(All That Happens) Before The Epilogue
He has jet black eyes, without pupil, iris, flaw or definition. Those who remember his face don’t remember the eyes, though they would never hope to live long enough to see such eyes, to be sure. No special effects team or proprietary computer software will ever reproduce such pitiless and abysmal eyes.
The man does not forgive. He knows lies when he hears them, because he cannot hear truth. His ears go deaf until the spoken lie. So he is deaf for most of the day. But he has learned to hide his hearing deficiency, and adapt his expressions of discussion and interaction into a flawless impromptu process. Holding a full-time job, especially in high level management when he’s particularly fatigued, is no challenge for him. No one who has met him has ever even considered he might be deaf. He quits and moves away when someone has told him ten lies. This is telling too much.
Hope is not a concept he can believe in any longer, it should go without saying. There are a few of his kind every century, but he has other unique qualities. For instance, he is the only person alive now who understands time travel. But he is too depressed to go about inventing the required machine.
He will never be in love. He has never cried.
“I want to,” he says, “I want to cry.” (I hate myself most of any… He won’t say this aloud). He is not lying.
All dogs tried to get together. They planned their convention three years ahead of time so everyone could Put It On Your Calendar, passing the invitation on through neighborhood bark fests, customized territorial pissings, and distinct howls through the forests. All the dogs in the world soon knew about the Great Gathering at an excellent hotel in Cleveland (Ohio).
Not that the owls hate the dogs or anything, but they failed to tell them that their booked date was scheduled after the Second Flood.
When a kid decided one day (age six) he wanted to be a storyteller, he didn’t feel so scared anymore—of the adults, the words he didn’t know, the looming dark of the closet. He immediately experienced a day of infinity, wherein his entire life became open and full and… simply excellent. And then he grew anxious to experience the exciting life he had promised himself. He dreamed a million dreams that night. Of dinosaurs, adventure, crazy love, his own children, meeting the aliens, meeting the angels… and never really woke. He lived right into the dream. (And he is the only one of The Few who will live through what is coming).
This might be what’s called Getting It.
When he got up the next morning he rode to the drugstore at 8:14 A.M. (having never touched a bicycle before, and this one without training wheels) without telling his parents (for he wasn’t even supposed to cross the street without holding two parents’ hands firmly and looking both ways and a half) and bought a new notebook with six weeks of allowance from collecting the waste baskets around the house. This notepad was to be his launch site, his portal, his infinite toy chest. When he opened it, he did so very carefully, like a ritual… not breathing, shaking like the flu…
And as he moved toward the future of his life and the stories that would fill him and become history and make worlds themselves, an owl cried in the day-bright sun.
And he wrote something he didn’t understand. And was scared again. And wrote no more. Ever. Again.
There is a disease called god. There are no symptoms. No doctor can diagnose the infection, and no victim can feel its invasion. It is a plague of time and chaos. In the event of an outbreak, the victim(s) may change anything s/he wants to. The infection lasts one night and one day, after which the mind’s natural stubborn mortal-dom kicks in and breaks down the invader. During the sickness, the victim may choose to: become immortal, or instantly wealthy, or healthy, or destroy mountains, or entire species, or stars, or everything. Or change the natural elements, or history, or restaurant premium scratch&win sweepstakes game pieces.
No one has used this power yet, not even in the recklessness of dreams. The disease is carried by owls. They transfer it through the gaze of their eyes. They see everything about us, dreams too. They want to laugh (but that is another story).
This message is not selling anything. It is designed to scare you.
This is the last story before the end.
A knifemaker has (just) crafted a knife which cuts dreams. He shaped and ground the blade with diligent and methodical craft, working every night for a full year, never sleeping, in a lightless workshop, until its completion. It is a fierce, perfect weapon—most of all, it is impossible. But he had to have it. He has nightmares, and wants to kill them, cut them out.
