"In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and a darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God seperated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day."
He'd never really gotten past that first part. He'd never really tried more than once of twice.
But he liked that first bit enough. It was kinda like poetry he thought. Not that he knew a lot of poetry either. But it fit his idea of poetry.
All nothingness as far as comprehension and a presence, a spirit of air and change, gliding over all of it.
It was all he knew of faith really. That image, that wind, that presence over the face of the waters.
He saw it everywhere. When the breeze stirred a field of tall grass into ripples. When the black birds swirled up into the sky like ash in the sudden winds of a coming summer storm. When the oceans waves beat stronger and harder with each pounding pass, like arousal feeding on itself.
...moving over the face of the waters....
He was on a drive.
A very long drive.
Leaving a lot behind, and hoping at best to find something to replace some of it at the end.
In a cheap motel.
The kind that B horror movies tend to start in.
He could have afforded better, but he was trying to be frugal. He wasn't short on money, not by any means. And he wanted to keep it that way. That meant eating a lot of sandwiches while he drove, and staying in a lot of crappy rooms.
He was watching porn on the little TV. It wasn't something he did often, but tonight he felt like he needed it. After everything that had happened today he needed something that would take him out of himself, and then put him to sleep when it was over.
He didn't want to deal with a hang over in the morning, so getting drunk was out of the question. And he'd never really done drugs, wouldn't even know how to get them. So that left porn.
It wasn't working.
The channel was srambled.
The colours were all off, and the screen was flicking up and down in wavy bars of what might have been fucking, or might have been boxing.
He'd seen the face across the water earlier that day. More clearly than he'd ever seen it before. And in a place he'd never wanted to see it.
In a mother's face, in that moment that she looses everything.
He fell asleep and dreamt troubled dreams.
Thousands of miles of pavement sliding beneath his feet faster than he could comprehend, and he couldn't slow it down. The road was open and clear in his dream, but he knew there was something just up ahead. He had to stop before he got to it. But he couldn't. He couldnt' even slow down.
A voice from the TV woke him up before sunrise.
The picture was still scrambled, but the sound was coming through now.
It was saying;
"In the beginning there was the watery waste of the none," the speaker, a woman, spoke that last word with an odd twist.
"...the waters drew back and the earth was seperate from the waters. And on the earth there was a great winged bird. And when He took wing He stirred the waters as He passed. Thus the god Horus was born, and thus did the god Horus take up battle with the serpent who would swallow the world."
He listened numbly until the sun rose and the scrambled documentary ended, "...envisiaged not only the creation of the world, but the end of the world, as described in chapter 175 of the Book of The Dead thus: 'this earth will return to the Primevel Water Nun, to the endless flood as it was in the beginning. And in the end there will be no gods, no goddesses, nothing but the face of the waters...'."
He didn't turn the TV off when he left.
He didn't close the door behind him.
He just drove away.
