TALES OF THE WORLD: POSTMODERN MYTHOLOGY

by Aaranon Patreau

CHAPTER ZERO (0) THE PROLOGUE TO END ALL PROLOGUES

I awake to darkness. Darkness, brighter than that in which we sleep, but still darkness. There is a screeching to my side, not unlike the wheels of a braking vehicle. I have been hit by a car. My head is swimming. I am swimming in a sea of concrete and brick walls and branches.

These are not the branches of a winding country road.

This screeching is not that of a car.

My vision clears. Around me, the drudgery of a million cornfields. Minus the yokels, plus a few underaged prostitutes.

I

b l i n k.

A creature floats beside me. He is the moth, I see. He is the beast ever flitting closer, closer to the light, only to be swallowed by its hungry, wanton jaws. He is the darkness. In him, I see the darkness, and I see, all that is ME.

To him, I say: "Good morning."

This creature, this aberration, this tiny bundle of heartbreak and futures and being, he says:

"Good morning."

We leave this realm of desolation. We leave it as one.

Where Mormo is white and gray and all fire and logic, all chastity and broken roads, I am the beaten reds and oranges and browns of a distant, unseen autumn. My hair is white. It is not the white of my companion. It is not the white of snow nor the gray of weakened bridges in a faraway group-home for the elderly.

My hair is the white of an early spring. Of new beginnings. Of a flower. A daisy.

I am beautiful.

I am a flower.

I am a virginal stamen, not yet sullied by penetration of the ovum.

I am the birds.

I am the bees.

I Am A Dead God's Gift To This Sullen, Dirty World.

A dirty scream resounds through the World Tree's walls. It echoes in my newborn brain. It is the scream of earlier, I realize. The scream of car accidents and shipwrecks and dog whistles in the rains of Paris.

It grates.

I think, if this place were a block of fine cheese, perhaps of fine Swiss or an age'ed cheddar. If this place were cheese. If this place were anything like cheese.

This scream, this anthropomorphic cheesegrater, would have sliced right through us. Blown us to pieces.

Its screamer is the epitome of power and youth and humanity.

Mormo, at my side, he says:

"We Must Help Her."

And me, I say:

"I Will."

(A Note From Aaranon Patreau:

I write this as a nobody. As an Anonymous Witness to the World.

Today, the eighteenth of May, year 2010, I watched the dawn rise at exactly 5:23 AM. I realized, as I looked at my $20 Walmart-bought generic-brand watch, that I cannot grasp the concept of a millisecond.

As a human, my grasp of time is truly imperfect.

I pray this piece of writing, of my very inner psyche, will not be a waste of time.)