Sarah unmancled her glass man and helped him up. “What would you like to do first, my love?”
Dagonet stared blankly forward—barely cognizant of anything that had happened. “B-b-br…”
Sarah glowered. “Would you like to make love first? Or go on a lovely walk?”
Dagonet stared forward blankly and said nothing.
“Ah, I see. You have not come into consciousness yet. Perhaps you need to be reminded you are conscious.” And Sarah kissed him aggressively—trying to wake him up.
Dagonet spluttered, “let’s go on a walk.”
Sarah shackled his hand to hers and they left the white room together. She nearly danced down the stairs in happiness in their perfectly clean, white home, as she threw the front door open and dragged Dagonet out the door with her.
It was a luscious green jungle next to a beach outside. The blue sea was as clear and reflective as glass—the sky was a shining, pristine sapphire, and the sand was as soft as a pillow.
“Come here,” Sarah said giddily to Dagonet, dragging him to the soft sand and lying down on it.
She yanked him down after her and he lay on top of her and made love to her in an utterly passionless way that was just as artificial as she was.
Dagonet stood up after that and he let Sarah drag him around their beautiful island in a barely conscious state.
__
Months passed, and all they did was explore the picturesque island and make love. There was nothing else to do. They had no need to eat, drink, or sleep.
And Dagonet, the quiet and pristine glass doll, did whatever Sarah asked him to. Whatever soul he had left was slipping away from him slowly but surely.
But, there was always something that kept him awake and conscious… The crack he had made in Sarah’s arm before.
Sarah was climbing the rocky face of a cliff on the little island one day, and Dagonet followed after her. When she made it to the top of the cliff, she lent a hand to Dagonet and helped him up as well.
But Sarah noticed a live thing at the top of the rocky cliff—a small ant. She glowered and turned to Dagonet with a frightening face. “Get me a rock,”
Dagonet searched the cliff until he found a rock. He looked at the ant, full of life, and began to remember something very important, but he still couldn’t remember fully what it was.
“Give me the rock!” Sarah demanded, her pretty face turning ugly.
And, upon seeing the crack in Sarah’s arm, he remembered everything.
He looked at her perfect, clear face and tossed the rock at her right eye.
Like lightning, a crack was formed in her skin in a zig-zag fashion. She stared furiously at Dagonet. Her gaze could frighten even the most brave of men and women.
Dagonet ignored her and looked into the distance and noticed a crack in the glassy sky through which he could see a desolate and dark country with a cloud hanging over it.
And life was breathed back into him and all the good and bad things that came with it.
The first were two of his core traits—humor and anxiety—and then the rest of who he was.
Dagonet could see again.
“I see through you now! Any reality is better than this empty paradise!” And Dagonet wrestled with her furiously. Being made of glass, neither of the two was stronger than the other.
Dagonet grabbed her by the shoulders and through force of will overcame her strength and pinned her to the ground.
He grabbed another rock—ready to smash her with it—but was stayed by her beautiful, but lifeless emerald eyes and suddenly felt nothing but pity for a doll who had no goals, no worries, no friends, and who had no other purpose than to be his temptress. She always knew her purpose and her future everytime time reset itself and yet she was no happier than he was. She was as empty as this paradise she had made for him.
Dagonet stood up, dropped the rock to the side, and said to her, “are you happy here, Sarah? Isn’t there anything else you love besides me?”
Sarah shook her head.
“Can you take me back to the country you hid from me? There are things for you there. Maybe you can find real love there and not this fake love that desire has foisted upon you. Dagonet suggested. “You know… we both just wanted to resist time. Desire has made a ripple in time that I just can’t get past… I wanted to spend my life with the woman I loved, and that desire ripped a hole in my duty to the point where I couldn’t complete it, and now I am stuck in this loop where I just can’t… I just can’t move on. God, I’m so afraid of the future. So afraid of what will happen if I succeed, and what I know will happen if I don’t.”
