Nick Hayden's Blog

Tony did not hear the music in his earphones as he sat in the waiting room, even though the bass and the synth drowned out the whining child across the room and the TV replaying a superhero cartoon and the hum of the fishtank and the occasional ringing of the office phone and the answering and the murmuring of voices and the moaning of the chairs beneath shifting weight and the crinkling of magazine pages turning. 

Tony, not hearing these things, did not hear his music either, nor was he thinking. He waited in a sort of stupor, anxious, the noises within and without swirling around each other, building and canceling and being unheard.

He did hear his name called, finally, despite the headphones, because it was the only thing he had waited to hear for the last twenty minutes. He followed the nurse down a  hallway into a small, white room. The walls were bare. There was a single chair, made of a dull, heavy plastic. The nurse motioned him to sit.

She glanced through her paperwork. “This is your first time?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t worry. It really is painless.”

“That’s not what my girlfriend told me.”

She shrugged. “She’s just trying to scare you. It’s completely safe.”

“And painless?”

“Absolutely.”

“How long does it take?”

“We have you scheduled for a half hour session today. Doctor Beaufort will examine you at your appointment next week and decide then if you need any follow-up.” She retrieved a small bin from outside the door. “Please place all your loose items here. You’ll receive them back after the session. Any questions?”

“I guess not.”

“The door will be locked. You will be observed in case of an emergency. We recommend that you remain seated, though you are free to move around if necessary. See you in thirty minutes.”

She closed the door with a barely audible click.

Tony sat there in the silence and the emptiness. He studied his hands, the whorls of his fingers. This lasted about a minute. His eyes gazed around, looking for some feature, maybe the camera. Even the outline of the door blended seamlessly with the wall.

He stood and walked a few steps. The floor yielded slightly beneath his weight and softened the sound of his footsteps. He felt the smooth walls. He sat down again and waited. He started tapping on his leg, tapping his foot, without realizing it. He stopped. He didn’t want to come back. He needed to remain still and let the process do its work. He waited. There was no clock.

He followed the seam at the bottom of his T-shirt with his forefinger. He started humming an insurance company jingle. He caught himself and stopped. It kept playing in his head.

The silence grew louder in his ears. It started sinking down into his chest. His breathing quickened. He stood. He restrained himself from banging on the door. He stood in the silence, as in deep water. He felt heavy; he wanted to escape, to do something; he felt a restless, irrational prodding, pushing, scrambling in his chest. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, took a second, and forced himself to sit. The movement was as quiet as slipping into a still pool.

The panic passed. The tension remained. The silence roared in his ears. It was as if they were thirsty for sound, as if they were tendrils reaching out into the desert rock and sand, searching for a molecule of moisture, but all they found were more rock and sand, cracked lake beds and desiccated remains of life.

The silence had a weight to it, like tons of stone piled upon a spelunker deep in the darkness of the earth, like the pressure of the deep sea crushing a submarine. Beneath the silence, inside of it, smothered in it, Tony began to think. He thought thoughts he did not and would not speak aloud, thoughts that reeked of night and loneliness and death and the fear of death. He remembered words spoken and unspoken from the hazy past. He remembered the faces of elementary school friends and the sharp, bright edge of childhood hopes. He thought eventually of nothing; wrapped in silence, nearly shivering in the alien chill of the silence, he thought of nothing, but it was a different absence, something wide and peaceful, as of the blank ocean beneath a pale sky, waiting for full dawn and the whisper of surf.

When the door opened, it was with a soft sweep of air that seemed expressive of some new world.

Steven noticed his father’s slight limp as they took the trail into the woods next to the house. He glanced at his brother, to see if he had noticed, but Paul was looking at the trees and the ferns growing beneath. “It’s all different now,” he said.

“I keep trimming back the undergrowth,” Father said.

“It was all wild when we were kids,” Paul said. “It’s almost like a park now.”

