A Fucking Chocolate Éclair Please

“Hi hello, sorry, hi — do you have anything with chocolate?”

It’s a beautiful day out, either very late in the summer or early in the fall, depending on your version of the infamous water to glass ratio problem. It’s not too hot yet, although the temperature’s to be scalding towards lunchtime if you give any weight to what the weather witches have been yapping on about on the television. For now, however, it’s all just goldilocksing away unimpeded, small, pleasant looking clouds making their way perfectly calmly across the narrow-ish upward view one gets when surrounded by the tall buildings endemic to large cities: a quaint, framed picture of sheep grazing on blue pastures.

The woman who’s just spoken is dressed in layers of light wools and cottons and linens in black, always black (is there really any other color, truly? and don’t start with the “It’s not a color it’s blah blah fuckin’ blah…” rhetoric, just bear with us, come along for the ride, and quietly now — we wouldn’t want to scare the pigeons away). Her hair is disheveled exactly how it would be in a very expensive hairdresser’s wet dreams. She could have just turned twenty, or be at a solid eighty-six, or even a comfortable forty-two-and-a-half: it all really depends on the lighting conditions around you when you look at her, and what you’ve had for dinner the night before.

And, right now, she could quite literally kill for something with chocolate.

Anything at all.

Assailed by both the dry-cement smell the whole place gives off, and the sight of the drab, wiry looking man standing ill at ease behind the underlit counter of this patisserie (although, now she’s taken in her surroundings, the word “Gulag” pops into her mind), she realizes she’s made a terrible mistake coming in. But, as she is many things but never a quitter, she powers through, for she’s having a fantastic morning, and she will not let anything, or anyone, get in its way — not even sourpuss here. Arming herself with a smile (inwardly), she asks, again, if she could have something, anything, with chocolate.

The clerk gets on a collision course with her for some reason, retorting that there is “nothing of the sort here, Madam; there are absolutely no bleached flours, or chocolates, or any kinds of sugars, or —”

“— flavors, I’m sure.”

The crystalline sound the tiny bells hanging over the doors make as she trudges back out onto the streets and into the blaring sunlight thankfully seems to move further and further away with every step she takes, as she mumble-grumbles underneath over-the-top, oversized sunglasses that “perhaps it’s now, perhaps I should just call it, just go with the flow and burn the whole place down.” But before she’s able to wield the full power of her anger and rage, and general desire to bring forth the End of Times (™), something licks her right hand, making her slightly jump, and notice she’s bunched it into a fist without realizing it. She starts to relax and, in an equal mix of relief and disappointment, the thought of the (Grand) spectacle she would have loved to unleash just now for all the gods in all the galaxies to witness (except for a few of the outlying ones — they’re just really too far away to be able to fully enjoy the finer details of the artful calamities she’d conjure) is brought further away towards the back of her mind with every additional lick coming from the sympathetic creature. She unbunches her fist and lays a thankful, gentle hand on top of the dog’s head, a medium-sized Australian-shepherd-adjacent sort of dog, all black of course — the only originality she’s permitted herself when creating this creature’s outward appearance. Because standards.

“Now now, I know,” pat pat. “It’s all fine.”

She’d been told by a dear old friend over dinner she could have gone for any other breed, any other really, that perhaps she could have looked to more “I don’t know, dramatic sorts? Like dobermans, or great danes — hell, even chihuahuas give off meaner vibes than your mutt.” He’d started to take a sip of the nefarious looking liquid that was swirling in his glass, but he’d stopped himself for half a second, blurting out in anticipation of the retort that was surely to come that “they do all come in black, you know…”

But she’d kind of fallen in love with the crazy-filled soul of this magnificently luciferous anomaly of a beast. And, well, she could always change it, it’s not like it was in its actual true shape; people would just completely go insane, were they to witness its original form, their poor, tiny brains and inadequate, inflexible souls unable to grasp the vastness of its true nature, imploding in shame at the sight of its Greatness.

Alice, she’s named it. No last name, as she does not think something that doesn't have a job should have one.

She’s been in this world what, over a little more than ten thousand years? give or take a few centuries? And she’s still surprised at how quickly she gets angry at the little discomforts life brings, like this morning’s patisserie kerfuffle. She’s been conscious of this more and more, thinking that perhaps she’s spent too much time with the little creatures, the little people, and that by osmosis she’s perhaps become permeable to their insanity, their instability and general lack of sensibility. But damn it all if they don’t have great food — nothing like the unpalatable, unimaginative stuff they serve on the Big Guy’s Mountain-Palace, or during the simply eternal banquets they still hold in V-town, or at any of the other shitholes her friends call home. “It’s the insanity,” she’s thought before. “That’s what makes it so good.”

