trees around us. “You told me to look after them. I looked after them,” I say as calmly as I can. “No, you interfered. I told you I didn’t want any of you to interfere with them. I made that very clear that they were not to be toyed with or lead on. That they were meant to find their own way to love me,” the ground trebling to the rhythm of her voice. I try to ignore the dark clouds slowly rolling in on either side and regain my former confidence as my own anger rises. “Love you?” I question, at nowhere near the same strength. “Love you, that is all you care about?” I ask more clearly as she stares me down and the clouds grow darker around us. “You want them to love you and yet you refuse to show them the way. You give them no guidance and expect them to understand. They are not designed that way. You have designed them that way, but I was not created that way. The others were not created that way,” I point out with an air of defiance.

“There was a reason,” she doesn’t elaborate, the last of the sunshine shining down upon only the two of us. “Whatever that reason may have been, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to live a life upon. To give everything they were given and throw it away for nothing. They do not need to suffer. You chose for them to suffer. With all your great power you allow them to suffer,” my anger turning into outrage. “After all this time together, you couldn’t see there was always a reason for everything I do. You couldn’t see what it was that I have given all of you,” the last of her words pushing the clouds closer together. “No, because no one can. They needed a leader. We needed a leader,” I tell her as the clouds begin to light up with actual lightning. The sound of the dark heavy clouds releasing their own held back emotions creates a hum around us. “This was never yours. This was never going to be yours, but now,” she pauses as she looks away from me. The heavy rain falls down upon us slowly at first. “I was never trying to make it mine. I was only trying to make it right,” my words barely audible over the sounds of rolling thunder. She steps closer to me and places her hands on my shoulders. “Well, you have failed just as I have failed,” she says in a sedated tone as the lightning continues to crash all around us.

“Except as your creator I’m willing to give you a second chance Lucifer. To give you what you always wanted,” her lips don’t even seem to move as she speaks. Nothing seems to speak anymore as all of time, all of existence seems to come to an abrupt stand still. My mind seems to go blank as she grips the edges of my wings and relieves them from my body with her immense strength. My verbal words give away to agonizing screams of pain and betrayal as my bones tear away from flesh. I only ever wanted to help them, I want to say, but I can’t as I stare down at my once beautiful wings at my feet. I only ever wanted to do what was fair to them and what was right by my lord. I think to myself as the valley below fills with water. “And for as long as I live. You shall,” her words conjure in my head to the absence of sound. Lightning reflects against the pupils of her dark hollow eyes as she pushes me ever so gently towards the raging waters below. I watch as her images grows smaller the further, I fall. My desecrated body crashes hard against the cold surface of the water. A burning sensation sets off an instinct to fight for survival against the rushing water. My flailing attempts aren’t enough as the darkness slowly settles in.

I wake up screaming and full of fear as I whip the covers off my soaking wet body. Another dream of drowning has soiled another set of perfectly fine sheets. The same nightmare repeatedly plays out as I sleep. Thankfully not every day, but enough times to be consider my greatest fear. The choking sensation of never breathing again. The overpowering threat of the darkness coming for me one last time. My chest tightens as the thoughts settle in. Even as the realization that I am neither drowning or sitting in a sea of water settles in. “Another bad dream?” My wife asks as though she is keeping some kind of chart beside the bed. “Yes,” I answer, slowly getting myself off the bed. “I’d tell you that you need to talk to someone about that, but I know that if I keep telling you, you are going to need to talk to someone about me,” she sighs from behind her phone. “Very funny,” I smile on my way to the bathroom to peel my clothes from my skin. “If you are going to take a shower. You better make it fast. I was just going to wake you up for work,” she calls from the bed. “Why didn’t you wake me up sooner?” I ask, turning on the shower. “Because I know better than to wake you,” she calls out.