“Everything is civilized and regulated now,” Steven said, more bitterly than he meant. He remembered endless days of exploring and adventuring in these woods, where one might get lost and find treasure and meet spirits. Now, with the tall, straight trees, the cleared brush, and his father’s worn paths, those memories were tinged with a sharp sense of loss.

“I found something while poking around back here,” Father said. “I’d forgotten all about it. It’s in the southwest corner, past that big oak that came down in the storm. You remember?”

Steven remembered. He had been thirteen, old enough to fake that thunderstorms didn’t frighten him, even though he was awake half the night as the house shook and the wind banged against the windows and lightning blasted the darkness.

“I thought the world was ending, and Christ was coming back,” Paul laughed. He had whimpered in his bed, the bottom bunk, and Steven had told him to shut up and stop being a baby.

They walked for ten minutes, the sun fitfully showing itself. It was an early Easter, so the weather was still cold, even when the clouds cleared for twenty minutes at a time. The old fence, just leaning posts and a few strung-along wires, still straggled along the western edge of the property. The newly blazed trail, grass still growing between the ATV tracks, ran along the fence.

Father led them into a clearing Steven didn’t remember. The remains of a few narrow stumps showed it had been recently cleared. Father had hauled an old wooden bench back. The area was shadowed by the branches overhead, and gray clouds had swept in front of the sun. A large stone, set upright, stood near the center.

“I remember climbing that,” Paul said. “It was my ship or island or something. Sometimes we couldn’t find it. It was always tricky finding anything back here. It was full of brambles.”

“We just had a lousy sense of direction.” Steven had a vague recollection of the rock. There had been poison ivy nearby, too, he thought. That’s probably why he hadn’t ventured much in this area.

“I was going through some of Grandpa’s stuff,” Father said, “and something in that reminded me of this. Your great-great-grandpa set this up a long time ago.”

“He lived across the south property line, right?” Steven said. The land there had been sold off a generation ago, and three houses stood there now.

Father nodded. “Before that, something important happened here. Your great-great-grandfather was a hard man from a hard family. I used to know the details. Drinking and fights and stuff like that. It’s written somewhere. Here, at this place, is where he met God. That’s what he said.”

“What do you mean, met God?” Steven asked.

“Met him, knew him truly. We’ve all had some moment when he became real, not just stuff people told us. To your great-great-grandpa, this was a holy place.”

Steven looked at the rock and at his father looking at the rock, and he felt nothing.

“I was in a hotel room in Atlanta at a conference,” Paul said quietly. “Alli was at home with Georgia. She’d just been born. And I was–well, I was angry and feeling sorry for myself, and I started reading one of those Bibles in the drawers, because I remembered all those years you took us to church and prayed with us. Some time along the way I just sorta….” Paul smiled. He always smiled, eventually, no matter what happened. “I forgot it all until then. It was like a slap in the face.”

“I remember,” Father said.

“Steven, here, he’s always had it figured out.” Paul laughed again.

Steven was an elder at his church and had been for a decade, and he knew the Bible as well as the pastor. He lived a good life, a clean life.

“It started with your great-great-grandfather,” Father said. “That’s when the faith in this family started. Right here, in this little piece of woods. I think about that sometimes when I sit here.”

“It’s not magic, Dad,” Steven said.

“No, it’s not. But it’s a real place, a solid fact. Once, God spoke to a cussing, drunk rascal, and it changed his life. It changed mine. And yours.”

“Once, this forest was filled with pirates and goblins and wizards, too,” Paul joked.

“That, too,” Father said, eying them. “But if God can act once, he can act again. I need to know that. I thought you might find that interesting. Well, your mom will want us back before the rain starts.”

“It’s pretty neat, Dad,” Steven said, as they walked back. The sun was showing itself briefly between the dark clouds.

“I thought so,” Father said, looking at Steven. “I thought so.”

Here’s another original short story for 2023. If you like it, share it with your friends.

