#ownfic

Countless nights pass me by in a breeze wherein I attempt to identify the contents of the hourglass. The process occurs naturally, in a state of calm and without much significant change on the horizon. Have a riddle. Help me figure it out:

Some of the particles are transparent. Underneath you can catch glimpses of obsidian, a spitting image of your own gut dyed black. On top there is a thin layer of glassy dust. No matter how much you shake the hourglass that is the formation the seeds of time inevitably fall back to, as if the glass was pawns on a chess board and the core artillery taking aim on my fingertips as we speak. Maybe there's a king on the inside, too.

What is it?

I turn the hourglass round and round but it remains the same. With a frown etched into my forehead I approach Mother and ask: “What's inside this thing that makes it so important?” Mother smiles and hands me a lockpick. The mischievous vixen! In my puerile fantasy where every door can be opened I will, of course, try to unlock the hourglass only to discover the pieces don't fit. “Why did you give me a lockpick, Mother? What's it do? What do I do with it?” She ignores me most of the time. Every now and then she scoops me up like a puppy, lets me nestle in her lap in anticipation of a hint, a password, anything, then – “It's not an hourglass, child.”

Eventually I concede and admit that my humble efforts just won't cut it if I aim to crack this particular shell. The next day at school I approach my friend Meri on tiptoes hoping she will see what I cannot. As we sit underneath a pine tree where someone had scribbled the letters ‘Y+T’ into the bark before either of us was born, she takes the hourglass from me and flips it carelessly in her hands. “Careful!” I squeak.

“See, there's your problem. Stop worrying about it all the time!”

“But it's one of a kind.”

“No, it's not. It is interesting though,” she nods, holding it up between her thumb and once finger. She knocks on the glass and shakes it, disturbing the inner peace of the particles. “Is that a conch shell?”

“Where?”

“Here, the dark thing in the middle. Maybe it's a conch shell with a pearl inside! Hey, you could get rich off of this. But since I found it I demand a 50% share!” she jokes before throwing the hourglass back to me and giggling as my arms shoot up to catch it before it shatters.

“I thought it was just a black bead. It's shiny but I don't think you can sell it for much.”

“I'm telling you, there's a pearl in there.”

“Mother says it's a simulacrum,” I say in Mother's wheezing accent at the unknown word. (Mother is eons, eons old.)

“Nobody ever knows what Mother means. You have to come up with your own interpretation.”

“I'm trying!” I yell and kick the dirt under my feet. Pine needles scatter about to escape certain death by crushing under the sole of my shoe.

Meri watches me without lifting a finger, keeping her gaze fixed on the object I'm clutching. “I miss the misery.”

“Huh?”

“We used to be so miserable in our own ways, remember? Back when we felt like outcasts and only had one another. Good times.”

“I'm not sure that's a good thing to be nosti... nosca... to miss,” I mumble under my breath but my fingers keep trying to claw a way inside my heirloom, thinking it’s not fair. It’s not fair that others get strings of beads or pictures or lockets with a clear message and I can’t even open my only gift. “I hate this fucking hourglass.”

“Language,” Meri shushes me. “You know, you would save yourself a lot of trouble if you just broke it right away. It’s not like it’s going to survive for long with you handling it the way you are, anyway.”

“Then I’ll never find out.”

I keep asking other people what they think is on the other side of the glass until I’ve gathered a fair share of opinions, but none of them are of much worth. Another friend tells me the black bits are miniature ants building a miniature colony where they spin straw into sparkly string. Father considers the idea that the black bits are really materialized absence of space filling up the respective half of the hourglass. A philosopher asks me whether the black bits have any conscious knowledge of existing and whether they do exist at all if they are oblivious to their having a physical form. He concludes that if they indeed exist, only the black bits have any chance of attaching an identity to their being in the world. I leave his office more bemused than I was before and wonder whether I am truly alive. I realize that I am because pain is the one reliable aspect of living that is extratemporal, that grounds me to this prison. The pain began when I failed to resolve the simulacrum – but if its meaning is hidden in time, then pain is all that surrounds it.

I wonder if I’ll find out the meaning in death.

“I hate this fucking hourglass!” I scream as tears roll freely down my cheeks. Meri isn’t in my room to berate me for my language; she has gone on a school trip to the mountains up north. I clench my fists, grab the hourglass and throw it against the wall.

There is a starburst. Particles of varying sizes coat the carpet. The shell mixes with the insides. The sound of hundreds of mirrors cracking shoots through my ears, only emphasized by the dull thud of the wooden lids rolling infinitely. Glass shards scatter across the floor, forming a neat handwriting I recognize as neither Mother’s nor Father’s nor Meri’s: ‘Now look what you’ve done.’ A galaxy with stardust foaming at the mouth all splattered at my feet. A nebula shines through where the black bits were.

It was just gunpowder.

***

An elephant gives his offspring the sex talk. The child is embarrassed; he has already witnessed his father and mother doing the do countless times, thank you very much. Why, he may have already impregnated a female himself! Or perhaps not. He's not quite sure. The father elephant tries to wipe the blush off his son's face with his snout. "Now, now, Junior, there is no need for modesty. We're all adults here."

White Fang talks dogfighting techniques with his mates in the kennel. He isn't sure whether it is wise to mention the blood splattering from a jugular or the crackle of vertebrae in the firm grip of a wolf's jaw, which sounds like a thousand needles piercing the surface of Lake Erie frozen over in the dead of Tolkienian winter. The dogs muffle his howls with their own singular cry: "Bark like a dog. We're all adults here." White Fang resumes telling his stories with the fervor of youth bristling in his eye as he holds on to his crutch and the others place bets on when he's going to die.

Captain Hook's crocodile is on the verge of tears. His downcast gaze has a pale shade of gray to it knowing he, the feared and exalted ruler of the high seas, the Triton of the lagoon, is about to make the level of the water rise just enough for corals to sink a little deeper into the sand. A clownfish swims up to him. "You're allowed to cry, good sir. No one amongst us will mock you. We're all adults here," he says, patting Triton on his scaly back.