It’s her theory, at least, and she clings to it like an adult man clings to generational trauma.

She’ll need to calm down, of course, for the Big Show; to be in control of her emotions in order to fully bring forth the impending doom that’s to be ushered in upon this useless species — humankind, they call themselves. She’s thought of all the details (she’s had time), and, accompanied by all her aides, she’s certain she’ll be able to get it right:

It starts with a few million cymbals, all at once, holding a note, The Note, while she and her people feast upon the bowels and entrails of hundreds of god-carcasses, for thousands of years all tightly held within a quarter of a second. They then name all the seas and lands, giving them new names, unforgiving names, forbidden, sorcerous names, turning everything into crystal, into frozen diamonds to be set upon the crowns of all the dead worlds that ever were.

Behemoth (Alice), the Great Beast made manifest through percussions to which galaxies vibrate and bounce, bares teeth by the billions, and eyes innumerable, and dances in swarms of eyes and limbs and talons, causing absolute carnage, oceans of blood coursing through its very being, and tornadoes and catastrophes and sicknesses and pains and deep, deep primal fears becoming the very breath it spews upon all that ever was, and all that ever will be.

And trumpets, orchestras of trumpets (she’s always had a soft spot for trumpets.)

And, as it all comes together and the universe shivers, a —

— kind and naive looking dog herds her towards who knows where.

This heat is becoming unbearable, making it harder to think. What if she misses? What if she gets distracted by, I don’t know, a novelty chocolate, and pulls the proverbial trigger a bit too early, or a bit too late? What then? Would the Others make fun of her? They sure aren’t the nicest chaps on even the best of days (not unlike this one, she thinks, as she pats her companion’s head delicately.) They’d for sure not miss an opportunity to point and laugh at her and call her names, like trigger-happy-poopy, or Hurr’Ghratholegerthnia’n Flaggar (she was never able to translate this terrible, terrible noun in any of the languages available on this planet, but it isn’t a nice thing to call someone, you’ll just have to trust us.)

And, well, it never seems to be the right time, does it. Always there’s something holding her hand, steadying her whim.

It’s not like there haven’t been any good opportunities already: wars, famines, pestilences and deaths — the Fab Four, the Original Crew. Yet these damned humans keep creating these devastating atrocities themselves, meant for their own kind none the less, as if they’re only comfortable when there are disasters all around them at all times. It’s all very impressive, in a way, if you take a moment to think about it — perhaps the cacophony of their fellows’ screams soothes them, makes them fall asleep more easily, makes them forget about the deep silence the universe continuously produces that’s more akin to the loudest sound you could ever imagine.

She’s been close to calling it once or twice, she’ll admit — to declare the world ended. But what is it that truly settles her hand? Is it the flowers, the jewels? The vast cities, the vaster books, the feel of finely threaded fabrics touching her skin? Or perhaps it’s the scent lovers carry on themselves when they’re in their first moments together, or the sight of the leaves atop trees blowing gently in the wind, seen from afar?

Don't they know she could just snap her fingers, make a few calls and bam! done, everything ended, none of their smugness left.

Yet she…

A lick from the creature by her side brings her back to this reality. She’s unable to repress a grateful smile, having thankfully been brought out of her overly dramatic reverie. It’s getting really hot. She removes a few more layers, then remembers she isn’t in what the history books call Ancient Greece anymore, and puts her t-shirt back on. The dog seems to have been guiding her steps towards somewhere she might find solace — she regrets nothing in her choice of companion, truly, to hell with Mr Scythe and his thoughts on a dramatic entrance, and on general appropriateness, the uptight little…

A hundredth lick.

“Sorry, you’re right.”

Another patisserie, properly lit this time, with a wonderfully joyous looking baker at the counter, a pleasant roundness to her general demeanor — ten out of ten, so far.

“What can I get you dear?” Now THAT is proper customer service. “We just got these bad babies out of the oven, just now, chocolate filled and all — here, have a taste and see if you can resist having a few dozen.”

Her smile is just simply wonderful.

The smiles! She’d forgotten about them, momentarily. That’s what she finds irresistible. And the chocolate, of course — nefarious creation, that. No one up there thought of it, it took these insane creatures to think of it. “And didn’t they also think us up?” she thinks to herself, quickly reminding herself not to entertain such thoughts, as the world could just fold upon itself were it to realise it’s existing in a nonsensical reality, in a permanent thought experiment.

“If they keep at it, if they keep being this creative, they may yet see another century.”

And another.

And another.

— — — — —

It’s blisteringly hot outside.

A woman drops a pastry on the ground.

A flock of pigeons arrive and start pecking at the chocolatey concoction. The woman bunches her right fist.

A dog, standing a little ways away, barks and starts running towards its master as it notices what now may feel like an inevitability,

As the woman just —