Holy blight (draft 2)

In His Image: part 1

In His Image...

I think I'm falling apart, mentally. I can't stop it; I can't see the end of it... No one was ever meant to live this long. No one was meant to walk the earth for eternity. Every day, I see new faces. I'm met with an endless horde of strangers, all of them hopelessly entangled in the details of their meaningless lives. I see them gather in groups during the good times, I've heard their desperate prayers during the bad ones. Their words fall on deaf ears, eons of frantic calls to a being as indifferent as he is powerful, and they still haven't figured out that they're wasting the short time that they have on this earth. They still haven't figured out... that he isn't listening. It's funny to think about, in a tragic sort of way. What else would they do? What isn't a waste of time when your existence itself is, and what matters when nothing does? I try not to think about it much, it doesn't help, it never has. I do as I'm told. I am what I am.

I find myself people watching now. It is something... I haven't done for a long time. Before, I'd simply do my job without much concern for those who perished by my hand. It was easier that way. I could go centuries without talking to any of these creatures, or even paying them enough attention to see the devastation my work had wrought, but now something is... different. I feel empty. I feel as though those I smite are the lucky ones, that before the misery, that I've been tasked with spreading, made its way to them, they experienced joys that I can barely remember and will likely never know again. I feel as though whatever agony I bestow upon them, whatever physical or mental functionality I strip them of, the sweet release of death that awaits them, is better than the endless future that awaits me.

For a while immortality was fun I suppose, in fact I don't think that it bothered me until I realized that I'd been alive for so long that I couldn't remember the man I was before all of this. My life, my death, my memories, all things he took from me, all things that... God took from me. He decided to bestow upon me an endless form of torture and still... men worship him; they see him as a benevolent all-powerful force of good that aides them in their everyday lives. How deluded the mortals have become. The Greeks worshiped deities who were beyond ruthless, and while their interpretation of divine beings was far from accurate, it at least showed an understanding of how little the lives of individual mortals, matter to the God they serve. The real God, (the only real God) is a careless artist who sculpted the world but delegated the task of maintaining it to the lesser beings he once claimed to love.

In the beginning, he watched the earth like a hawk, omnipotent and omniscient, creating life and purging it from existence when it failed to please him. He could control almost anything, but he couldn't control himself. He had created life where there was nothing, crafted the world and the creatures who populated it. Unfortunately, he felt that those very creatures had no right to ignore their lord's work, who were they to exist without giving him praise. So, with rage, that like his power was unparalleled by anything in the universe, he destroyed the life that he had spent millions of years creating.

Entire species fell by his hand, some were slowly changed into other creatures over time, and some were merely wiped from the face of the earth in divine tantrums. Eventually, he crafted his "prized creation", humanity. They lived, they laughed, they loved, but most importantly, they appreciated the world around them and gave thanks to the being that had crafted it, and for the first time, in a long time, the Lord, the ego-driven, self-absorbed, lout, was satisfied. Perhaps the ever-present narcissism that would become a mark of the human condition could be traced back to the being that had sculpted humanity in his image. Man lacked the ability to understand what had given them life, only that something had, and so over time, different cultures formed and embraced the idea of various deities, celebrating them in their own ways. To some, "God," was a collection of powerful overseeing beings, to others he was one, benevolent presence, to him it made no difference, so long as he was praised.

He had been more patient with humanity than any other species, waiting for them to evolve to a point where they'd be able to appreciate what he had given them. It wasn't until he began to observe an unwelcome change in early civilization, that his anger resurfaced. He raised a hand against the beings he'd once loved so much and smote them with so much ferocity that he nearly rendered them extinct. His punishment struck them with famine, plague, and natural disasters, and when his wrath subsided, and the smoke cleared, he saw that their desolate state had caused the few that remained to fight amongst themselves, he came to realize that humans, own, innate affinity for violence was a punishment all its own. He looked amidst the chaos he had wrought and saw four conduits through which he would channel and mitigate his wrath. He saw us.

He set his sights on a conflict over what little food remained, and grabbed the man who would later be known simply as "War". As the man plunged a makeshift spear into the heart of his enemy, a bright light shone upon him tearing him from the world of the living in a flash that left only the echoes of his terrified screams. Next, he directed his attention on my brother and I. His blinding light shone on two thin bodies, mine, ravaged by sickness and his by starvation. He was younger than me, but it's been so long that neither one of us can recall how wide the age gap was. I remember taking what should have been my last breath as the lord's light took me. I had suffered for so long, I was finally content with the thought of dying, I welcomed it, I begged for it. I think God knew that. He took me away to forever deny me the release of death. I was to become "Pestilence," and my brother was to become "Famine." The light filled the small hovel in which we'd taken refuge, and within an instant we were both gone, leaving everything we owned... and everything we were, behind.

Next came Death, who at the time had a wife and young son. The light came for him in the middle of a sandstorm. Death has often said that the winds were so violent that the sand tore at their flesh like small razors as they tried to find shelter. The storm grew in strength and pelted the family with so much force that it lifted the child and knocked him backward. The man who would become Death was walking just ahead, almost blinded by the thick sands. He turned back to see his wife struggling to hold on to their son as the storm tried desperately to pry him from her grasp. He tried to get back to them, tripping and falling in the sand as he did so. He scrambled to get back on his feet as the storm threw him about. The light broke through the clouds and shined upon him. He screamed their names as it tore him from the world of the living. They could not hear his calls. The last thing he remembered was his wife losing her grip on the boy and chasing him deeper into the storm, disappearing forever as Death shouted names that he's long since forgotten.

In an instant, the four of us were before our creator. He was shrouded in a blinding light that made it impossible to gaze upon him. He stood at the center of a narrow path that extended endlessly in both directions. We cowered before him, shielding our eyes from his heavenly glow. Death ran, trying to find his way back to his family but as he sprinted down the path, the scene just behind him began to come into view in front of him. The road did not form a circle, and it did not end, it merely returned those who traveled on it, to where they started. The glowing figure chuckled and raised his hand upwards causing Death to levitate. The being opened his mouth to speak releasing a calm symphony of thousands of voices.

"You have been chosen! You all have!", he decreed.

"Chosen for what?", Death asked, terrified.

"For the greatest honor, I could ever give.".

Sand granules began to form out of thin air andencircle death. They appeared by the millions and entrapped him in a small spherebarely big enough for him to stand in. The sand began to swirl rapidly and windbegan to swell inside of the orb. Bloodcurdling screams of agony rang out asthe sand moved faster and faster, ripping the flesh from Death's bones. Blue lightshined out, as his immortal soul bound itself to the sand and turned it black.He looked down at his trembling hands as the sand ripped the skin and muscle away from his fingers, leaving only bones held together by swirling blue energy. His exposed rib cage held his bright, blue, pulsating soul. His exposed skull held blue light circles in the sockets where his eyes used to be. He released one final scream of pain before the ball disbanded, allowing the black sand, along with Death's now separated skeleton to fall to the ground in a giant mess now devoid of light and life.