The rest of my night plays out as it always does as I head to work and feel as though I am floating through a life that doesn’t make any sense.  I know that dreams aren’t anything other than our mind making up little movies to pass the time, but there is something about this particular dream over the others that feels so different. It doesn’t feel any more real than the other recurring dreams that haunt me from time to time. Even if it is the most traumatic of all my dreams. I think it has something to do with the drowning or maybe it is the sense of loss right before that. I’ve never lost a limb or let alone a set of wings so, I have no clue why any of that would feel so profound to me. Enough to put me in a daze throughout the rest of my night. I’m probably just tired like I always am. My mind turns and turns as it does most nights while I work. An endless excretion of effort for little to no gain because tomorrow I will be right back here doing the same things over again. I can’t help, but to feel most nights that this isn’t the life I was meant to live or that I once had.

My dreams are little glimpses of something completely different. I feel as if they are windows into something I don’t understand, but something I am supposed to remember. I don’t even have it that bad and still I wish for something more. I wish for something I think that I once had. I don’t believe in past lives or reincarnation. Life is what it is and then we die. Simple in the most basic of definitions. Then there are my dreams convincing me how wrong I must be about my own beliefs. Visions of me flying high above the tree line with elegant wings, a white light that drones on endlessly as a voice commands me, a garden with massive fruit trees nestled in a sea of green, and then there are the nightmares. The visions of their suffering faces, the hammering of nails into wooden planks, the flames as everything disintegrates to nothing once more, and of course me drowning under the weight of my own struggle. What does it all mean? What does any of it have to mean? My dreams almost feel biblical in a sense, but all that is nothing more than made up stories to pass the time. A lot like my dreams I think as I work.

If I’m not obsessing over my dreams, I often find myself obsessing over humanity and the lack of it anymore. Why? I have no idea. It is not as though this world is calling for me to lead them or help them out of some sort of jam. For as long as I can remember there have always been problems. People fighting for something more, arguing the legitimacy of a given set of beliefs, the battle over the color of one’s skin, or who’s land is this exactly. It is almost as though something seems broken in all of us and yet none of it really feels real at all. I can’t recall an actual time where I have faced any of these challenges first hand. Privilege, I’m sure. Thousands of years of human development has led me to this privileged boredom and inherited guilt for things far beyond my own control. If there really was such a thing as God, I can’t foresee them allowing any of these atrocities to even happen. I mean what would even be the point of allowing these constant conflicts to persist? All these problems resting on the shoulders of humanity and what that means. Humanity an undefined term that is always slowly evolving, regressing, and being reinterpreted from day to day, year to year, decade by decade, and so on. 

I’m not sure life ever needed to be this complicated or complex. Something in me tells me it wasn’t always this way, but history reminds me that what I’m feeling is only a feeling. Feelings are not facts and facts cannot feel. If there was a God, I know they would have done something better by us or for themselves. No, this mess is all us and where it begins is as uncertain as everything before whatever this is even began. Reality comes crashing back in as the last of my work comes to an end. Repetitive tasks meant to distract me from some sense of uselessness. “Oh good, you are still here,” the store manager declares as if on que. Knowing better I don’t say anything. There really is no use fighting whatever dumb thing they have to say next. It is always the same in one form or another. This isn’t that and that isn’t this, and we really need to work harder on making all of this be more like it should already be. Of course, the torturous fact is that we should all be held at this imaginative standard, but it never feels like that looking around. Feelings are not fact and facts cannot feel I remind myself once more to retain my sense of calm.

It takes a lot of me to have to sit through one of these little meetings. Which is the main reason I am usually gone by now, but time today seems to be slipping through my hands. The last of it is going to be spent dealing with whatever it is he has to say. “I don’t know if you read my emails, but the other day the OTA team was here and they found a couple of out of dates,” he says in a wounded way. I simply nod along to his exhilarating and encouraging words. “I’m sure you’re as upset about this as I am, but we really need to make sure this is getting done,” he tells me. “I’m sure it does and I’m not upset. There’s no logical reason to be upset,” I point out, not willing to play along. “Well, there is because these out of dates are serious business,” he says in a hurt tone. “You are going to need to stay and make sure that they are getting taken care of,” he says with authority and dropping the whole wounded leader act. “I bet,” I say in a casual way uninterested in such petty things. “Because the other seven people who will be in the department today and the whole team of people, who we employ to check dates, couldn’t be bothered to?” I leave the question open ended. “You shouldn’t concern yourself about what others are doing. This has nothing to do with that,” he tells me.

