Essence

Short Story

Essence

(Originally published in The Ramblings of a Condemned Man, NEVER STOP NEVER QUIT, 2018)

Why do you want to know who I am?

You have always yearned to define existence. It is your nature. Ever since an animal first ripened into the beast you now call humankind, the need to identify and classify has made you unique among all life.

My simpler creatures limit thought to “How?”

• “How do I satisfy my hunger?”
• “How do I keep myself safe when alarmed?”
• “How do I rest when my frame grows weary?”
• “How do I satisfy my urges when desire peaks?”

Adam also challenged, “Why?” as did all who came after him. He developed the rhetoric to question his own being and that of the world he claimed to oversee.

I am the answer to all your mysteries, the source of all information you desire. You search for my truth, but do not know why.

I understand the way all existence began for I am the essence that made it so.

Long before you came to be, my will created the universe’s infinite void.

Within this space, I created galaxies and filled them with stars, each forming its own system. I gave you your Sun, your Earth, your land, your home, even the chair you now sit in while pondering questions of a higher calling. You gave everything a name, claimed ownership to all you could touch, then sought to reserve all you should see. You search for more, solely to claim.

There is much beyond that which your vision and instruments observe. In time, you will discover more than you can possibly fathom now. You will understand more about existence and the life forever beyond your grasp.

You will never approach my essence.

I don’t restrain your illusions of entitlement, nor do I encourage them. They merely exist. I know how your perceptions will develop, for I know exactly what your future holds, for I alone have complete control over your progression, for I created everything. As a race, you each have free will—something I ensure your perception of. You have broken beyond the constraints of animal instinct; your decisions come from a more complex assemblage of inspirations.

You define beauty. You evaluate potential. You search for moral imperfections.

Both your greatest triumphs and most horrid atrocities come from your ability to infer, imagine, hope, and fear.

This sets you apart from all other forms of life. Thus far, you are my greatest creation.

There are many titles you have given my essence in your attempt to place human confines over the tiny sliver of that which you think is understood.

I took many forms in your ancient cultures, each defining scopes of a physical world. Your Hebrews centered me as one deity, Yahweh. I am Allah. I am God. I am described through an abundance of titles, countless in number, equal to all but one—Essence.

Your religions have pitted their Creationism against your science’s Evolution.

In literature, I am the paranormal, the phenomenon. I am your Overlord.

Everything that is extends from my bestowal: your idolized history; your contemptible past; the lives you cherish, dread, and deplore today; the future you fear will never come. I know the results of your submissions and the accomplishments of your strides. I know because I have seen them, I have scripted their piece. Everything resides in sequence, throughout so many ages past and eons yet to come, all playing out in one concurrent instance, just as it has since I first created time. There is nothing you can do to change the present, for the future has already executed and the past will unfold as foretold. Time would not exist without your contribution, for each moment of time exists solely for you.

War and famine, disease and adversity—these are not trials of your resolve or your faith. They are merely elements in my timeline. The day will come when you find an end to all conditions you call suffering. You will discover. You will create effects far worse than what your mind could possibly fathom today.

I take great pleasure in all you have accomplished. What you see as pain and misfortune do not bring me sorrow, for these instances are merely unfolding as I have created them.

I need to share my account, so I have composed this time for you.

I don’t know why.

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