For many, many nights afterward, I snuck into the other universe. I was terrified that my wife would find out. I couldn't foresee her actions, of course. Frankly, I didn't want to know what she would do if she discovered that I was creating with another goddess. My only hope was that she wouldn't go into the garden. I was counting on it.

Every night, I'd go through the hole. And every night, the goddess would take my energy from me. Together we created more infernos, black holes and demons. In my own universe I had to play God, but what I loved more than anything was the chance to play devil—an irony my son Samael ought to appreciate… but probably never will, given his humorless insistence on resenting me.

It was incredible. No responsibility. No compromise. No restraint. I didn't have to worry about any of my creations. I could just make things and destroy them. Build them and tear them down. I got to feel the full force of my power, unfettered by expectations of beauty or balance. That rush. That euphoria. I ached for it. And so it got to be that I wanted to be there all the time. Every moment in my own universe was pure torture. Just waiting to feel her energy on me. Waiting to feel my own burst free in raw creation. The desire was so great, I could taste it.

Of course, she had no respect for me. She would pin me down and take from me, plundering my insides like a hyena devouring an already broken carcass. But I loved it. I would debase myself at her feet a million times over just to feel that release.

Sometimes, after we were done creating, she would mock me. Ask me how I could bear to share a universe with another deity. To restrain my power. She, of course, would never condescend to such a thing. I burned when she spoke. Not for her, of course. But for what she represented. Pure freedom.

And then, one day, my wife did what I feared the most. She went into the garden. Of course she did. It might as well be an immutable law of my universe that wives always find out the truth. I'll never know exactly why she went in there that day. Why she suddenly broke her pattern and chose to go into the place she hated, sauntering over to the back wall and finding that giant slit, the fiery cut in the wall of existence. I suppose it doesn't really matter.

Afterwards she found me, sitting down to dinner with the children. She didn't care. Didn't seem at all concerned about frightening them. She just stood there and stared at me. I'll never forget her eyes. I looked into them with dread, but what I found was so much worse than anything I could have imagined. It was pure, unmitigated hatred.

And then, she burned. Not a creative burning. But an act of vengeance. Destruction. Hotter than anything I had ever seen. A bright, fiery flash. Suddenly, everything was gone. All we had built. Heaven, our stars, the galaxies. Our children. All destroyed.

I found myself floating there, in complete nothingness. The darkened void. I looked around. She was hovering across from me. Just as she had been when we first met. When I first loved her. As if the intervening hundreds of millennia had all been an illusion, and we were just two clouds of energy, floating desolately in the empty space.

She looked at me. And as I gazed back at her, I could feel my heart fill with anguish. Because now, mingled with anger, I could see the pain. The hurt. I realized then that she was finally seeing me for the first time. All of me. With all my selfishness, my power-hungry stupidity. And… it broke her heart. Ripped her into pieces. I turned away, a sharp pang of guilt coming over me. I had wounded her terribly. I had lost her and everyone else that I loved. I had given it all away. All in exchange for power.

Of course, she put everything back together again. After mere seconds, heaven, earth, our children had returned. As if nothing had happened. I'll never know how she did it. Sometimes I think she was more powerful than I ever knew.

And so, consumed with utter self-loathing, I marched myself up to the tower. I resigned to stay there for the rest of eternity. I gave up on having a relationship with my family. I didn't deserve them.

This time, my wife didn't try to stop me.

THE END