After the phone call, Elliott gathered his books and hefted his backpack over his shoulder. He walked across the seminary campus to the chapel, but he stopped before it and did not enter. Inside were the stained glass windows and the altar and the cross lifted high. He felt a sudden aversion to them. 

He did not want to walk back across campus to his dorm. His body felt heavy; within, crackles of maddening energy coursed. He looked around as if viewing his surroundings for the first time. The Eiler Music Hall stood nearby. He would sit inside somewhere, out of the cold, and wait and struggle. 

It was an old building, with old wooden floors. Along one hall, out of the way, were a row of small practice music rooms, each with a piano. He sat on the beach here, put his bag on the floor, and did not pray. 

Elliott slumped against the wall and closed his eyes. He heard footsteps from the other end, a door opening. The door did not quite latch. He could hear some notes as fingers moved upon the keys.

Slow, familiar notes came unsteadily down the old hallway. Pachelbel’s Canon. Elliott was not well-versed in classical music, but even he knew the piece was worn out. Loved by millions of brides, yes. Hummable and catchy, yes. But in the end, it was just a round, just an embellished loop. 

“All things are full of weariness,” he muttered, a sardonic smile lifting his lips. His morning Old Testament studies showed their usefulness. 

The tune cycled in its lazy undulations, and Elliott thought on the meaningless and solidity of words sent through empty space, from one device to the next, and how a voice might never be heard again.

Slowly, he realized that the fingers in the room down the hall were dancing. The melody was twirling out of its set steps. It sprang up and laughed and settled back into its expected guise, wearing a sly grin. Then again it leapt up, spun, and pranced playfully back and forth. It was the same canon, but the fingers gave it freedom, improvising, setting it loose upon white keys and black, up and down and around, cavorting and tumbling, the stately beauty overflowing into joy, the expectant grandeur of the procession now a childhood dash, with a splash and a fall and a giddy scrambling. The wedding was coming, it was coming, and no one could wait, because if this were the prelude, if this rampant, barely contained energy sparking over the keys, as orderly as a child’s coloring page and as honest as an infant’s laugh–if this was the space before, what must the entrance of the bride, the climax of the great song become! 

Elliott found himself weeping as the fingers somewhere found the old, worn melody. He thought of his mother, and of who she was and of the cross he had thought of with a sense of horrid emptiness after the call. He let himself cry, for he was sad and, he found, he was happy, too. The music could have continued forever, and he would not have noticed a minute pass. In a blink of an eye, a thing could be transformed. 

He knew now what he had studied. He stood to return to the chapel to pray.

Upon descending the crumbling steps that led down into the subterranean lair of Mulnok the Necromancer, Percival found a large desk with a large sign that read “Information.” A young woman sat at the desk, dressed rather scandalously in well-fitted pants and blouse. She scribbled at a piece of parchment with her quill. 

Thinking she must be under some spell, Percival drew his sword with his right hand, summoning a ball of mana into his left, to be converted into what he most needed when the time came. 

“Oh,” the young woman gasped, raising her hand to her mouth and splattering ink on her nose. “I’m so sorry. I was trying to finish the requisition request and the numbers just weren’t adding up and – well, never mind. How can I help you?” 

Percival eyed her cautiously. “Are you under the control of the Necromancer?” 

She smiled. “Oh, no! We sure have started on the wrong foot. I’m employed by the Organization for the Protection of Morally Divergent Creatures, Spirits, and Magical Beings. This is an official Morally Divergent Sanctuary. Welcome! We have maps, pins, and your admission fee can be applied to a membership that will grent you 30% off at the gift shop.” 

Percival looked at her for a long time. “Then Mulnok the Necromancer is dead?” 

“Well, technically, he’s undead. All liches are considered undead for the purpose of preservation and care, granting them special protections and accommodations.” 

The ball of mana in Percival’s hand spluttered out. He struggled to find words.  “I mean… has he been slain?”