Sarah silently looked at him with a consternated frown and they were both quiet for a moment. And then she said, “you don’t understand just how lonely eternity is by yourself. Desire had finally gifted me to you like she promised, and now you want to leave me?”
“I know how lonely eternity is, Sarah… I know better than anyone. But time has bestowed this legend upon me, and I must complete it. Take me home. You can live there with happy human friends. You can watch over them forever.” Dagonet said with a grin.
Sarah looked at him intently. It was not her usual plastic, pretty face—pursed just right so that she could look appealing. This was a real face with tired cracks and a face twisted in an unconscious fashion. She said, “I’ll take you home.”
“Thank you, Sarah. It is time I faced my destiny.” Dagonet replied.
__
And Sarah grabbed his hand and ran across the water on their fake island. At some point, they crossed onto the real, filthy, and blackened water of the ugly country Dagonet had overlooked while on the cliff.
Should he let go of her hand, her magic would stop and he would fall into that ocean, and so he let her hold his hand until they arrived at the country with the dark sky.
The city they arrived at was a mess. Buildings were on their sides, there were humans killing each other in the streets, and everything smelled like Sulphur.
The glass man said to the glass woman, “you can go where you please; I have to find Brunhilde.”
Sarah didn’t have enough time to give an answer—he was gone before she could.
Brunhilde was a nurse at the hospital in this lifetime, and he headed there to meet her.
He sped through the streets where gunfire rang in his ears and bullets flew by his head. If he died, time would just reset back to medieval times. There was always comfort and discomfort in knowing that.
He turned right at an abandoned four-way intersection and ran along the sidewalk until he came upon a hospital with shattered windows. He ran inside and tried to find--among the nurses and doctors attending to the dozens of patients on stretchers--the voluptuous Brunhilde.
He smiled to himself. You can’t miss her with those tits.
And sure enough, he found the witch-nosed, ugly woman tending to a man with a missing leg. She turned to him when she saw him with a look of shock on her face. “Dagonet, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the midst of your trials and—”
He silenced her with a kiss. She kissed him back and wrapped her arms around him as tightly as she could muster.
She cackled when he took it too far as he often did in public and groped her breast. She backed away and said affectionately, “thank God you’re alive…”
Dagonet grinned ear-to-ear and took a moment to memorize every line of her face and then put his palm on her cheek as a budding frown overtook his smile. “God, you’re so beautiful.”
She shook her head. “Come on, no lies. I know you just like my breasts. No man could look at this nose and wart and genuinely say I was pretty.”
Dagonet had tears in his eyes as he replied and buried his head in her shoulder, “I like those too… But I fell in love with something intangible about you that not even time itself can touch…”
She sighed lovingly and kissed his cheek, which cooled her flesh lips.
“But Dagonet, why are you made of glass? What happened?” She wondered as she led him away from the stretchers of dying men and to the privacy of an empty office.
“Temptation, cowardice and exhaustion happened. I couldn’t stand to see death grip your neck one more time so I ran away with a woman made of glass because she promised me paradise instead of misery.” Dagonet explained.
“Death grip my neck…?” Brunhilde asked him. She grinned brightly—her face scrunching up in a smile—and wrapped her arms around him. “This is why you let time repeat over and over like you told me it did? Because you don’t want to see a future without me? How silly you have been! I will one day be ash the same as anybody else and you fixate on one life and one life only?”
Dagonet sighed and turned away. “No more of your cryptic, wise, witch sayings. Can’t you see what it does to me to see the woman I love die over and over again? And yet, anything is better than an unsure future without you in it. I… I haven’t been giving it my all when it comes to the final challenge because… Because I don’t want to see a future without you in it.”
She poked his nose playfully. “You’re no fun when you let your neuroticism overtake your humor. Can’t you see the ultimate challenge time has put before you? You must choose between me and your duty, and you choose wrong everytime. You have come to me to tell you what to do, but you know this has ever been your legend to fulfill.”
