The Dream of The Obelisk
A Short Short Story by Cory Kutschker
It was a queer night to be sure. I shudder for the memory of it. And yet I must hasten towards with this recounting. The previous months I recall studying ancient Egyptian architecture, of an inexcusable anomaly recently found of profound archaeological import outside of Thebes, an obelisk buried beneath a great dune. It's column was a black sheen of obsidian and was peaked by a shaped ruby. Many questions were raised of its origin. The excavation had excited and equally disturbed many. Several of the hired workers went mad and many fell into trances from extended contact with the structure's surface. Many questions were asked querying of not merely its obvious distance from any known volcanic regions but its flawless surface as though somehow chiseled into one vast column. Archaeologists balked at the translations, many skewing, but the exceptional ones coming upon the translations that caused a magnified interest and unease among the scholars that came to see it. It was of course to be transported for further archaeological research. My university and the local museum lay hold of the study rights first and so it was not long before I stood dwarfed before its height and breadth. I deftly brushed my hands along the reliefs of hieroglyphics that told of absurd rites. Worse things were near the top, telling of odd, grand internal chambers within and queer descriptions of what seemed descriptions of the mind and sleep. I continued sliding my fingers there along that smooth glassy surface there playing along the ridges and reaching the edge continuing along to the adjacent side, caressing and sliding, caressing and sliding, caressing and sliding and arousing my mind. My eyes imagining or not imagining hands upon hands all caressing, touching, feeling the obsidian monolith. Upon the exclamation, "Thomas!" by my colleague, I broke from a stupor, as though from a creeping trance. All that excused him from interruption was of little significance, mere attention to the hours of the museum. I arranged for private study later that evening.
So there in those starlight hours, I set around several lamps illuminating the black engravings. My studies had no longer started than I engrossed my mind upon the satin touch of its glass. There my hands explored and caressed and my eyes set in to the surface eternally reflecting and there began traveling over hills, roads, lakes and ocean there unto placid heaves of dunes under a maroon sky and stood before that hideous obelisk piercing into the sky, standing as a lone, dark tower maddening me, engulfing me, swallowing me. There in the bowels accursed under heaven, a cavernous cubed chamber held a crude machine composed of equally black steel cogs and wheels shimmering under unseen rays all clicking and ticking and grinding against each other in rude and wretched undulations. And under the maddening din, thereupon the wall a set of dials and faces akin to clocks recording years, months, days, hours, minutes and infinitesimal measurements there all hands flicking around the centres in flitting synchronous movements. Over the machine arose a murmur as though echoing from ages immemorial grew into a voluminous chant in a forgotten tongue translating to my mind as though acknowledging my deficiency. There in unison all these voices chanted day and night all exclaiming: Man is God! And in those unknown minutes a dread arose thick and coarse, causing unruly anxiety expanding in my chest, an exhausting ghastly expectation of a doom cataclysmic and awful in its tenor, an expectation of judgement. I was, in a moment transported out into the midst of the air there looking down upon great heaving masses of crowds all chanting and clapping in rhythms all chanting day and night as a great lapse of time went before. The last event of that disturbed nightmare was a great horn being sounded of a deep dinning vocalization. And all up the black walls of that awful column opened slats pouring out a tar spraying onto the masses and from the interior came a roar and then a blast of flame from all sides there igniting the masses in a licking and dancing lake of flame upon a wailing and screaming population eternally writhing and burning.
Upon waking, with the sunlight streaming into the observation room, I recorded the last of the inscriptions on the obelisk. I published my findings in the inter-varsity journal of archaeology and sat alone in my room reflecting upon the current great pride in humanity and thinking upon that awful chamber with its gears, cogs and dials. And still that awful machine, pervading my thoughts, now counts, ticking towards the end.
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