“Oh, no, of course not! That’s what we’re here to prevent.”

“You would stop me from slaying him?” 

The young woman pursed her lips as she looked at his sword. “Oh dear, what did they say in training?” she muttered. “Oh, yes!” She hurried around the desk and threw out her arms. “You wouldn’t hurt an innocent young girl, would you?”

Percival lowered his sword. “No. But the lich must be destroyed.”

“Why?”

“He is evil,” Percival declared.

“Morally divergent,” the woman corrected.

“He sold his soul to dark powers in exchange for eternal life.”

“Well, it’s his soul. He can do what he wants with it,” the woman pointed out.

“He has slain entire villages.”

“That’s one side of the story.”

“He killed king Leinan and–”

“Well, I’m sure the king wasn’t exactly innocent. Most kings aren’t.”

“He raised an army of undead soldiers that now dwells in his castle.”

“Undead are people, too. They have a right to affordable housing.” 

“He is right now working on a spell that will open a portal to the Realm of Darkness, unleashing the ancient destroyer Gilgamon to tear our world asunder.”

“Wow.” The woman looked him over disdainfully. “Fearmonger much?”

Percival lifted his sword again. “I have spent three years constructing this blade. It is the only weapon capable of undoing the Necromancer’s foul curses. I will slay him.”

“That’s admirable, but I’m afraid your religious zeal doesn’t have a place in this sanctuary. I’m sorry you wasted the last three years, but you really should have contacted us before going on such an unnecessary adventure.”

Percival eyed the dank chamber beyond the Information Desk.

“Does the lich not still consume the life essence of others to maintain his power and vigor?”

“What he does is his own choice,” the young woman said primly. “We merely ensure that he is able to freely pursue his best self.”

“How many? How many has he sacrificed for his selfish ambitions?”

“I don’t keep count. Maybe Accounting does.” 

Percival pointed his sword at the filing cabinets behind the desk.

“Well, it’s confidential.”

“How many?” he demanded.

She grunted in exasperation. “You are dull. Let’s just say we don’t have a lot of repeat visitors.” She lowered her voice and giggled. “The membership isn’t actually worth it.”

“Why are you protecting him?” Percival shouted. 

The young lady, hands on hips, replied: “To protect him from people like you! If we let the likes of you do what you want there’d be no more liches. Why, there’d be no more dragons or demons or evil djinns. Oh, but you wouldn’t stop there, oh no, then you’d get rid of the bandit lords and the dread pirates and the goblin kings. In your world, everyone would be lawful good. Who would want to live in a world like that, with all the curses and witches and tyrants gone?”

“You don’t?” Percival asked.

“Wickedness and malice are authentic expressions of rational beings and should be protected,” she said defiantly.

Percival sheathed his sword. “Then I will never succeed. For even if I slay the lich and the troll and the wyrm, there will still be young ladies I cannot slay.”

With that he turned and slowly climbed the stairs, dejected.

“Hey, could you at least fill out a comment card?” Her voice went unanswered. “You’ll be entered into a raffle for a Lil Necromancer picture book!”

An hour later, Percival rushed down the stairs, past the Information Desk, past the skeleton security guards and the warded doors and slayed Mulnok the Necromancer, Terror of Three Kingdoms and Foul Sorcerer of Fangnort, as he listened bitterly to his assigned advocate tell him he was loved and valued just as he was.

Theo stumbled, caught himself, and continued to sprint down the incline, breathless, falling more than running, narrowly avoiding the dark trunks in the twilight, branches smacking him, leaves and logs tripping him, racing down like a boulder as the land became still steeper.

Crashes and breaking and hateful screams followed him. An innumerable horde of undead men, bones broken, eyes bloody, senses malevolent, trampled after him, sliding, rolling, climbing over one another in covetous bloodlust. 

