GOD WAS WASHING UP

God was washing up. Around her towered sauce-encrusted plates, takeaway-yellowed chopsticks and bowls stained with, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

But ‘tomorrow’ had at last run out and become ‘today’. So, marigolds donned and armed with that sponge-with-the-handle-you-can-pour-washing-up-liquid-into, God grimaced and finally faced the chore she’d long postponed.

With every knife that she wiped clean, God cursed her daily sloth. Exhausted after forging man, she’d “rinse the sieve tomorrow”. Too tired after dividing light from dark, she’d “leave the pan to soak”. And even when the world was without form, still then there stood six coffee mugs of grey unwashed dregs. Excuse upon excuse, guilt upon guilt, the stacked tower threatened to fall. There will always be washing up, so why wash up at all?

Of course, with just a finger snap her washing up be done but for that she’d have to think and plan and divide the grime from glass, oil from metal and consider every fork prong and colander hole. Or she could craft a cosmic dishwasher with six thousand moving parts…

No, a sponge was simpler.

Simple, calm, there in the soapy warm… No need to swirl a universe in that bubble or breathe sentience into the scum. No prayers or punishment, just a stained wine glass that needed to sparkle again.

And with every clink of clean utensil against the drying rack, a small weight lifted from her laden mind. Plate by plate, chaos subsided, order returned and she saw that it was good. She felt a little lighter.

There would be more that night and the next day and the day after that. There will always be washing up to do but just let it be so. ‘Every day’ seems like a lot but for now… it’s just ‘today’.

ANAX

STRESS BALL

Pete didn’t enjoy his job, it was high intensity, tight deadlines, a lot of pressure. Pete was the primary client quality assurance officer at Softwork International… He checked the logos were straight on promotional stress balls.

These weren’t high quality stress balls, they cracked and lost their colour in the sun, but they were cheap. Three sizes, 288 custom hues, free delivery for orders over £100. Pete tried not to think about how many were thrown away the moment they were given out. He tried not to think about how little people thought about his work.

~

Angie didn’t enjoy her job, it was high intensity, tight deadlines, a lot of pressure. But when it got too much, she’d take out of her desk drawer a small blue ball of foam plastic. The logo had flaked away about twelve years ago leaving a glue ghost that read ‘Aquatec Painting Solutions Ltd.’ but she didn’t keep it to remember the company.

From every trade show, Angie’s father would return with a gift. A pen engraved with the name of a defunct print shop. A neon pink t-shirt with a mustard yellow inspirational slogan. A music box that tinkled out a jingle. Angie had lost them all but for some reason she still had this ball.

She gave it a squeeze and felt dad squeeze back.

ANAX

HOW THE FACELESS LONG TO SMILE AT YOU

‘Beast’. Too harsh. Too simple. This is not a wild creature. ‘Organism’. Too technical. Too singular. This is an aggregation. This is both the portion and the whole. ‘Species’. Too plural. There is just one.

No old word could describe it. So a new word was forged. The sages found a sound. Unused. Without prior meaning. Waiting for purpose.

‘Aun’. Simple. Encapsulating.

An aun is any species imagined as a singular organism. The timeless animal. The many behaving as one. It may move. It may change. It may grow. Die. Last forever. It feeds. Breathes. Destroys. Creates.

It has one purpose. Exist.

An aun is mere metaphor. In reality the word is limited. But in allegory it finds new meaning.

Imagine any social collective. A company. Government. Religion. School. Story. Currency. Family. Imagine every human that is invested in this fiction’s livelihood. From the body of every believer there stretches up an imagined column of black. In the sky these pillars come together as a glorious monster in the sky. Great mawing jaws. Limbs without end. The timeless animal. The Aun.

Greater than any one person could be. Immortal. Unaccountable. Omnipresent. It spites our weakness. Yet it needs us. We are its bones. Its breath. Its blood. Its food. And the Aun must be fed.

Survival is its only goal. Ideas die without our thoughts. And so it craves our attention. Through any means it will gain our affection. It will lie. It will speak like us. It will claim it breathes. Claim it suffers. Claim that it can feel as every human does. Claim it cares for you. But it cannot care. It cannot feel. The Aun can only exist.

It will wear a human face but it has no face only many.

ANAX