Excelsior

Another and another.

Another day. Another slow drip of meaningless life, and he did not want it. It was acidic, the knowledge that there was no destiny waiting for him. There was no great end to justify all of the muddling around, waiting and paying attention, and all of the looking for signs when there were never any signs because there was nothing to indicate. Nothing was waiting just for him, and he could not stand it.

           All around, it seemed, there were great people with destinies and places where they had to be or the world would change, but not him. This was unbearable. He tried to create greatness, but the road never once rose up to meet him. It was clear that he would have to drag meaning out of his life with sheer brute force, but as far as he was concerned, that meant that he wasn’t supposed be there. It wasn’t “meant” to be in some kind of biblical or in some greater cosmic sense. It was heart breaking, this lack of personal prophesy. He decided that he must have had more meaning some other time, and so he went to a professionally strange woman and was hypnotized and so was rocketed back into his past.

She sent him to a previous life time where he was able to stay and look around for a while, but found nothing singular. There was a house and a wife and some kid. Normal. Nothing special. After this first session, he became obsessed and came back to the woman again and again. He went through lifetime after lifetime searching for his specialness and finding nothing. Here he was a farmer. There he was a sailor. Over there he died as a child having accomplished nothing of note.

           He woke from these sessions furious with the regressionist. He had heard people talking about how they had been kings or queens at some point in their soul’s history. It just could not be that his soul had never seen some similar kind of greatness. The regressionist could only promise him that maybe if they tried again, maybe he would find his greatness next time. Soon though, it became clear to him that she only told him this to bring him back for another session. Another paying session.

How is it that he and he alone had only ever been just some guy?

How is it that one can live not just one life, but hundreds of lives in complete obscurity.

In the core of him he knew. He just knew that somehow he had to be great in some way, some time, and so he set about trying to tear a hole in the world so that he could head into the future far away from his repetitive and menial pasts. Using that brute force which he had no interest in exerting on his current life, he used it instead to gather a staggering accumulation of occult technologies. He stacked and riveted them all together and then he summoned up the fires of hell of fuel his machine and the silver clouds of heaven to cool it. He gathered up all of the electricity in the country using a great magnetic stone formed in the very center of the big bang and using it, he brought all of that power crashing down into a single point that had neither volume nor mass, putting a deep crack in and through all of time and space. He used this little hole to jettison his soul through now and then out into the future to find the place where finally he could be destined for importance.

           The sky opened up in front of him and he tumbled into it flying and then floating down into a future version of himself. As his soul was his future soul, the change went smoothly.

It was immediately clear that this was where he wanted to be as he found crowds all around him cheering and dressed in bright colors. He was completely surrounded except for a narrow road in front of him only wide enough for him and it rose up slowly leading to a platform high above the sea of cheering and singing people. This must have been a long awaited great day. He was suddenly aware of tears streaming down his cheeks. Up the narrow road higher and higher over the crowd and then he was standing amongst a set of five masked individuals having built up a strange, roaring fire burning all colors, and so large it covered nearly all of the platform leaving only a slim walkway around it.

High above the sun was shining in a distinctly night sky. All of the stars splayed out around the sun and the sun began to spin. Great shimmering storm clouds crouched all around on the horizon. Waiting.

Hypnotized, he watched the impossible cosmic dance. Then one of the masked figures approached and bowed deeply. He nodded back sure that he must be their superior though he had no idea of what they expected from him. The warmth of authority glowed in his heart and it spread like love all the way through him. Tears of joy gathered in his eyes mixing with the tears already on his cheeks. The masked figure came closer and it took his hand. It slowly and gently then wrapped a thick cord around his wrist. Then another masked figure did the same. Once all five had wrapped a cord around his wrist, each turned and walked back to one of five stations around the platform. Looking closer now, he saw that each station had a great pulley on it and before another thought could bubble up, the figures all turned and violently began to haul on cords at their pulleys. Quickly, the lines attached to his wrists pulled tight he was knocked over, drug across the ground, but then up. He was lifted into and then over the enormous blaze. He cried out in pain as his arms were stretched out to either side and as the alien fire leapt up at him burning his feet and legs. Above him he saw the spinning sun grow. It spread over the sky until all of above it burned as brightly to him as the fires below. He could hear the crowd singing just barley over his own screams. Smoke. Smoke from his own burning flesh wafted up into the sky and where it met the blazing sun, a black hole formed. The more smoke that rose up from him the greater the hole grew, and as his mind spun into shock and darkness, tears streamed down his face and he roared with laughter as a great eye peered through the hole in the sun and all around he heard the people singing with joy into the end of the world.