I live a charmed existence in my imagination: queen of my castle, ruler of all I survey and someone that’s loved unconditionally. Then, of course, there’s reality. Reality, that thing hits you in the face every time you open your eyes and take a look around, looking at faces that you barely recognize, listening to voices you’ve never heard before and time slows down for a second as you take it all in, the noise merely a distant roar as the world spins faster and faster around you. Recognition takes a few seconds longer. And then you remember everything you’ve learnt, everyone you ever met and all the words you’ve listened to a million times. The world makes sense again as you walk into every other coffee shop in every other city in the world. Dialect is immaterial; the same sentiments are conveyed anyway. Boredom, inertia, pleasure, speed. You live every cliché that modern life gave to history. Sound hits you from every side, if you were an air particle you’d shiver from the force. But you’re flesh and bone, mind and matter. Nothing fazes God’s favourite children. And you are one of them, right? Right?

Wrong. You are meaningless. As useful as that dust particle referred to earlier. God is as much of an illusion as Love is. You exist for one reason, and one reason only – immediate pleasure. Where will your next fix come from? Which dirty drug will you shoot through your veins so that your brain tells you that it is now satiated. That dark, brooding monster that dictates your conscious being lays dormant now, demanding nothing for the moment. A reprieve. Thought, faith, comfort.

Impurity. Every action of yours is profane and the sooner you realize your pollution, the sooner you will come to terms with your being. As a race, we’ve had enough time to convince ourselves that humanity is normal, acceptable almost. A lot can happen in over two thousand years – the Earth moves, glaciers rise and fall, volcanoes form, entire species die and we continue on, mere chroniclers of the true actions of Creation; nothing more than a billion cosmic specks. Men did not create history, they merely wrote it down. Ink-stained fingers in corners of the vastness of space wrote down the work of forces the mind cannot comprehend. Evolution has led us from ink to print but the matter doesn’t change.

So we figured out a couple of things – flight, movement, and communication. So? Reproduction is hardly an art. We paint our pictures, fly through space and read each others minds. We applaud ourselves for these acts. Pieces of paper can now tell you that you own an idea. Patent your work and you can own anything. Tomorrow I shall create the Air and you will pay me.

Pay me. More paper for me to burn. I keep the wheels of commerce moving smoothly. What would you do without the lowly cog? Where would the world be if I decided to not use those scraps of pulp that you iron out and manufacture in billions? Let’s trade in sand particles; there are more of them anyway. And isn’t that the idea? More. More. More for you, me and the entire human race. Excess is now exalted. Surveys are our Gods. You didn’t make it to that list? How you have failed! Work harder, produce more, consume, consume, consume! Run your industrious little feet to the bone!

Might. Power. Authority. How quickly they dissipate. What will your paper buy you in the face of Nature? Your inconsequentiality is your defining characteristic. Fall in love, slit your wrists, bleed for humanity. Do it. Reality does not care. So you lost a son, a father, a willing slave to your affections. Attach yourself to a new being. The End is both around the corner and the distant horizon. At the same time. Simultaneously. This very instant, Death controls the disease. Sweet extinction. Cessation of thought, action, belief. How does it matter anyway? The empty darkness draws you away from the rotting excuse for existence. You are but a maggot eating off a perfectly good fruit. You are the destruction, the reason for contamination. The sickly-sweet stench of filth hangs on your miserable manifestation. No matter how hard you try to mask it, to try and hide beneath the synthetic perfumes that imitate natural creation and lend their scent to your being, your soul will carry that odor till it no longer exists. And all it takes is the extinguishing of a flame. That’s all you are: a matchstick in the unforgiving dark. Your beauty and horror merely a nanosecond in the endless black.

The End is now.