Divinity

Short Story

Art courtesy of NEW WORLD UNDERGROUND

This short story was written in 2005 and only shared with close friends, I share it here for posterity.

DIVINITY

My apartment was a loft apartment, the fifth floor of an old Victorian townhouse that had been converted into separate apartments, mostly for single person occupancy.

The ground floor apartments were beautiful, giant bay windows looking out onto the street, and long thin back gardens, mostly overgrown with wildflowers and weeds, due to the average character of the occupants. Many single men and women, of varying ages, none of whom seemed to count gardening amongst their interests.

My apartment however, was not beautiful in any way, shape or form. In fact, it was something of a secret lair, unless you knew it was there inside the roof of the building, it was almost entirely undetectable.

I got a kind of twisted kick out of living inside of the roof, like a vampyr or some other cryptid. I made no effort to speak to any one of my neighbours, although the attractive yoga instructor one floor beneath me went out of her way to show me kindness, which I very awkwardly received via notes about parcels and the like. Niceties, the sort I never reciprocated back to her, or anyone else.

I had always been an appreciator of bugs and insects, finding something of God in the study of each spider, moth and fly I was able to examine close-up, usually when the poor critters had expired.

On the seldom occasion I entertained the company of the fairer sex at my apartment, this insectoid appreciation was often challenged, and I was never fully able to convey the earnestness of my interest in the countless entities, both living and dead that I played host to.

I was of course aware of how unusual this sort of interest was to normal people, though I didn’t care enough to curb it.

The eyes of a fly, round and speckled, and its pincered little legs in death, as well as its wings with their untold complexity, was, to my belief, evidence of a loving God.

It was a previous employer of mine who had seen fit to bless me with this wisdom.

A devout and quiet man, with a bald head and tiny glasses, he looked considerably older than his actual age, he spoke about the unlikelihood of evolution, and illustrated his point by asking of me, if he were to take the watch off of his wrist, and violently smash it with a hammer, put the destroyed article inside an empty jam jar, and hand it to me, how long would I have to spend shaking said jar to get it to rebuild itself into its functioning form?

‘It never would,’ I answered him, to which his eyes lit up as he declared ‘Bingo!’ and promptly burst into laughter.

Another question he would ask, is how a spider came to be the architect of such impossibly convoluted designs found present in the spider's-web? Each one unique, and capable of carrying the spider, as well as a multitude of types of considerably heavier prey. Did he learn that process slowly over time, or is he the product of a grand designer of all things?

It was this question that firmly placed itself at the centre of my brain as I stared deep upon the insects of the world, with all their charms and features. Did they learn them through millennia, or were they gifted with their charming traits?

It was unfathomable to me that people go through life not considering these things, to live an unphilosophical life is the equivalent of being gifted something beautiful and never once opening it, or even holding it, or asking why the gift was even given in the first place?

When I went out to work, I would purposefully leave my secret roof window wide open, as far as it could possibly be opened. My apartment was free and open to any of the divine bugs of the world to enter, and inhabit at their leisure.

Upon arriving home, I would find new occupants, and after a quick study, I would ensure that my routine would not interrupt theirs.

Flies and moths would be allowed free-reign to bang their little bodies into lightbulbs repeatedly, or into closed windows, where many a fly found their end.

Having entered the apartment, and not left, and lived out their last days in a manic state in the window, I had to assume to myself that they were indeed happy doing so, and that their lives ended in fits of permanent buzzing ecstasy.

What else were they to do? They’ve no pub to visit, no apartment to clean, who was I to assume that banging your body against a window for hours on end, and then dying wasn’t what they wanted?

I could only give them entry, I wouldn’t dream of telling them how to live.

Spiders in the bath were given dominion, and if one was present, I’d simply have a cursory wash in the sink until it moved on again. Spiders were actually the single most displeasing entities to visitors of the fairer sex, and I was often challenged about my pacifism to my eight-legged occupants.

My refusal to murder them was not a popular stance.

Even on the occasion I had to shoo them away to calm a woman's nerves, I felt a tremendous sense of guilt that I had ruined their relaxing day, and caused them to scuttle somewhere where they didn’t really want to be.

To truly be oneself in this world takes a great deal of grit, and to not let your interests and hobbies be shamed out of you by the common folk takes tremendous resolve. Luckily, I was gifted in this sense, and like the act itself of living inside of the roof, I actively enjoyed being the strangest person someone might know.

I’d spent my life being unapologetically myself, which had earned me less than a handful of very good friends, and a litany of detractors. However, if I could do it all again, I wouldn’t change a thing, and I’d live exactly the same life.

One night, after coming home after a few days away from the apartment, where I had of course left my windows wide open, I lugged myself up the steep old wooden stairs, as I had a hundred times before, only this time, once I got to the front door of my apartment, I heard a bizarre sound resonating through the door.

It almost sounded like white static from a television set, a somewhat low frequency, as well as a higher almost discernible one.

Although this was no television, and the sound somehow had an almost alien quality to it. I pressed my ear up against the door to study it further, and was alarmed at the buzzsaw hiss that filtered through the wood and reached my ear, as well as the seeming vibrations coming through the door.

I took out my apartment key, an old fashioned one for an old fashioned lock, and I pushed it into the keyhole, again, as I had many times before.

Only this time, I felt resistance and some kind of crunch as I pushed it in, then, upon turning, more cracks and crunches as the lock disengaged, and unlocked the door. I also began to feel a heavy doomy feeling in my heart, almost like I had heard an agonising scream in another language.

When I pulled out the key, it was coated in viscera, a translucent goo, as well as shards of hard, shiny black shell. I wiped it on my trousers and reached for the handle of the door.

