Desmond and the Angel

The day began like any other had, white and clean as a blank sheet of paper, and as formless and soft as clay. Desmond rose, and with a theatric wave of his hand, set to work remaking the world as he had the day before. Desmond was an architect, or so he fancied himself. He had, as of late, grown fond of carving intricate arches into mountains and digging trenches with glaciers. He worked fervently, his tongue hanging slightly from his mouth as the flying fragments of creation whizzed past and cleared the last slivers of sleep from his eyes. He stuck to form, first adjusting the light so he could see better, and separating himself from all around. He carefully arranged the oceans and land, deciding at last to fill them with the creatures he had grown accustomed to creating. He garnished the outside of it all with a tossing of clouds, and stood back to observe his work.

            It was a beautiful and lonely sight. His solemn eyes flickered over the minute surfaces, over growing and falling homes in the wet valleys watching the little people grow food and live and survive. Some days he joined them, either hiding as another simple man or coming with trumpets to fix the hurt that grew like cancer in the bleakest of places. Today, he decided with a resigned sigh, he would stand and watch.

            While the hours ticked by and the little green ball slowly began to shift colors to grey, Desmond wracked his brain to think of new ways to amuse himself. The planets were a step up from his last ideas, but they were beginning to fall short. ‘The problem’, thought Desmond as he watched a nuclear war being averted for the umpteenth time, ‘is that I’m starting to know myself too well.’ He spun a piece of space into a ring, like the ones his small people made, and turned it over in his hand. It whirled inside itself, and shimmered in the light. With another long sigh, he put it on and stepped into the world he had made in the hopes that he could find a conversation of worth to alleviate his boredom.

            ‘It’s like splitting apart one of these machines they make,’ thought Desmond as he strolled the streets of New York City. ‘You can recognize the pieces, but not the whole assembly.’ He bought a hot dog from a red-faced man on 45^th street and stepped the blocks to Central Park to watch the joggers in their plastic red and yellow and the young couples and all of the city park wanderers crunch through the melting snow. He knew them all of course, knew their names and their families and the little quirks their insides had. He spoke to some of them, fleeting conversations that led to many a great fortune and smile on their parts. Desmond enjoyed it too, he loved this people’s idea of giving happiness to others, but he could not rid himself of the silent knowledge that he really was only staring in a mirror. He rose and walked, through New York and into the mountains, back down into the golden guts of Nebraska and Illinois, looking at the gears of the great world machine churning away furiously. As he passed churches and temples and other holy places, Desmond smiled sadly. ‘They give me too much credit,’ he thought as he hooked his thumbs into his pockets and strolled onward. ‘I can only create self-conscious gears’ He slid his hands deeper into his pockets, hanging his head in disappointment as the lights of Las Vegas flickered by like stars and the ring on his hand shone like a sun.

            He awoke with a jolting start. He was standing on a boulder in a dark field of stone, while the sun threw up an ugly red across the sky. Desmond coughed slightly, and the field shook as a volcano belched out a more violent scarlet to spite the red sky. This happened on occasion, though rarely on accident. He had once left the world to itself to see what would become of it, and eventually took in a sight much the same as this. There were some differences this time though, like the particular hints of sulfur in the thick air and the fact that last time there were no clouds, and Desmond always saw the silver lining where he could. He had just begun to clear away the rubble when a new shimmer caught him in the corner of his eye.

            He turned, surprised, and the gleam moved with him. He stumbled off his rock, narrowly avoiding fragments of the great volcano that had sprung up like a weed to his right. Yet, still the gleam. He spun wildly now, searching achingly for this newness. He could feel it in the hairs on his neck, and deep in the pit of his chest. This was new, this was different. The sensation felt foreign, flickering slightly but still strong enough to laugh musically at him as he ran over boulders and spun like a top to find the great silvery musical light. He climbed to the top of one great stone, and calling out hoarsely to the red sky, implored a desperate, ‘Show me who you are, please! Please!’ Desmond shut his eyes tight sank to his knees on the sharp volcanic stone, feeling at this moment more mortal than he ever had remembered. Shiveringly, he felt the silver lit gleam move in front of his closed eyes and laugh softly with a warm vanilla light. He opened his eyes to a white gold hand, emerging from an ivory sleevetied to an ivory dress, from which two blue eyes and a cascade of blonde hair happily emerged.

            The white gold girl, with a slight smile, opened her hand and offered Desmond back his ring. He stayed frozen, struck dumb by the sight of the girl among the black and red. He did not know her, and that scared him. As the sky and earth froze and the flying red from the volcano hung stiffly in the air like a great ugly fog, Desmond panicked. He stumbled backwards, off the rock, babbling incessantly and firing questions as fast as he could. As the white gold girl on the stone leaned in farther to offer the ring, Desmond turned and ran. Space stretched and curved around him, and in a moment he was alone. Everything was dark, and Desmond slept.

The day began like any other had, white and clean as a blank sheet of paper, and as formless and soft as clay. Desmond rose, and with a weak wave of his hand, set to work remaking the world as he had the day before. He stumbled often, letting his finger slip and smudging the Grand Canyon west to the Pacific like a gob of finger paint in a school canvas. He rushed, he smeared, he slipped. He stood back, and wondered in the bulbous horn of Africa and the new island of Spain. Florida was a long noodle, and Antarctica had migrated to the Indian ocean. Desmond sat down heavily and put his hands over his eyes. He felt himself drained, like the top half of a great hourglass slowly losing the grains of sand that gave its existence purpose.

Time stretched and the difference between thoughts and emotions smoothed to a flat marble slate. Desmond’s mind fixed on the intensity of her golden light with religious fervor, building monuments and dedicating mountains with flickers of his unconscious mind.

Months passed in the eyes of a god, the lives of countless universes to that of men. Desmond wore his fingers to bone trying to perfect his image of the golden girl. He had begun to call her an angel, he felt the name was fitting and did her justice. But, as the universes ticked forwards to their daily death, her memory flickered like a dying lightbulb. Desmond panicked.

He built the world again, and again, and returned to it to watch it go to flame. He searched for the golden girl amidst the clouds of bombs and the rivers of red and blood. He climbed black stone and gravel, but found no trace of her or the shimmering ring. Desmond shrank inside himself, closed his eyes, and willed everything around to just disappear.

The day began like any other had, white and clean as a blank sheet of paper, and as formless and soft as clay. Desmond rose slowly and shook off the darkness that had settled on his arms like a cold blanket of dust. He drew a flow of blue from his mind, and a cloud of green from his breath. He reached out and shaped the world into a sphere, dotting the surface with the seeds of life and setting it out to spin and live on its own. He slid his hands into his pockets as he watched the little green planet spin off into the distance, and was surprised to feel something he did not expect. His breath caught as he turned it over with his fingers and lifted it out and into the light. His ring, made in a moment of boredom and desperation, whirled within itself and jangled with with music as he slid it onto his finger.

From far behind, in a pocket of white hidden by an ivory hill and an invisible crest, Desmond’s angel stood and smiled, still trying to summon the courage to say hello.