Theo lost his footing and went headfirst, spinning painfully down to the foot of the hill. He splashed into a reeking fen of mud and reed. He stood, disoriented, sputtering. Bodies fell around him. They grabbed at him as they lay in grotesque positions. Their hands were flesh, bone, and gore. He kicked them off, the feel of his boots against their shoulders and arms a familiar one. This was not the first time he had struggled to escape from those hungry, insatiable hands. 

But he was tired now, more tired than he remembered being, and his hope of surviving, and even his desire to live, was dimmer than before. 

He found his feet and ran, trusting his instincts for the direction. He had to be almost there, if his information was correct. He sloshed through the muck, trying to make for the nearest island of reeds. The creatures did not get to their feet, but slithered and dragged themselves forward like reptilian predators. They were incredibly quick. Mindless, relentless, deathless, they held a blind cunning that frustrated all attempts to outwit them.

Theo, luckily, was faster – just. He had no weapons left. Bullets slowed them, blades dismembered them, fire burned them, but nothing stopped them. They reconstituted, melded, walked charred and maimed. With each partial defeat, they became more disfigured, more inhuman, more monstrous. Theo had heard that some places had tried nuclear weapons – the deathless just became walking Chernobyls.

A moment’s pause upon the little island showed him the way. A painful jolt inside his ribs stunned him. It was sharp as a knife. He didn’t move, didn’t run, almost didn’t breathe, and the deathless were swarming him. Then he dove into the water, toward the submerged cave he had seen – the sight of which had so injured him, because it gave him hope.

Gurgling, kicking, drowning, fighting, screaming, raging against the deathless, he entered the cave and dove deep into the water, looking for a room beyond. He emerged gasping into air and light. He struggled out, into the chamber. Nothing followed him.

It was silent except for the lap of water and the sound of his own labored breathing. As he recovered, thanking God for his survival, he began to have a better sense of his surroundings. The stone chamber was roughly the size of a large room, with a few weathered pieces of furniture – a chest, a table, a cot. The light seemed to come from nowhere.

There might be a figure on the cot.

The pool of water near him remained undisturbed, shining reflectively with soft light, so he walked cautiously forward. In the cot was a woman. He could not tell her age. In appearance, she seemed no more than thirty, except for her face, which was an old woman’s. Her gray eyes were open and looking at him with such unblinking intensity he thought she might be dead.

“Are you one of them?” she asked, stirring. Her voice was that of a young woman.

“Who?”

“You know who. You are not one of them. You have too much caution and curiosity.

“Is it… is it here?” Theo asked. His singular purpose for days and weeks of travel and travail had led him here; even the question caused that piercing pain of hope again in his chest.

“Tell me what you think it is?” The woman did not rise, but her limbs moved as if she were trying to raise herself. He bent to help her, but she shook her head. “Speak.”

“A weapon. A weapon to defeat the hordes, to destroy them. People whisper that one has been found.”

“Weapons can hurt friend as well as foe.”

“There is no hope if we cannot destroy the deathless!” Theo cried.

The woman nodded. “So you bring hope to me as well.” She succeeded in sitting. “In the chest is a box. Bring it to me.”

Theo opened the chest from which came the light, and within, beside supplies for daily living, was a box, from which the light streamed. It was nearly weightless in his hands, and warm. He gave it to the woman.

“I am not the first to keep this. It was begun long ago, even before the deathless, and it is still incomplete. It will always be incomplete, until we are like it. But it is enough.”

“What is it?”

“Call it a weapon, if you like. It is the melody that makes you stop and look up, the phrase that knocks you flat, the moment you realize the weight of raising a child. It is the silence and the song, the paint and the poem, the caress, the revelation, the dawning, the escape from damnation. It is all that is not from us, but makes us like it. It is goodness which is truth which is beauty which is life, real life.”

She began to cry, then, as if even speaking of it pained her, and her weeping grew to sobs. Theo wanted to comfort her but did not know how. He waited, wanting to understand why she wept.