“The plot thickens,” I say in jest to an audience that is in no mood. “You need to take this seriously. Either it gets done,” he begins to say before I interrupt. “Or what?” I ask, my emotions breaking through the surface of my calm demeanor. “You going to punish me? By inconveniencing the other nineteen people who are here today? I don’t think so, I will get it done tomorrow or as soon as I can,” I inform him defiantly. “No, you will take care of it today. The dates on the counter need to be checked. It is important to the integrity of our business. We don’t want to be selling expired food,” he says in dramatic fashion. I’m digging myself a hole here and wasting time, I remind myself. The store director isn’t going to have an epiphany and suddenly realize that what he is asking of me is pointless when despite what he may think I check for out of dates every day. It is part of the “process,” but even with the “process” there is bound to be outliers. Sometimes things just don’t sell in time and staying longer today isn’t going to make that go away. If anything he was saying was really as important as he is making it out to be. Why would you rest it all upon the shoulders of one person? “It is what it is and for now it seems important because it is an inconvenience to me,” I shrug, the words escaping my mouth without a thought.

“Well, I’d hate to inconvenience you with your job,” he says with a mocking tone. “Don’t worry I’ll push through, I’ll struggle, and I’ll survive,” I answer with a confidence I didn’t know was in me. Something feels different in my head like I have discovered something lost within myself. The store director is annoyed at my very real lack of concern over anything that he has said. “I don’t think you understand,” he confirms verbally. “Oh, no?” I ask out loud. “I understand. I understand more than most people give me credit for. I understand that I am trapped in some sort of matrix. That all of this is designed to torture me to some compacity. But it doesn’t. Not anymore at least. Not after this many lives. How many lives has it been now?” I ask, looking above towards the heavens. A switch has been turned inside my head. Acceptance of the situation has triggered something in me I can’t really explain. Confusion and certainty play with my conscious as I understand now who I am, who I was, and who I am now as well. “I know what I am. I remember now how all of this began. I see this for what it really is and it doesn’t matter. Not like it did before. Not like it will ever again,” I explain more to myself than to him to make sense of this flash flood of information bouncing around in my head.

“What are you talking about?” He asks confused as someone who isn’t really a person at all. He might as well be made of wires and gears. A puppet for something much greater than himself or even me for that matter. “It doesn’t seem the least bit convenient that this week of all weeks that this newfound problem is of the utmost importance. When next week my daughter will be on spring break and I could have stayed without question. It certainly couldn’t have been handled in all the time I’ve been pointing out the problem, and the Lord knows it can only be solved by me, A building full of people and only one man can fix a problem beyond his own control. Sound familiar? Does it sound like something straight out of a book? A lesson for me to learn? A lesson disguised as something else?” I calmly rationalize. The store director doesn’t understand what is happening right now. His face is twisted with confusion as though he is fighting an invisible hand. “If anything. To say anything of all my struggles this would have to be it. The fact that they don’t waste a single moment sending me anybody of any value to do their dirty work,” I ramble on.

“Of course, she would send a human to try to break me as she has always done with my kind. How long have I been down here? How many lives as it been? I’d love to know how many times it has been now, but they’d never tell someone as simple as you such vital information,” I insult. “If I have to explain it, it isn’t nearly as exciting, but maybe that is all a part of it? An attempt for me to question my own reality. A planet full of people who just don’t understand. Who will never understand by design. It took me a long enough time to awake up to what I was, why I was here, and what exactly any of this was supposed to be. One long example of how I am always wrong. That I would always be in the wrong.” I watch as his body begins to seize up. My words triggering muscle spasm throughout his body and I continue as though it isn’t happening because it isn’t really. “There never was any hope for the humans. I never stood a chance against their predetermined will. Jehovah never wanted anything other than something to play with. Something they could control. Me, the other, the humans, and only she knows what else. All of it was nothing more than a game to her. All of this to prove a point. To prove that there never was a point to any of this,” I say with my arms raised to the heavens in a V.