Upon opening, I was greeted with a sight unlike any other I had bore witness to in my life.

Every square inch of the apartment was covered in bugs, insects and creepy-crawlies. They teemed with a seemingly infinite energy, up and down and round and round, hissing, screeching, buzzing and mumbling a thousand different tongues.

Red, brown, blue, black and green, iridescent wings of varying sizes glistening and fluttering.

The strangest thing about the orgy of insect chaos I was audience to, was their adherence to the confines of my apartment, not a single one of them crossed the threshold of the door, in fact, they got out of the way of the door opening pretty quickly, and seemed to have reverence for the invisible border between my apartment and the outside world.

I was unsure of how to proceed, whether to close the door and rush to tell somebody, or to try and enter and commandeer my now heavily occupied and somewhat stolen apartment from the seemingly infinite number of guest invaders.

After some initial hesitation, I decided to step into the apartment.

Untold hundreds of insects met their end under each of my footsteps, as I slowly, carefully walked towards the phone on the table. They must have somehow become aware that I was intending to use the phone, for no sooner had I started to close in on it, and it become almost within reaching distance, there was a loud clang as the cord was ripped from the wall, and the entire thing was quickly carried, passed and chucked by the horde of insects, and then promptly ejected from the window, where I heard the faint crack of it hitting the ground, five stories below.

This act of sabotage by the throng, seemingly pleased most of them, as the volume of their collective hiss and buzz increased significantly, almost as if they were cheering or laughing. They didn’t want me to phone for help, and they had made this known in no uncertain terms via their apparent team effort.

By now, my fear had begun to subside, and although the phone throwing had startled me, by this point, I had to agree that it was pretty funny, and a somewhat impressive stunt.

It was then that a huge wave of tiredness hit me, suddenly, and with very little warning.

I was completely exhausted from my trip, and felt an overwhelming urge to just rest, regardless of the infestation situation. I figured as I couldn’t phone for help, I should just lie down for a little bit, take a nap, and then maybe think about what to do about the bugs when I woke up.

Similarly to the phone, the mass seemed to pick up on this desire to lie down and cleared a pathway towards my bed, for me to step towards it without more tremendous insect casualties. I accepted their path, and walked towards my bed, where they had all vacated a spot just the right size for me to lay down in.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a while, and looked around the room, sleepily.

Could I be dreaming this? I reached out to touch the wall beside me, covered in bugs, and they dispersed in every direction to avoid my touch. This was no dream, the smell, the noise and the sensory overload of this teeming mass was certainly as real as anything else.

Did I invite this? Have they come to me knowing my fondness for them? Maybe they had communicated to each other that one of the humans desired not to smash them with newspapers, or spray them with noxious gas, or flush them down toilets, baths and showers. Maybe they were aware of my pacifistic nature towards their kind. The whole thing raised so many interesting questions, but I was too tremendously tired to mull over them any longer.

I was so tired, I didn’t even take off any of my clothes, instead I just collapsed and closed my eyes and sighed. Such a heavy tiredness, the type when you know you are going to fall asleep very shortly after your head hits the pillow.

The second I breathed out my heavy sigh, I felt them come to me.

At first I was alarmed, but I did not make a move to shoo them away, to brush them off, or in any way harm them. I just lay there and they collectively honed in on me, all seemingly in unison now, like a giant swarm, or a flock of hideous alien birds.

They moved as one entity, even though they were so many different species.

They moved back over my body in the same way they were occupying every space in the apartment previously.

Running, screaming, dizzying circles of motion, centipedes up and down, woodlice rolling in place on the spot in little balls, spiders scurrying then stopping, flies, moths, wasps and bees hovering for a second them landing, untold thousands of arm rubbing, wings flickering, biting, scratching, burrowing,

After this initial ceremony of contact, they set about my person proper, into the cavities and crevices of my ears, my nose, my mouth. Running down my throat, running up and down any space available inside of me, the smallest of the lot, pushing deep into my veins, gnawing at my red flesh. Removing the skin from my body in short consumable strips, the occasional calamitous beetle dropping into my stomach acid and dissolving.

Mosquitoes pulling up blood deep from within my veins.

I was conscious for all of this, and yet the various venoms and overwhelming force prevented me from moving, coughing, crying or screaming. Spiders had also started to embalm me in their holy mysterious web, spin spin spinning their little limbs to produce the iron-like substance around me.

During all of this I ceased to ponder why it was happening anymore, and as I was dismantled, morphed and broken down, I felt no malice or ill-intent.

Only calm.

Whatever this was, was part of the universe's grand plan for me, my fate, God's will, whatever you wanted to call it.

It didn’t matter, especially now, for me, in the final moments of my life.

What good would musing do me now? The sun comes up, sometimes something like this happens, and then it goes down again. As it has for all time, for all men. Every man's story has an end, and here was mine.

There was enough for all of my beloved children of the night, my biomass was rich in sustenance for them, my skin, my flesh, my blood were full of the vital nutrients, vitamins and minerals they needed, to grow, and to thrive.

The blood-frenzy reached erotic heights, as they bashed and flitted into each other, clamouring to break me open for more of the sweet nectar contained within.

Almost the entire apartment was now clear, with almost every occupant upon me, bar the weakest, the slowed and impaired, who still lazily traversed the edges of the apartment, lost, and almost done with their own little lives.

I was a living dead whale at the bottom of the ocean, poked, prodded and consumed, ritualistically by a myriad of the earth's divine creatures, every one of them, designed and brought into being by the hand of a loving God.