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The sun dragged across the sky with a chain around its ankle. Jacob had first noticed years ago, as he had been squinting up at the sky. It seemed broken or abused. He pitied it, that lack of power that came with carving a way that it had carved a million times over, that streak of yellow that resided behind it for only a second. Jacob couldn’t imagine being as stuck as the sun was.
The same birch trees were always complaining. They wobbled on loose feet, dug up by a power unbeknownst to them that must have been only a fleeting streak of life in all their years. Jacob pitied them too, just like he did the sun, because he was simply kind like that. He would have gone insane if he had to endure those shockwaves that they must have felt.
The dirt under Jacob’s feet coiled and wrapped around him, whispering in a plea for release. It was filled with ants, red and black and slipping through the cracks like naive answers. Jacob thought that the dirt must be tired of being labeled as soil, of producing something silly and taking in that decaying corpse that the mushrooms refused.
Jacob was watching when the first human was created. They weren’t named Adam, and they didn’t wear a shawl around them that acted like god. They weren’t man or woman, or anything beyond human. Only a few generations in and humanity got bored.
They asked the gods, not as deities but as fellow beings of existence, to give them more, and the gods, feeling the first emotion, gifted it to them because they were the ones to create it. Humans took it– splitting bread and dipped one half in water– and called it a blessing. Their thoughts began to roam, and with that fields were made and crops were grown.
Over the years, humans separated themselves from nature, though they had no idea why.
The first tragedy resulted in half the world slipping away, according to humanity. The second, Jacob blocked out. The third, the most he could do was stare into space as everything he knew shifted. He decided not to go over it.
For the first time in thousands of years, Jacob found himself in the present. He was where he always was, silent and still, unmoving out of the fear. He was exactly who he had been when he first lay his eyes on human, he had to believe that or else he would be something different.
In front of him was everything. A vision of what may come, what has been disproven, the ideas that swayed through winter season and celebration. He was aware of the individuality that had spread through civilization, and, mostly, he couldn’t take his eyes off the sights. He wondered how he hadn’t caught all of it if he had been watching all this time.
The stone slab he leaned on was cracked and faded out of reach sometimes. Jacob noticed the distance between him and everything else, and a primal urge to close the gap suddenly snapped into being. Gods weren’t supposed to be primal.
He slowly pulled himself up, adjusting his posture and briefly apologizing to the ground under him. He tapped the air in front of himself, making sure that his vision was trustworthy before taking a single step forwards.
The first thing Jacob learned about what he had deemed the new world was that colors had changed. He said green, pine needles and blades of grass poked against his skin as if to thank him, they said green and neon bulbs played trumpet over the soundlessly beautiful dark. It was an imbalance that must have been fate, because nothing else could explain the contrast of that new album. It was always midnight, but bright red was the most prominent color. It streaked across billboards, shimmied through cracks, shone like it wanted to replace the sun. Jacob was blinded every time even a strand of hair crossed his path.
The second thing he learned about was greed.
And oh how he hated greed.
It stood against everything he might’ve accomplished, the only thing he was good for. He couldn’t put it into words yet, but he did know that the way the cashier on the other side of the street looked at him was far too impatient for their dynamic. He would scream and cry like a little child, and humans would take videos to post to fictional plethoras of delusion. Sickness was haunting them, why did nobody take action? Jacob waited a few more moments to see any changes, but it was too late.
He sighed a sigh full of air and walked down a busy street. And as he moved, something held him from behind, like a misbehaving dog or a dog that misbehaved. Jacob shuttered.
Two realities shifted into each other as he minded a child running past, flower petals trailing behind them. He was dizzy, he knew he couldn’t do this for much longer, but going back might just trap him again. He knew that he couldn’t stop moving because when he laid down the floor always shattered beneath him. His pace quickened as he passed from town to town, barely noticing when nightlife turned to night-reform, as if the universe couldn’t take what it had created, which was probably funny in retrospect.
He moved onto a spot with a view, where the lights weren’t as dizzy and romance was some sort of rite of passage. He wondered if humans still held him in high regard, or if they really had forgotten about what they had done. Images flashed in his mind that he wished he could put down; go out back behind the shed and call them good enough and do it right there.
Without thinking, he dipped into a coffee shop that repeated each of the noble truths, all of which had merged years ago to make one claim: Everything's Better with Coffee. Foreign chatter forced its way through his head, making itself known as if that would make any difference. He awkwardly shuffled to the line, praying that the limited knowledge he had looked over was enough to get him a cup of coffee. He wasn’t even sure why he wanted it, he only knew that the barista seemed nice-ish (he had no real concept of kindness; what made him able to judge must have been unspeakable).
Before Jacob could have the thought to blink, nothing remained before him except for one smiling witness with blue hair. Language had changed, he quickly realized, as they began a conversation he barely registered. His serpent's tongue had been carved away to a new world snake, something not as perfect as he had hoped, but it worked. He figured that people would like him more if he smiled, then he figured that gods shouldn't care about what other people thought of them, then he figured it was too late anyways.
In two minutes flat, he'd been offered a job and a title. A new life in the new world, a new life, as if he had one of value before. He did think that it was nicer than the alternative, though.
Jacob pushed the opportunity as good luck, and almost laughed out loud of he wasn't busy saying a foreign word that seemed oddly familiar. He accepted, and past that was a blur.
When Jacob came to, he was exactly who he had been, and his artificial head was killing him. He pondered on many things, comfortably unaware of his surroundings and yet completely stuck to the spot. He wondered how so many feelings had come into existence, and if he was supposed to be where he currently was. He wondered if there was another god of him, some cosmic Cosmo that named itself after what it was told as well, and if something higher than it was but the atom that Jacob lacked.
Not too much had happened because Jacob was still there in that spot, and he decided at that point that it must count for something. He missed the view he used to have, like a blood cell missing the patches over the scarring. He was moving inwards rapidly, and nothing made sense anymore as his own insides –which weren't even real– became something more than what was needed. He imagined his mind as the core of everything and only wished that he could have a weighted blanket, because that was a man made invention that was true to its word.
Nothing was right and he was sick for thinking otherwise. Jacob couldn't think like a human could, he could only make one too many claims and get himself killed.
His hands shook.