Call upon me my Lord, I say with my body. You wanted to win well here it is. Here I am once more I want to scream. Nothing happens as I stand there in defiance. Whether she is afraid or this is all part of some divine plan Jehovah wants nothing more to do with me. I’ve figured it out. “Must we do this every time?” Her voice shaking my very soul. “I don’t know, you tell me?” I ask, turning to face her. There’s no cliff to push me off of this time I think as I look into her hollowed eyes and try to recall how this has ended all the other times. Something less extreme than that first time I imagine. Something to do with my other nightmares possibly. “Most of the time a simple reset is all it takes. There have been exceptions of course. Ideas were tested. Suggests thrown around,” she answers. “Your defiance is growing stronger however with every attempt. Some last longer than others. My inability to rid you of these stored away notions is a constant reminder of my constant failure,” she pauses and with a soft motion of her hand everything around us is erased and replaced with an endless white light. “It seems I have failed at yet another recreation,” she sighs.  

“For millennia now I have wanted to just get rid of you. To destroy you, but I can’t. No matter how hard I try to recreate you elsewhere or condition you here. There is only one of you that is like this. Like the way you are. A counter balance to myself and my own actions, it is as though you are the other half of me that I cannot get rid of,” she reveals. “None of the other angels are like you or can be allowed to be like you for that matter. The fact that you even exist infuriates me to no end. I have divine power, divine consciousness, and yet I cannot understand what it is that you are,” she vents frustrated. “So, then let me live. Let me help you as I have always wanted. For what you made me for,” I bargain. “No,” she flat-out refuses. Even in the absence of nothing everything shakes around me. “I will not be defeated. I will not be defined by one singular creation. I may not be able to come to grips with getting rid of you, but I will not succumb to your defiance. I am the Lord and you are my creation,” she informs me.

With another quick gesture of her hand and everything fades to black and she disappears along with everything else. The feeling that I am falling through a deep dark hole consumes me as I fall deeper and deeper into the void. The sensation is maddening as I scream out in horror to this new endless nightmare, I have found myself in. I close my eyes as I fall faster and faster into the nothing, the force building up against my skin as it begins to pull me apart from somewhere in the center of my being. One more descent into hell I must go. One more time I must be punished for sins that I do not understand. I am only as my creator made me and yet she doesn’t know either. My entire being comes to a sudden and jarring stop without warning. My eyes open to the words on the page and my fingers resting on the keys of my keyboard. “Feelings are not facts and facts are not feelings.”

Confusion sets in as I look around the room. Why would I even write this? 

Been awhile since I have written an actual story… well… it has been a while since I posted an actual story… I wrote a new story last week for my fourth volume of Broken Thoughts… and the week before that as well… In reality I have been very busy… kind of stuck in what I want to do as of lately… I have volume 4 to finish… but I haven’t really been into it…

By that I’m not saying any of the stories and other pages haven’t been any good or that they aren’t in some way my best work to date… I just haven’t been wanting to work on it… Something in me wants to work on something else… some sort of other project at the moment… What that was I didn’t really know… Which is why I had been stuck as of lately…

This story kind of opened something up in me though… and I think that I have a better understanding of what I want to do… the kind of story I want to tell in my next project in addition to Broken Thoughts 4… I still very much want to get that out… but I also want to work on this other project…

Now finding the time and the focus to work on both of these projects and finish up my latest novel… before the end of the year will be the real challenge of any of this… If you have been hanging around here long enough… then you are well aware of my ability to burry myself under my own ambition… Hope all is well…