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Sands Denial
by Michael S. Collins

Sycophants Sycophants the lot of them. I have no time for them.

Time flows softly in the wind. It brushes over my face and my arms. I held my arms up to touch time, and it burned. It burned a hole into my very soul and I saw nothing. Nothing but the bleak vast emptiness of aeons, carried on without any diversions in their eternity. All the realms of insanity invoked me, all the systems of regret, and soon I was within one extreme of denial.

Denial. Denial. A river in Egypt, you might say. Swift silken soft sands stuck sneakily around my shoes, grabbing at my toes, sucking away my laces, threatening to engulf me. Sphinx stood standing in the distance, beckoning closer. The might of the Pharaohs fell apart at the seams; all around me was the dying of the light. From a point in time, I was only one person, alone in the middle of the Desert. The wind howled past my ears. My ears crumbled into dust, the rest of my features followed. Only my eyes were left and they stared into the dark sky, as two larger set eyes appeared in that night sky and looked back at me. And they smiled, and I waited for the mouth to appear alongside those eyes, but it never did.

It never did, I remained where I was. Listening to the Sycophants. All of them.

“I am very sorry to see what has happened here.” Said the first one.

“It was a tragedy to be sure.” Said the other.

“We expected so much of you,” said the third.

Blaspheming. Exalting. I heard the words but they were only words, only elements of sound carried on the breeze. What care I for those words? Those precious indecisions of air that make a man. Not by his actions do men deal with legacies, but through their words that follow those legacies. Why else should Great Men with big sticks become legends in their own mind? The staff would agree.

Agreement is a good thing. I see that. Only if they agree with me. Otherwise, what is the point? So, as the Sycophants listen out for my next words, my mind floats back to the Desert.

In addition, I let that sand drag me to eternity's end, instead of listening to another word. It is better that way.