When the tears stopped and she sighed and looked up at him again with fresh eyes, she said, “They cannot stand before it. They have nothing left that can be raised.”

“And us?” he asked.

“You see my face. We are far weaker before Beauty than we suppose.” She smiled now, ironically. “I came to sacrifice myself, out of love for humanity. There was some truth in it, I suppose, but much pride and vanity and foolishness. Still, you have come, and with you is hope. Will you take this burden?”

Theo said yes, and he believed he meant yes.

“I will open it one last time before I die.”

In a moment, Theo was consumed. He looked away, closed his eyes, from the fire, the pressure, the blast, the melting intensity and then it was gone, and he was weeping, trembling, aching deep, deep in his being, thin, insubstantial, like a ghost remembering his flesh. The world returned and it was bright to look at and heavy upon him. 

He took the box from the woman’s hands. He realized that he did not even know her name, and this seemed another tragedy, greater for the memory of the glimpse he had bowed beneath.

She was dead, an expectant look upon her lifeless face. He prayed for her; he prayed for himself and for the world. He took the box. It was light, deceptively light, and he feared it. He understood why the deathless did not enter this place. 

He stood and prepared himself to enter the world again.

The two men wore ties and slacks. Their youthful faces and confident strides marked them as college students or young professionals. With a quick, whispered discussion, they approached the older gentleman on the park bench. It was late afternoon. The light streamed heavily through the leaves. Two squirrels chased each other up the maple beside the bench. 

The older man was watching the squirrels when the two young men stopped in front of him. 

“Excuse me, are you Dr. Landis?” one asked. 

Dr. Landis looked at them with his watery blue eyes. “You two from the university?” 

“We wouldn’t bother you, sir, but we were doing some research and your name came up….” 

Dr. Landis laughed softly. He put the book down that he had been holding but not reading. “Yes?” 

“The Happiness Equation, did you really have it worked out?” 

Dr. Landis studied each of the men separately. “You have names?” 

“Sorry. I’m Jason. This is Randolph.” The other greeted him timidly. 

“The Happiness Equation was my career,” Dr. Landis said. “Thousands of test subjects, thousands of interviews. Work in psychology and social science and neurology. What does everyone in the world, in every culture, in every time period, want? To be happy. It is the great human aspiration. That was the goal of my research: how can a man best be happy? What situations, goals, circumstances would provide for the greatest possible happiness during our short lives? I wanted to give him a blueprint, a method for maximizing his happiness.”

“We know,” Jason said, not impatient, just wanting to show that they had not come uninformed. “We read all about it. But where is the Equation? Did you finish it?”

“We can help,” Randolph said, “if you are still working on it.”

“Sit down. It’s much more comfortable than staring down at me.” 

Jason sat beside Dr. Landis on the bench, leaving Randolph to sit in the grass on the other side.

Dr. Landis waited thoughtfully after that, looking sometimes at the two young men, sometimes at the trees and grass that surrounded him. The young men remained silent, out of respect, though Jason fidgeted with his phone and Randolph started picking at the grass.

“Forget the Equation,” Dr. Landis said. “Go study something else. Find something you love and work on that.”

“But what’s greater than helping others enjoy life?” Jason asked. “That’s what we want to do. That’s why we hunted you down. It wasn’t easy to find you.”

Dr. Landis smiled knowingly. Then, glancing again at them, he spoke: “The Equation is finished.”

“Does it work?” Randolph was on his feet again. “Have you tested it?”

“We thought that’s what you’d been doing these last years,” Jason said. “What are the results?”

“Misery,” Dr. Landis said defiantly. “Absolute misery.”

“Then the Equation isn’t right,” Jason declared. “I mean, I’m sure you know that, sir.”

“It’s right,” Dr. Landis said. “It’s perfect. Everything a person can dream of for self-fulfillment, matched to their personality and psychic profile. It works. That’s why they’re miserable.

