Terra (Working Title!)
an excerpt

There was a crooked man and he walked a crooked mile.

He had the best of intentions – the very best, as He always had things. He saw to it that everything he did was the very best, and it was only possible for Him to be so perfect because of the thousand million other worlds that crumbled and Collapseed in their imperfection; He made the multiverses primarily so ninety-nine percent of it would carry errors for Him. This way, the pieces He truly loved were kept perfect by the sacrifice of all their alternatives that had died to give them that chance.

He found a crooked sixpence upon a crooked stile.

There were leakages, of course, there always was and always will be. Myths and legends and ideas whispered in between the worlds like through a door half closed, or the paper walls of a Japanese room; what’s true in one world cropped out nine times out of ten as a work of fiction in another. This was because of those people, those idiots, who just couldn’t keep their ears anywhere else than flattened against the walls listening to the heartbeat of a neighbouring reality. He always hated them, the fantasy writers, but in the end it was never they who brought the worlds to an end. It was the glowing heart of a spell brought together, and the white pinprick of an atom split open, that tolled the funeral bell for the two worlds He had come to love most.

He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse.

He remembers their names now, even as the glowing whiteness overtakes Him and it wraps around Him and suffuses Him and diffuses Him and consumes Him whole. The twin sisters of Earth and Gaia, one where his sons Science and Physics dictated and watched after the humans, the other where his daughter Magic lead the dance of life for the numerous residents of Gaia. His children were nothing more than puppet rulers, dependant variables in an experiment, and he was positively gleeful to see the buzzing peoples of the two worlds pull and test at His power – but He never expected them to tug so hard as to overextend and reach Him. Very quickly Science and Magic were slaves of those subject to them, instead of the other way around, and quicker still the races of both worlds had used their newfound masteries to destroy their own worlds. And destroy Him.

And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

He has almost reached the point where he couldn’t think. He’s reacting purely by reaction now, just like He used to do before the consciousness developed, and His touch extends everywhere at once to change the worlds without rhyme nor reason. Instinct folds in on Him like the sides of a paper box until He became It, until all It could do was everything. There was no rational thought in there, no intelligent design, only the last fragmented efforts to save what He had loved with whatever means It can. He remembers for a split moment, but it was enough for It to do what needed to be done. The last thoughts of God sounds like a riddle, but it merely trivia and trivial at that.

Q. Why are Japanese houses made of paper?
A. No-one gets crushed in an earthquake.

{ . . . }

He had seen them, like a glimmer of earthbound clouds, drifting like spirits on the horizon.

There was a rush, a scrabbling sound as he climbed the stairs three at a time, all that could be seen being a blur of darting limbs and skinny knees as he climbed his way up to the night-time. The stairs were best described as rickety, bent this way and that in odd and unsound shapes along a flimsy wooden line; but Ellis was used to the house, to its whimsicality and to its reluctance, so his feet never stayed in one place very long in subconscious preparation for collapse. Every time he climbed up the spiralling, broken steps up to the top level he felt absolutely certain that they were altogether a different staircase to the ones Master used when he chose to descend, which was rare. The steps that Master took were deliberate, firm footfalls like the clapping of God’s own hands, and never in the course of his stiff procession did the wood (which had so often spited Ellis by either spitting splinters or letting him fall or making him nail them back on, or all three at once) ever dare to do anything but submit to the Master. Even the house, all cracked glass and hard, dark wood, obeyed the authority.

A last gentle knocking of feet on wood propelled him upwards into the top corridor, which was never a corridor at all but a small space seemingly designed to frighten little children (it had certainly worked on him, a long time ago). Spider-webs, some occupied and some retired (their owners’ corpses hanging off the sticky threads in a sickly collection) lined the ceiling with non-descript marks and dark shapes to empower the imagination of a child’s nightmares. It was always enclosed on all sides, one by a dirty wall, one by the dangerous route down and the left-right by doors kept angrily closed. Ellis knew, now, what was behind each rough wood door – and that there was nothing to be afraid of in the rooms behind either except the inhabitant (or possibly inhabitants). Both rooms stored the dark balm of night.

