Gluttony

It came from the stars...

Or so we believe. In truth we didn’t see it coming, merely felt its arrival. It had slipped unknown, beneath the notice of everyone. It was as if it had appeared between the grasp of nothing and nowhere; no telescope, no satellite, no daydreaming child- no one knew, until the day of gluttony began.

A shadow crept across the moon, writhing and wriggling a silhouette of the oncoming Glutton. Its many bellies jiggled as if in the throes of a voracious laughter, a gyrating mass larger than mountains...

Are you listening?”

“...”

“Blake!”

“Wha!? Umm.”

“I said, Blake, are you listening to me?”

“We'll I...”

“Clearly not I see.”

Both teacher and student waited in the silent wake that trailed those words.

“Well what's even the point?”

“Excuse me?”

“Whats even the point! I've heard this damned story my entire life.”

“Young man, it is the story of our people!”

“Our people are dead!”

Again, that silence. Deeper now, bottomless, the words having swallowed them both whole. The teacher simply walked over to his student... And hugged him.

“They await the promised day.”

Blake pushed away ”and how many years will that take? How many decades? Will I even live to see it?”

The teacher let him go and moved over to a window in quiet contemplation of his young student’s anger. Through the porthole was the vast expanse of space. Moving listlessly into view was a home that neither of them had ever been to, Earth, perched amongst a sea of stars. The planet was torn between two sharp dividing colours, a vibrant crimson red and a mulled rich green. Pulsing back and forth between one another, a struggle across continents and below oceans “I... I do not know.”

“Generations of watchers, awaiting the promised day; hundreds of teachers having grown old and died in these very rooms.”

“I had my doubts when I was a student too”

“ doubts? I don't have doubts, I have regrets. I regret having to spend every day with you , I regret being stuck in these same 10 rooms , I regret that I'll never see the day our people return from the grave; I regret I was ever born.”

“ It is a privilege to be born!” The teacher yelled “it is a privilege that only a few hundred have had in the last 7000 years. That is the gift of being a watcher!”

Now Blake turned to the window, eyes seething with hatred. A burning spite deep in his core, not just to his teacher whose duty betrayed the love the two should share as near father and son; but to the two writhing masses on the planet below. The Glutton had taken the world inch by inch leaving barely enough time to react. And the Reclaimer, that green bastard child of humanity, had fought the Glutton to a standstill.

But most of all he hated what he was, a Watcher, one tasked with awaiting the promised day, when life could be released back onto the planet Earth... A day that Blake has long ago understood may never come at all.

The tension was thick and the air felt thin, neither one apparently wanting to speak next...until

“I...” Blake started

“I...” The Teacher interrupted. “I'm tired Blake... I think I'll go lie down.”

“Oh... I'm... I'm sorry.”

“Im sorry too. I'm sorry that you feel burdened to be alive”. With that the Teacher walked back to their room and laid down. Silently he wondered to himself, had all these troubles begun because he had given Blake a name?