“Think – remember a time you waited for something, expected something, desired something more than you’ve desired anything – an accolade, a vacation in Europe, a road trip with friends. When it was over, after you graduated or finally got married or published that book, were you happy? Satisfied?”

“I remember sitting in my car, wanting to cry, two days after I won the Science Decathlon,” Randolph said.

“Why?” Dr. Landis asked.

“I don’t know. It was…there was nothing after it was over.”

“Nerd,” Jason said. 

“So we keep moving to the next thing,” Dr. Landis continued. “To the next big movie, the new car, the new girl. We keep moving. But suppose I promise you perfect happiness, and a scientifically verified method of obtaining it. Item after item, a 70-year checklist you keep chasing until you die. What do you think that would feel like?”

“Emptiness,” Randolph said.

Dr. Landis nodded. “Disappointment. Time and time again. Depression and desperation.”

“Can we still see the data?” Jason asked after a silence. “I–I’d still like to look at it. I’ve sort of dreamed of helping – you know, save the world, that kind of thing.”

“No,” Dr. Landis said, “I’m afraid not.” 

Randolph stood looking down at the scientist. “Then what’s the point? Don’t people just want to be happy? What if we can’t give them that?”

“I think we don’t give it. I don’t think we can – that’s the real error in the Equation. Time. Time and eternity.”

“I don’t understand, sir,” Jason said.

“It’s not a closed system. When are you really happiest? Happiness sneaks in on a rainy day, or five minutes before the alarm rings in the morning. It ambushes you with a phone call or a memory. It snuggles against you in the evening on the couch with a friend. Some people who should hate life seem to have happiness stored up somewhere secret. I assumed it came from experiences and possession we could arrange just right. I was wrong. It comes from somewhere outside.” He laughed self-deprecatingly. “I found this in an old book: ‘Everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil – that is God’s gift to man.’” Dr. Landis’s eyes shoe. “That’s a beginning to an answer, I think.”

Jason stood now. He and Randolph communicated through a glance. “We are sorry we bothered you.”

“Think on it,” Dr. Landis said. “Maybe take a walk and talk about it.” 

“Thank you, sir,” Jason said. 

“Visit again, if you want.” Dr. Landis stared after the young men who wanted to change the world then returned to the book he had set down some time before.

You wake and stare at the window where the early morning light filters through the blinds and you try not to think of the knife on the nightstand. 

You could rise and eat breakfast and brush your teeth and ignore the presence of the knife. You could snooze for another half hour. You could, in fact, dispose of the knife and never use it again. 

That is what you should do. 

It is, in fact, what you might do. 

But it is not what, deep down, at the foundation of your being, you want to do. 

And so you lay there, comfortable in your bed, wanting to start the day like a normal person, like you used to start and end each day before you were given the knife, before you could see the knife. 

For it is not a blade of metal. It cuts deeper than steel. It kills things that an ordinary knife could not touch. But you have felt its edge. You bear the marks of it. 

You sit up. You can leave the room. Yes, leave. It has no hold on you. You are your own person. You can do whatever you want. You are free – free to avoid the pain, free to avoid this daily struggle, free to walk out the door and join the rest of the happy, thoughtless world.

Your hand reaches for the slender hilt. You grasp it. You mutter some words in prayer, almost against your will. Every morning, against your will, or against your better judgment or against common sense, or against….

Against yourself. The blade, shimmering faintly in the morning light, is against yourself. You are your own enemy. Every day, every morning, every hour, this contest of wills – your will against yourself, with the knife between you.

Put it down!

You lay it on the nightstand, upon the Bible that sits there, but you do not release it.

Let it go! You don’t need it. Don’t hurt yourself. You are enough.

Your fingers grasp the hilt more tightly.

What are you doing? This is ridiculous. You’re going to maim yourself one of these days. You will scar yourself beyond recognition. Love yourself. Put the knife down.

