We'll Try Again

Danny doesn't know how much more of this he can take. His body and mind are broken beyond belief, stretched and twisted and changed in ways he can't ignore. He feels as a million million stars are born, lighting his mind with pinpricks of fire and heat. He senses their deaths, too—the way those stars dimple his everything, slowly pressing against his skin like his sister's finger poking him, like sitting on a crochet hook left on the couch by his dad, like his mom's scalpel against his flesh—pushing into him until they break against him, or until he breaks with them, leaving heavy cold dark in their wake.

Hadn't he wanted this?

Only, he doesn't know what want is. How can he, when he has-is-was-will be everything?

Purple and blue and deep red churn their way into his awareness, and a binary star system creaks and groans. A purple-gloved hand made of time itself brushes against the center of his attention, and a galaxy shudders. The hand takes a moment to strum the galactic filament to which the galaxy belongs, the shudder rising to a resonant frequency as time gives voice to space.

"Clockwork...." Two galaxies crash into each other, swirling like red and green on the floor of the lab, star systems flung in broken sobs of chaos and destruction.

Time smiles, gently caressing the surface of a star, and it blasts into supernova.

"It's alright, Daniel." A star system full of life weeps and screams and mourns as it is slowly, inevitably stretched and twisted and pulled into a black hole.

"We'll try again."

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