Ellis opened the left door first, the one he knew to be less haunted, the one that never covered up anything more than a windowless room with a simple bed and a simple desk-and-chair affair. Nothing to be afraid of here, he knew every inch of the room, had cleaned every inch from eight years of age, when his shivery hands and knees had wiped up more dust than his duster did, and a young mind totally blank with fear collected the absence of skulls beneath the mattress. The Master’s bedroom was frightening back then, but the looming form of the Master’s shadow over his shoulder was still frightening to him. It was a prison; a closed-in, nightmarish place crawling with the bold and primal fear of the simple inky darkness that came with the lack of windows and the closed exit – it was a while before he was accustomed with it enough to muse maybe this was how it was like inside Master’s head.

This time there was no-one there, no ominous shadow lurking nor restless form lying on the bed. He stepped out with deliberate softness and shut the door on the lightless little space, turning around to meet with almost immediate closeness the opposing door; he wiped his hands carefully on his shirt and reached around the cold iron knob. He let go almost as soon as he twisted it and pushed the door open quickly, as though to expose himself in hope of numbing the nervousness. He could see Master now, a long widow’s shadow in an already-dark room. If the room was a room; Ellis generally thought of rooms as vaguely having four walls and a ceiling.

He kept his eyes locked to the middle of the longish room, where sections of the floor were splashed by coloured lights and not where the twisting form of impenetrable shadows hid outside the lit path. He tried not to look at the source of the lights, the jars and tubes all sitting in a row on a shelf he could not discern (looking closer would be to peer into the shade-wrapped areas of blankness); inside each glass container danced globes and globes of coloured lights, blossoms of magic like will-o-wisps or large fireflies. Every time Ellis visited Master’s workshop they always seemed to grow restless and press against the sides of their captivity, flickering and rebounding off the walls of glass that surrounded them at his approach.

He cleared his throat. “I saw them,” his thin boyish voice was leeched off by the infinite darkness, and he spoke again as loudly as he dared, “I saw them coming.” The fire-globes seemed to writhe at the sound, dancing and spiralling to the rise and fall of his newfound Adam’s apple – he shuddered and dared to say no more than that. The Master turned slowly and regally on his wooden throne, aged and weary eyes surveying him slowly as though looking for something; he always did this, this scouring of the eyes, a gaze like a bird makes as it watches the worm. Hungry. Waiting. And each time, a small flicker of disappointment or irritation after the initial search crosses the otherwise stony face, which cuts deeply into Ellis like jagged knives. He wanted to know what was expected of him, just so he could take a chance at pleasing: but asking Master questions was a thing Not Done.

“Very well,” snapped Master finally, with a formal air of finality. A hand swept out, waved towards the dwindling fireplace inset into the dark walls (if there were any). “The fire is out,” he said, and the boy’s legs seemed to move forward out of the Master’s unsaid command, “I’m done with this one.” The Master’s long fingers plucked a fire-globe from the worktable – it had already been freed, obviously another subject of Master’s ceaseless studying, and Ellis took it from him with a small sickly feeling in his chest as the strangely live warmth heated his hand. It wriggled, sending a shudder down his spine at the sensation, causing him to tighten his grip around the globe to prevent its escape (it’s not a living thing, it’s not a living thing, it’s not a living thing, he chanted in his head) – the pointed look on Master’s face directed him towards the fireplace.

It was easy, he’d done it before. He’d raised the globe over the fireplace many times before, spoken the word he’d been taught before as well, had already felt the familiar heating up of the globe some time ago. Just like the last time and the time before that, he let go with a wrenching of his fingers just as the light grew too hot to hold and dropped it into the dying flames. And like every other time, the globe fell into the wood and – with a small explosion – spilled its form open into ordinary flames, and when he stepped back from the fireplace all there was left was the comfortable warmth of a heath. He felt nauseas and hated himself for doing so, hated the reluctance with which he performed the relighting because the crooked smile Master gave him each time washed him with relief and satisfaction. He had done his job well, he should be pleased to please the Master.

With a last bow, a last subservient gesture, he fled the shifting shadows of the room and submerged himself in the pleasure of acknowledged service.