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In the wastelands of stars, far away from the places where human concepts of time hold any meaning, I’m forced to reassess what infinity means. Slowly, it becomes me. The flow of waiting sinks into my bones, my ears, my mouth- my teeth rot from it, infecting gums with placid gump and bleeding strings. In the folds of my hair, clumps fall apart. I spend what currency I have detangling it apart again, carefully pushing it back to where it was before. It’s no use, I tell myself. God himself slowly watches my needs and laughs. Die of hunger, He tells me. See all the good it will do you.
I don’t die of hunger. Or lack of sleep, or air, or age. I’m forever, and immortal; the power floats up to my hair like oxygen doesn’t, maintaining my perfect sense of calamity. In the beginning, I begged Him to do away with me for good, and I interpreted His refusal as punishment, the landscapes of little lights I can’t stand to touch my own personal prison. One of length, not diminutiveness. One where even beauty didn’t dare try and compete with the scenery, not of drab bars and silver cagings.
It’s been a while since I last saw another human face, God not counting for all His peculiarities that make Him God. The spaceship. Crowded to the brim with fleeing breaths and maddening fingers, my eyeballs pushed from me as that day marched on into madness. An explosion. A crisis. The lights went out missing, and we looked every place which way and down to find them again to be met with nothing, only disappointment. I’m the last survivor. I watched them all slowly degrade to dust before my eyes, skeletons replacing human tendons from flesh from people who once talked to me as if they had done something to deserve it, not little thought to what would be stolen from them.
Space is large, it should go without saying. Too large for me to understand when I pushed it by at light speed, but now, I’m human once again, stripped of the technology that made me something else. God is punishing me, I’ve mentioned. It’s true. He probably will never let me back, but I dream out anyway, screaming till my lungs make no sound, coarse as a supernova, inhaling space dust that can’t possibly be there. Angels have crowded my vision. They chant a song I heard long ago, the lyrics mismatched and broken, memories mixing as I find myself again.
I live forever, listening to Angels sing. God addresses me, and refuses to give me back to the palace of my birth, Earth. I begin to suspect it is not what I believe I have reached. The beauty of the outside space has stripped me again, the ghastly halls of everything too little for neurons to consume. I’ve seen Heaven, not Hell. God has not forsaken me, it is me who has forsaken Him. Tears roll down my cheek in elation, sound reaching no ears as it travels on into the cosmos of tomorrow. Salvation at last.