This Story is Junk

First Cycle: Chapter Two

I want to explore it all. Everything I see is a story waiting to be told. Blunt would be my guide. It would be a magical journey.

"Stop," Blunt says sharply.

"I didn't do anything," I reply.

"Whatever yer thinkin' about, stop." My mouth is shut, but she looks at me as though I've said something rather stupid. "I know that look. You want to go out and see what this world's got for you. Like there's some big plan with your name at the top of the page."

"It could be at the bottom of the page," I reply. "I wouldn't mind that."

"Listen." She tucks the fishbowl under her arm and speaks softly, like breaking bad news. "There is no page. This world won't last long enough for you to make sense of it. All the things you see out there, they don't matter a spit. They'll be gone a'fore you know it."

"I don't understand."

Blunt huffs and pouts, annoyed to even have to explain herself further.

"You know how you just kinda started livin' not ten minutes ago? One day, you'll just stop. Poof. Gone. But not just you. Everythin'. Me. My fishbowl. This sand. This sky. It'll all vanish. And then it'll come back, lookin' nothin' like it did. That's how it is. Things come, and then they go. No rhyme or reason to the whole song and dance."

I try to make sense of the woman's words, but for every piece she offers, the puzzle gets bigger.

"How do you know any of that?" I ask.

"What?"

"If the world comes and goes as it pleases and takes everything with it each time, how can you or anyone else remember?"

"You sure like yer questions," Blunt says in a sly manner. "Might have to enact some kinda limit. Thing is, we shouldn't know. But something from the last cycle must'a gone screwy, because the Creator forgot to wipe us out. We've just been waiting in this ... limbo, for a while now. Livin,' waiting to be erased. Truth be told, this might be the longest cycle there's ever been."

Though it didn't mean much to me, Blunt reflects on that last line of hers with a sense of profundity. But she soon shrugs it off.

"But it'll end, just like the rest: Without warnin'. And nothin' will've mattered. I was actually just waitin' to be snuffed out in that cave a'fore you so rudely interrupted--"

"Why wait?" I ask.

"Scuse me?"

"Why wait in a smelly bear cave when you can go out and see all this?"

"Weren't you listenin'? Because none of it matters. Whether I see climb the Sun-Kissed Steps and meet the Creator itself, or just sleep in a cave--which wasn't that smelly by the way--until the end of my days, it doesn't matter! And it's none of yer business either."

"I'm making it my business that you come out and see this world with me."

"I swear boy, you are this close to bein' beat to death with this fishbowl of mine. A nice pair of shoes is not worth this torment."

And that's how our walk went for a while, waiting to be snuffed out at a moment's notice, either by Blunt's fishbowl, or by the Creator itself, whoever that is.

And then the pirates came.