[misc] An Abecedary of Villiany #1

[Jamie Rosen]

*Disclaimer: If the formatting is unpleasant, blame Google Groups.

aBcDeFgHiJkLmNoPqRsTuVwXyZAbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYzaBcDeFgHiJkLmNo
PqR          An
sTu           Abecedary
VwX                   of
yZA                    Villainy
bCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYzaBcDeFgHiJkLmNoPqRsTuVwXyZ  vol 1, #1 "Aa"


Aa was born before the Earth had coalesced from bits of dust and gas
around a fresh-faced Sun. He was old millennia before the anaerobic
life that dwelt upon its surface was suffocated and snuffed out by the
terror known as oxygen, and he was dead and gone long before the first
fish fled from water to the foreign vistas of dry land. So how does
such a long-forgotten being haunt us to this very day? Why does he live
within us at our weakest moments -- why does he hover on the outskirts
of our most pleasant dreams, where our parents tell us of their pride
in what we've done and that lost true love returns repentant to our
arms? Why does his shadow eclipse even the brightest summer day?

**

I wasn't born like you. I wasn't hatched, either, like a chicken or a
snake, or seeded like some common plant. There is no word in any of
your comic tongues for how I came to be how -- how could you name what
you cannot conceive? Let it be enough that I was.

There was nothing in those times but hatred and violence. The very
universe, such as it was, clawed at itself, seeking to rend its fabric
asunder with the turbulence that had given it birth. There were forces
at play, then, without names or reason, blind to anything but
destruction. For they had not existed, and now they did, and to exist
was to know pain -- and to know pain was to lash out.

Into this universe I came, a thing of fragile beauty in a world of fire
and hate. And in this world I saw the beauty of it. I saw the beauty of
existence, the panoply of colours, forms, and energies, of things you
could not ever even dream of imagining. I saw the beauty of the whole,
and of the component parts, and I sought to share with them my vision
of existence. But they would have nothing of it. They tore at me and
pummelled me, lashed out at me as well as at each other, and it was too
much for me to bear. I fell into retreat, a silent meditation that
could hide me from their howling rage, and in that meditation I saw
also the beauty of the pain, the terror, the hatred they directed at
everything and nothing all at once. It was an acquired taste, but
lovely, in its way.

Safe from their destruction, I slowly took myself apart. It was not an
easy choice, but time did not have meaning and I was committed to the
task. From my dismantled body I crafted others, each more brittle than
the last through no fault of design. And the more brittle the body, the
more of myself I placed into it to compensate, until there was nothing
left but this slender spark you see before you. But as frail and
flickering as I now was, I regretted nothing. For to exist is to know
pain, but it is also to know beauty. And in you, I had at last someone
to share that pain and beauty with.

I only wish that I had realized that beauty fades with time.

FIN

Author's note: I have no idea how short this is, comparatively
speaking, and I don't care. It's the start of a series of
non-continuing linked pieces, and since it's non-continuing and with a
nice loose theme, I should be able to stick with it.

Other series, such as Miss Tran, will likely only be posted on
weekends, when I have access to the internet from my parents' house.
Otherwise, I have to type things by hand at work in the breaks between
calls; not a problem for transcribing something like the above, more of
a problem for attempting coherence on a series-wide scale.

[c] Copyright 2005 Jamie Rosen, all rights reserved, all wrongs
righted, all's well that ends well