You sit, undecided, the words in your head telling you to leave the knife, to destroy it, telling you that you are mutilating yourself, that you are killing yourself.

Don’t you want to live, to really live?

You lift the blade. The words in your head, they mean two things. You are two people. You are what you were and what you are. You are asleep and awake, alive and dead.

You flip the handle and direct the point at your heart. If you could just end it now….

In the end, a decision only takes a moment.. Arguments build until you either say yes or you say no. You can either turn to the left or to the right. You can either thrust the knife into your breast or you throw it down in relief.

You plunge it into your chest.

The blade sinks to the hilt between your ribs, and for a moment you feel nothing except satisfaction and bewilderment at your own action. Then, pain, pain traveling outward from the pumping heart, as if the veins themselves were vines wrapped chokingly, inextricably around your bones and organs and you are tearing at them, prying them out. You are slicing soul from spirit like a child peeling layers of paint from a wall with deep, insistent fingernails. You suffer, and you think it will continue for eternity, and yet you know it is only a moment, then another moment, and another…

It is finished.

You withdraw the blade. There is no blood. There is no visible wound. A great sense of peace and health pervades your being. You set the knife back on the Bible, thanking God for this new day, for all that will happen. Then, with a rush of strength, you stand.

Upon the bed, a part of you remains, the shadow of a corpse. It is fading, the face that is like yours, the limbs that do the things you do not want to do, the flesh that clings to you.

You have left corpses there day after day. It is easier, now, sometimes. The knife waits for you, but it has done its daily work.

It is morning, and you are a new man.

You can see it from miles away, sunlight gleaming off its silver exterior. It resembles a rocket from a black-and-white movie, sleek and upright and poised to launch effortlessly into regions unknown. It is not the tallest structure in the world, but it is close. 

Some call it one of the seven modern wonders. When you stand in its shadow, craning your neck to follow its metallic curve, you feel that man can touch the stars, that mankind’s destiny is to transform planets and to transverse nebulae and to fill the universe with his glory. 

But despite its appearance, the structure is not a rocket. Its lower levels display exhibits of man’s achievements, of the planting of flags at the South Pole and upon the moon, of the circumnavigation of Magellan, of the exploration of the depths and the proliferation of the Internet. 

What next? the exhibits ask. Where does mankind go next? To other worlds? To other galaxies? 

Perhaps, someday. 

But a greater triumph has been realized. Imagine, like Keats did upon seeing an old pot, that you could live in a single moment forever. Maybe it’s the embrace of a loved one, or the triumph of a boxer, or the revelation of a philosopher. Maybe it’s simply the effusive headiness of spring fever or the insatiable angst of wanderlust. Strip the danger from space travel and keep the dream of adventure; excise old age and time from new-found love; eliminate the ever after from happily. 

The Rocket still sends people to space. It still encompasses the ambition of mankind. It is the final frontier of humanity’s immortality.

Above the exhibit, the Rocket holds its secret.

There are rooms, constructed by great minds, where lovers might stand, or an athlete after winning the gold, or a mother upon seeing her children graduate. In a flash of power and science and self-awareness, they are shot across the universe in a beam of light.

There is no destination except the far edge of the ever-expanding universe. In pure light they speed through the cold void, timeless, just as Einstein predicted.

Their relatives and friends will grow old and die. The Earth will age and suffer. But they live on in one endless moment–as happy as the moment the technicians flipped the switch to convert them from matter to energy.

It is heaven, perfected by man himself–eternity in a moment, a moment for eternity.

No one knows what it is like to live frozen in a moment, whether doubt and fear and corruption exist forever beneath whatever emotion sent them into the sky, whether a moment stretched to infinity is like death after all.

The Rocket gleams in the sun, and at night flood lights illuminate its sheen. If you watch, you can see the beams shooting forth, one after the other, from its pinnacle into the unknown, where they are lost in the emptiness.