Billions of Destructive Moments

Do you ever find yourself driving down a highway, with trees speeding past in your peripheral vision, when suddenly an insidious question spears straight through to the front of your consciousness: what if I just turn my wheel and drive into the tree?

How often have you looked at the knife in your hand while cutting vegetables and wondered: what if my hand just slips and I cut through to the bone on my finger, what would it feel like?

You may think yourself to be a little unsteady when those thoughts come rushing to the surface; shiny things that are so blinding you can’t see past them. Luckily for you, they are only fleeting feelings which disappear as quickly as they arose.

Unluckily for me, I can’t force my will upon you foul humans any more so than that.

Billions of destructive moments form a collective intent for ruin and death, but very few moments ever come to fruition. I want you gone. All of you. I want this world to myself again, I want peace, but you filthy sacks of meat only ruin it.

Selfish beasts, the lot of you. If it wasn’t in your nature to be so awful, I might have left you alone.

I even pity you. You are so inept you can’t even see me here, existing in the fourth dimension. This entire planet is a one-way-mirror, and even though I am alone I think it might be best that I am farther away from you. You drive me to the edge of insanity sometimes with your presence, if you were actually able to interact with me I would surely have snapped.

In fact, you should be thankful I am stuck here. If I shared your plane of existence, I would surely have slaughtered you all by now. Mother Nature knows I have tried. She does her best to placate me but you are her favourite little pets, she barely has any time to spare for little old me. Except when I misbehave, then the witch will hold a keen eye to me.

She can’t watch what she can’t see, though. Those glorious worms of doubt, the tasty morsels of destruction, the alien intent which crosses your brain and urges you to stab into flesh with the knife, drive into the family of pedestrians, jump in front of the train… she can’t see my influence in those moments; she can’t scold me or punish me for tormenting her pet humans.

You have felt my presence… your loved ones have suffered tragedy at my hands, death comes upon the youth before old age greets them. Tears, so many tears, and there are countless more yet to come.

When you are sitting in homes watching television, or reading a book in bed, I hope you can feel me breathing down the back of your neck. I hope your pathetic eyes catch a glimmer of my shadow when the light is just right. I hope you feel my hands gripping your arms, urging you to steer your SUV into oncoming traffic.

Do you feel me?

Mother Nature can’t hold me back. I am as endless as she is, so I have time to enact my will upon her pets.

If you can’t sense me now, you soon will. A stray thought, a curiosity for the macabre, a seed of doubt that grows into a jungle of thorny vines squeezing your heart until it breaks… It is the small things that count. I can only enact small things, but the impact is life-ending.

I am here and I promise I am coming for you next, but do you even care? How detached are you from this wonderful world you have driven to the brink of total annihilation? You overlook me with a haughty confidence, a belief you are invincible, somehow. You can refuse me, but you can’t stop me.

I will see you again tomorrow, try to persuade you to sink into your depression further, to finally surrender your bodily control to me. I promise you it will feel very peaceful. I want you dead, but it is a very calming sensation to give up.

Just stop resisting.

I will handle everything.

Let go.

I will take control.

Mother Nature doesn’t need to know.

No?

Of course not.

I can only enact small things, but the impact is life-ending. Maybe tomorrow you will finally let yourself do what I have been telling you to do. The Grim Reaper before me took my life in a very subtle way - Mother Nature was too trusting of him to avoid it - and I have taken his place ever since.

I often wonder how he did it. Why was I given this existence, watching generations upon generations of humans destroy my home? There has to be a trick to it. One day, one of you fools will find yourselves in my position, and I wonder where I will find myself next.