When I launched Orpheus Lives! it was with the desire that Ezekiel David would one day write for it. He is, to my mind, among the finest short fiction writers and essayists around. Today I’m very proud to publish what I hope will be the first of many contributions. Many readers will be familiar with his work and I will give him no further introduction here. Those ignorant of him, suffice to say he will soon make himself known to you. I hope you enjoy. OL.
Do not think me fiction. I am as real as you. It is true I exist in your world as a series of words printed upon a page. But once I lived among you in the flesh. Now I am condemned to exist in another world for all eternity. And where the infinite is concerned all things imagined have and will come to pass. You think me fiction. Yet I often wonder whether your world is not in fact my imagining of a lost paradise. We imagine one another – you and I – and in that sense we have both glimpsed eternity.
What condemned me here? Who knows. A force, perhaps, stranger and older than the universe. How can I describe my world? Few words could. But let us say it is an infinite labyrinth. Some tunnels are so narrow one passes through only by the grace of time. Some tunnels go upwards, vertically, while others angle downwards into chasms, endlessly deep. Some tunnels are so vast they are better described as worlds unto themselves. Though one may travel forever, no two tunnels are ever the same.
So far as I understand my form is a long, fleshy cylinder. I know this because I have the power of touch. Yet I do not possess what you would call limbs. Nor can I see. I drag my bulk through the tunnels only with the greatest of efforts. Sensation brings me no pleasure. It is, rather, a source of agony. I have a mouth. Occasionally I must devour the earth to make progress. Sometimes, with my mouth, I cry out in pain. I have the power to hear. And when I hear my cries, I cry out all the louder.
Once, I thought I was alone here. I believed myself a god; there was no other in the world but I. And I burrowed deeper and deeper in search of yet deeper recesses where I might isolate myself. Until once I cried out and there came a moaning sound that belonged, I thought, to beings that wished to do me harm. Seldom did I hear them. Aeons passed between each chorus. Yet I feared and loathed these beings. I burrowed deeper into the labyrinth where I might escape them and exist completely unto myself.
But the deeper I burrowed, the greater my suffering. And the more my suffering grew, the more I sought my isolation. Though it is impossible to die here, one’s suffering can multiply infinitely. And though I did not wish to die, I became burdened with a suffering greater than the weight of all the universe. It was then, finally, I cried out, not in my misery, but to be relieved – if only momentarily – of my despair. To whom did I cry? It was, oddly, to those other beings. The very ones I wished to escape.
There came a faint and distant cry. Perhaps, I imagined, in reply. It was then I began to seek the others. I have sought them now for all eternity, and will do so for the eternity to come. I know the search is hopeless – for there is no hope here – yet search I must. If faith were possible, then this surely would be mine: a touch from one of those other beings would be infinitely greater than what you call salvation.
Ezekiel David is a writer who lives in Athens.