“I.. I want you to be apart of it.” Tears sprang from Dagonet’s glass eyes.
“And so I will be when your legend is told to future generations over and over again. How romantic a thing it is that you should reset time for me and me only over and over again… But I never asked you to. I am willing to die to let time and humanity continue: Are you?”
Dagonet looked at her longingly, but he gulped and nodded, inspired by her fearlessness. “For you, I will.”
“Tell me a joke, one last time.” Brunhilde asked.
Dagonet grinned and chuckled. “There once was a man who chose tits over humanity. But, they weren’t just tits, they were the softest, most comfortable tits in the world and they were always there for the man when his head was tired.”
Brunhilde laughed uproariously and gave him the kisses he needed to last for eternity.
__
Dagonet stood in the barren desert just outside of the city where wind blew the sand about aggressively around him and said to time, “I am ready now. I have conquered your third challenge, now give me the next.”
And everything stopped as it always did when he beckoned time in the holy desert.
The sound cut out. The wind stopped blowing. Heat and cold alike evaporated. From the sky, a bridge made of sparkling rainbow light shot down and landed before Dagonet’s feet.
He took a deep breath and ran up the bridge of light in silence.
What a horrifying moment in time it was—this horrifying world where time was ever stopped and Dagonet was alone.
He ran for minutes.
And he ran for more, until he came to the top of the bridge of light where he jumped atop a bed of clouds and the fourth trial after Sarah came to greet him.
The sky was so clear in these clouds that it was reflective. All was silent and clear as Dagonet waited for the fourth terror to emerge.
And, as it had done many times, Dagonet’s reflection stepped out from the glassy sky and stood before him. It was not made of glass as he was at the moment, it was made of flesh like a human. The reflective Dagonet asked himself, “you are prepared now?”
Dagonet nodded with a confident smile. He was silent for a moment before he asked, “answer me one question first. Why me? Why did time choose me to fulfill this destiny?”
“You know the answer.”
Dagonet thought about it, and his mind was as clear as his glass skin. “Because I have loved deeply, and it never went away. That is what time wants its message to humanity to be.”
The reflective Dagonet nodded, and with a snap of his finger, he brought Brunhilde to his side who was still stopped in time. He held out a knife and killed her swiftly. “Know that you killed her with your own hand, but you did it for humanity.”
Dagonet would never be unable to weep when she died. She was his everything.
The reflective Dagonet disappeared and the real one knelt at Brunhilde’s side and allowed himself a moment to hold her close and kiss her goodbye. He closed his teary glass eyes with a loving smile. “I’ll never stop loving you…”
And, as he held her in silence, everything around him began to be colored gray.
The final terror came for Dagonet. A clawed, black hand of death that enshrouded his surroundings in blackness and came closer and closer to him until he said aloud, “I am not afraid of the future any more. I do not wish to die, and will not die here another time. Brunhilde was willing to die for the future and so am I.”
And, as death reached out for him, he reached back and took its hand and he let it pull him into the future rather than push him into the past.
__
The future would never be clear and bright. Dagonet had found the courage to let time roll on, but he would always be afraid of the future.
He had made it past that block in time desire had fashioned for him, but the world he came back to was just as bleak as ever, and there was no Brunhilde to brighten it.
He remained a glass man, and he found the glass doll, Sarah, again, and the two became the best of friends as they made a pact to watch over humanity forever and spread Dagonet’s tale of love, humor, and anxiety.
Far, far into the future when everything was made of metal but for Dagonet who was ever made of glass, he looked up at the sky and thought about Brunhilde and his repeating lifetimes with a fierce longing to go back to a time he considered to be paradise.
“I suppose desire will ever be the shadow over my soul… But it will ever lose out to time and duty.”
His love for Brunhilde was as eternal as time, however, and would always be a beacon of hope for human generations far into the dark and unclear future.
You’ll become a legend with that act. Her voice ever echoed in his mind.
“And you did, too.” Dagonet said with a smile.
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