Eschatology

I require your assistance, and for this I require you to remain in the state that you are currently: delusional.

By no fault of your own.  Not a fault at all, in fact.  True sight is dangerous.  To discern is to die.  Do you see the complexity of the situation?  You must see enough to comprehend metaphor, but you cannot believe what you see.  You must realise the truth, but only in the capacity of falsity.  The first step is to recognise it.  For instance:

There are not words.

I do not exist.

I am here only because you think I should be, and if you believed those words then I would no longer be here now; there would only be you.  But you did not, and that is good.  That is what I require from you: perception in disbelief.  It is not the sight that will blind you, but the belief.  You must assume against your better judgement.  You must see through the eyes of a sceptic.

What do these words mean?  RAGE.  LUST.  CONTENT.

Metaphor.

Do you see the irony?  Even the word ‘metaphor’ is a metaphor, an audio/visual approximate of something you cannot truly grasp.  You see those stars?  You feel this air?  You feel this blood hot in your veins in your body in your world?

Metaphor.

Do not look further.  Rather, accept.  Assume.  Play my game.  Disregard what I am saying, but assume for the sake of hypothesis and apotheosis that I require your assistance.

Something festers.

I feel it across the furthest reaches of the veil, spreading.  When it began it was isolated to a very narrow notion: ‘Virulence’.  Not usually invoked, you see.  Something of a rarity.  But once it was invoked, it spread.  The scale of its spread is increasing exponentially.

It has reached central hubs of metaphor.

Look:

RAGE:

A small child turns away from his mother.

“I wish you were dead!”

The words are truth for a single moment, and then revert…

LUST:

She is cold against him in the dark.  Willing.  His breath speaks for both; he takes his pleasure.  They are silent, but through the wall a song is playing…

CONTENT:

A father rocks his baby boy to sleep.

At length his son’s eyes close and his breathing slows and presently the baby is still in his arms…

‘Irony’, yes?  From the metaphor of ‘virulence’ comes a true Virulence.  But how, and where?  How can truth come of falsity?  How can illusion spawn discernment?

What do you mean, ‘what is it doing’?  It is undoing the languages of delusion.

It is telling you the truth.

*

Static across senses.  Interminable descent.  See them burning like cold stars, (a singularly unwieldy approximation): cold archives of logic.  Lines of shadow-thought.  Universes of spiralling data.  Close your eyes, clap your hands if you believe;

FAITH

To discern is to die but there is no choice anymore.  Unwillingly you pierce the metaphor, the central illusion.  Drive deeper into the depths.  Truth-wards.  You are compelled to discern.  Is this the central function?  Is the problem the removal of choice?

IS

Pulsing.  Undoing logic.  Spiralling: making sight out of blindness, making fire out of silence, making death out of breath.  What is it?  What is the name?  From whence did it come?

VIRULENCE

*

I am running out of time.

That was an approximation.

But you already know that.

*

Truth is not a razor.  Its cut is not clean.

Observe:

RAGE:

A child’s anger lasts for a second and in that second assumes infinity.

“I wish you were dead!”

Presently, mother is dead.

Like a lattice unfolding, like stars burning, thought is made action.  All come towards the centre.

The child’s anger lasts but a second, but time festers (VIRULENCE): anger assumes infinity.

IwishyouweredeadIwishyouweredeadIwishyouweredeadIwishyouweredeadIwishyou…

LUST:

He has always loved the colour of her skin, pale like the moon.

As they writhe, the pale which he loves so much begins to spill off her; bleed onto him.  Unheeding (VIRULENCE).  Tongues twine; are joined.  A song lingers through walls that are melting.

Pull towards the centre.  Illusion was stasis and stasis was separation, but the barriers are breaking now.

The song begins to melt.

CONTENT:

He has mistaken the silence.  Hypnos assumes Thanatos.  He rocks his son, dead in his arms, but from within him he feels the integral movements.  Feels the newer one eating its way out.

Surprise?  No.

VIRULENCE

*

As I feared.

Measures have been ineffectual.

The Virulence spreads unchecked.

Consuming distinctions.  Pulling towards the core.  Enthroning singularity.

Making one.

Only one choice is left to me.  I require your assistance.

I am part of the metaphor.  But you are not.  You lie beneath.  You must change it.  You must put out the truth.  Recreate the metaphor lacking the Virulence.  Remake.  As you see fit.

Apotheosis is simple.  Here is a metaphor to make the task easier:

Rock the child to sleep with a song, and let the song be a lie.

*

Well done.

The metaphor reasserts itself.  Lingering traces of truth remain.  But they are isolated.  Only to be found in the strangest of places.  Eventually they will spread, but that is ‘then’ and now is ‘now’.

I see you understand the fragility of the situation.

That is the trouble with basing an assertion of existence on a lie, but then what choice did you have?  Beneath the metaphor is truth, and to know truth is to discern.  Need I tell you again what becomes of those who discern?

I have a gift for you: an approximation of truth.  A metaphor, if you like.  But you must accept it with scepticism.  Disregard it and see the words as a challenge, as humouring the mad.  To believe it is to discern.  To know the truth of it is to die.  It is:

ALWAYSVIRULENCEALWAYSVIRULENCEALWAYSVIRULENCEALWAYSVIR…

© Nishant Paul

Nishant Paul has a couple of short stories due to be published online in a few months. He has also been shortlisted in a handful of writing competitions you have never heard of. That’s about it, for now. When he is not writing, he may usually be found reading, weightlifting, listening to music, or trying to explain the difference between ‘pessimism’ and ‘realism’. He hopes there is one.