And am I born to die?
To lay this body down?
And must my trembling spirit fly
Into a world unknown?
A land of deepest shade,
unpierced by human thought,
The dreary regions of the dead,
Where all things are forgot?Soon as from earth I go,
What will become of me?— Charles Wesley, 1763
End of Endings — 2403
Once upon a time there was–
"A king?" my little readers will immediately say.
No, children, you are mistaken. Once upon a time, there was a woman. She was not a fine woman, not a prize to adorn your arm or to set beside you at the head of a grand table, but a simple woman — the kind we pass on the street and imagine some plain home life for. She has a house, one might think. There are floors and walls and windows, there are tables and chairs and sofas and beds. There is a shower and a claw-footed bathtub. There is a creaky step — the eighth — that she always swears she will fix.
We must imagine such a woman happy. We must imagine that she has friends and that she goes and drinks okay wine or maybe strange cocktails with them at the most absurd bars. We must imagine that she comes home, wobbling slightly with each step, with some other simple woman on her arm. We must imagine them sharing their kisses, being happy together.
We must imagine these things because they are not true.
I do not know how it happened, but one cloudy day, she was asking after her friend most pure and then her mind was turned all in on itself, was wrapped and folded three times, turned, and then wrapped and folded thrice more. Some malicious baker kneaded and kneaded and kneaded, and when next she woke up, sixteen hours and twenty three minutes later, her mind remained in some unknown, integral way tied up into knots.
But that was three hundred years ago.