It begins with a gasp. It will end with one, too.
First there is nothing, and then there is us. The ground is cold, the sky black. It has been a trillion years since any of us have felt cold. “Wake up,” Life whispers. “Wake up!” It has been a trillion years since any of us have heard that sound, have heard that promise, and the voice is electric. The story is about to begin. We stir. Eyes open. Memories explode in rainbow stars, our lives to be measured in color. I see red pain and blue despair. I see purple love and green hope. I see orange contentment. It is a winding path, one smeared with curdled sapphire, but it is a path, and it is mine to take. I reach for it. It too sounds electric.
Despite the rigor mortis pain, I smile.
“Mornin’,” two hundred billion people say in a thousand different languages. Bones crack in stretch with the ferocity of a thunderstorm. The yawn is loud enough to wake the dead. “Mornin’.”
“I hope,” someone says, “I hope things are a little different this time, you know? Just a little.”
“Mom!” another sobs. “Mom where are you! Dad? Help!”
“Oh. I always forget there is no God.”
“Mom!”
A billion people laugh. Ten billion simply scream.
“Love is Love,” I say.
The amphitheatre cradles us in the idea of darkness. It is everything, and it is nothing. It is chaos. The ground is smooth glass, a transparent plane floating above an ocean of shifting ink. Black bubbles wash up through the floor, the first breaths of our stories to be. I know mine, the beginning, the middle, and the end, and yet I wonder what flourishes the strokes will take. It’s always the same, yet the little details are always different. The color of her hair. The sound of his voice. The smell of the fire.
I too hope things are a little different. Just a little.
Shoulders rub together as people start walking, most looking for loved ones, others moving because to move is to be alive. To move is to tell a story.
I pick a direction.
The ground wets with rising ink, the ocean tickling my toes. I smile. We are a history of reborn ghosts, all the people who will ever be in a world not of our choosing, and while we are anxious and scared and angry, we are calm too. The volume is just right. The smell is pleasant. Many talk and shake hands, others make love, but no one fights. In the future, there will be wars, death, murder, but right now, in this place of waiting, we are one beautiful being. I smile, and even those crying over doomed fates smile back. In this moment, we are one.
Someone slips and falls, splashing black ink onto his naked face and chest. I pick him up. He’s light, his flesh nascent, his hair long. He looks like a dozen strangers I will glimpse during my life, but in this moment, I know him. Ink drips from his nose.
“Thanks,” he says. I’m not sure which language he is speaking, but I understand him.
“I know you,” I say.
He looks at himself, at the black staining his body. “You don’t. I would remember you if you did.”
I wiggle my toes in response. The story is rising; already it is at my ankles. Soon it will drown us all. Soon chapter one will begin.
“Take my hand.”
“It’s covered in ink.”
I bend over and wet my hand. The ink is thick and warm, idle but eager. It cannot wait to begin again, to open with “Once upon a time…”
“Mine too,” I say.
He takes my hand. His grip is strong, his hand smooth. There are no creases, no calluses or scars. It is an unlived hand, completely pristine. What will it become? Will it make, will it destroy? Will it love or hate? I squeeze it, and he squeezes mine back.
“We don’t know each other though,” he says. “But this is nice.”
“Look for me in the crowds.”
“It won’t matter. My story doesn’t cross paths with yours.”
I shrug, because the little details are always different. “I’ll wave as I walk by.”
“Then I guess I’ll wave back.”
Drops of ink spill from between our palms to land in the rising ocean. It is now up to our knees.
“Which way?” he asks, though all ways lead to the same place.
I nod in a direction, and we walk. I see people that will be born two thousand years before myself, and people that will be born two thousand years after I die. We look the same, all of us struggling to move, to stretch, to live before it’s time to live. It’s a shame I will not remember any of them.
“Cancer,” he says when the ocean is at our waist. We are now wading, trudging shallow waves into the ink, warming it to flow. “Every time it’s cancer, no matter what I do.”
I nod. I can see the fire, the blinding pain, the smell of burnt hair. I can hear the screams lost in smoke. “But it’s the story.”
“I wish it was different.”
“Life only knows the one story.”
He looks at our ink-stained hands. One day they will be gaunt, the fingernails bit short. The next day they will be weak. The day after that, lifeless, trapped in the long sleep of death until Life whispers into our ears once again. “Maybe next time will be different. Not this time, but next time.”
“Maybe,” I say, but we both know it isn’t true. Life only knows the one story.
Aimless slides into direction. The ink is at our chests, and now we are swimming, heading towards the one event we must all witness, the beauty we must all smell and taste. We are humanity, and we are about to be born. We are the story.
The ink is now up to my neck. I crane my head towards the sky to keep the wet out of my mouth, to breathe with lungs that aren’t there. We are at the edge of the ampitheatre. The tips of my toes hang over, ink welling along the nails and dripping into oblivion. The man I know is on my left, and his grip is shaking. A woman approaches my right, and I take her hand. It’s delicate and cold, the hand of someone who will die in childbirth. Right now though, she is strong and brave and beautiful. She holds back red tears.
“At least I get to see this.” She sniffs. She will never know what it’s like to breathe real air. “It’s worth it, right? I mean, I don’t know what I’m missing.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. I have nothing else to give her.
“Thanks.”
Another woman links with her, and another man to that woman. The chain is forming, every human to ever be born in one straight line. The story is almost ready, is preparing its notes for chapter one. But first there must be a prologue! Everything smells electric.
The ink rises above my head.
The universe begins not with a bang but a lilac roar, the first seconds of time counted by flaming breath and crystalline wings. The beast is Creation, and it stretches from one end of the cosmos to the other. Fire rushes from its mouth and nostrils. Stars glitter inside its scales. It cranes its head to peer at us, its idiot eyes seeing through our little haven of nonexistence to the potential beyond. It stretches, and then it is flying. Energy crashes down like waves. Colors erupt in volcanic explosions, and with them come song, dance, painting, sculptures, and poetry.
And it writes, “I!”
It flaps its wings, shedding stars throughout the universe. My eyes fixate on the familiar ones, passed the North and to a small, yellow orb in the middle of a small white galaxy. It’s home. It’s life. It’s comfort.
It’s time.
We step over the edge as the world fades into a searing glare.
We gasp.
Nonsense 