BackWords

We had to write a story backwards for English. I initially wrote about a debate tournament, but about halfway through there was this weird shift that I didn't like at all. So I split it into two stories. The debate one I don't like at all, really, but I handed it into English because hey, it fulfilled the assignment. This is the other part: the one I like much more. I handed into Wire. And so, without further ado...

Words

In the beginning, there were no words. Then slowly, groggily, the world woke up again, filling the universe with noise. Everyone was very determined to say things.

As time wore on, men discovered just how much better it was to ride a horse than drive a car. Around the country, each book went out of print as authors selfishly sucked it back into her own mind. Women, tired of being objectified, put on longer and longer skirts. Days became lengthier. Life spans became shorter. Not even words remained the same, except to say that they were still words.

The world grew into a simpler place.

A man came down from the sky and talked to people. They mostly liked him, but apparently not that much, because they put him in a tomb, and an angel rolled a stone over the cover. A few days later they must have felt bad, because they let him out and carried him to a hill where they raised him up for all to see and cheer for. Then slowly, they healed him. He walked backwards through the streets, and with ever step his load became lighter and easier to bear. They sucked up the spittle and undid the lashes and all the blood went back into his veins, where it belonged. They did it because as he shrunk into a child, smooth and innocent, they began to love him more and more.

His mother’s life was uneventful: a life of enough to eat, and freedom from pain. Eventually the baby disappeared, and the carpenter, and everyone grew less and less concerned about her holiness and virtue as time wore off. It just didn’t seem like that big a deal anymore. She lived in a small, happy village with her family, and died young.

The cherubim had been waiting patiently for thousands of years, and welcomed two young bodies back into the garden. Everybody cheered. To please them, Eve spat the apple whole again. And with the Great Spit complete, it was decided that the world was perfect and beautiful again, so there was no need for a garden. So God opened his Great Whale God-mouth and inhaled, the fields and the judges and the stars. There was no need for any of them anymore.

Then for a moment, there was a Word. Word, Word, Word – existing in the empty, acting as the all. And so in the end was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

But God had swallowed up the ocean, and the darkness, and the light, and so He swallowed up the Word too.

And away it went.