Yaldabaoth. - SCP Foundation

God is a mother cradling her dying son in her arms.

The train of her dress flows outward effortlessly. Her impossibly long hair and translucent veil drape her body in shining white curls and delicate lace. Her fingers gently stroke her child’s nose and wipe sleep from his eyes.

She takes a deep breath. The breeze in the silver birch forest is cool and humid. The woods are thick outside the clearing; leaving is easy but entry is unfathomably elusive. Mist prickles her skin. The scent of petrichor and moss is cut only by that thick, copper metallic scent of blood. Warm liquid trickles down her cheek, cooling to bite her skin as it reaches the curve of her neck. The subtle thud of a heartbeat, not hers, is getting slower… and slower….

When the child's breathing finally stops her red lips part. She leans forward to tear her first bite of his flesh.

She does not cry. She does not feel relief. She is neither impatient nor hesitant. She sees no meaning in any of it.

She feels nothing.

No words can explain what I've seen but I can't stop myself from trying endlessly. No image captures her essence or the realm she resides within. The words do not exist. It aches to know something you cannot describe. Her image is burned into my mind and yet I cannot share her as intimately I have felt her.

She's so palpable to me.

She does not enter our plane but she’s never been a guest here. It’s hers. She grew it herself.

On sleepless nights I wandered through the woods. The danger was clear; the wolves that circle her clearing are hungry. But the quiet echo of her spoon against the porcelain bowl was a siren's song. I had to find her.

I'm not the first; I know this now.

But they don't know her like I do.

God keeps her head down. She sees nothing. She does not move. She refuses to not because she cannot but because does not need to. The Earth stewards itself. There’s no cruel or beautiful purpose to life. There’s no love or hate behind her creation.

We are livestock selecting ourselves for harvest. We bite and claw and thrash to survive. We eat each other lest we be eaten ourselves only to die anyway. We breed so that our children may one day be consumed just as we will.

We prepare ourselves as her meal. Her hands are unstained by blood or pomegranate, only her lips.

We do not die to feed her.

She feeds because we die.

It was never intended. It only is. Our existence is incidental. God is a child tasting the mold on the bread she left to rot in her backyard. She doesn't understand why she should stop.

She heard me stumbling weeks before I found the clearing. She never raised her head. She knows so much and yet so little.

She could swallow me whole and end my life before my time, but she doesn’t know she needs to.

She doesn’t know need at all. She’s never felt that sharp pang of hunger. Her life is nothing but sloth and gluttony. She’s dressed in luxurious purple silk satin she'll never see at a tea table with only one seat.

Everything she’s ever eaten has climbed down her throat itself.

There’s no soft sigh as she wishes for more. She doesn’t ponder how things could be different. She doesn't think about what's to come or reminisce about what has gone. She doesn’t know whether things are right or wrong. She doesn't even know they can be.

She turns her children over in her hands to admire the new and wonderful forms they take, then swallows them and opens her mouth again.

I grab God by the wrist and pull her away from her meal. Her silver spoon clatters into her bowl.

I beg, claw, thrash, and cry out to her so that she may hear my prayers and make it all stop. She can’t feel it as I dig into her flesh with my bloody blackened nails.

She turns to me with milky eyes; wide innocent eyes. She reaches forward, cups my cheek, and wipes my tears away with her thumb.

She brings her digit to her lips and tastes them too.

She strokes my hair as tenderly as my mother once did between gulps of my mother’s blood.

I can't make her understand. I can't make her stop. She will never understand me the way I alone do her. She comprehends the language but not the message.

I try and I try and I try to make her understand though I know she never will.

Then she's gone. It's all gone. The clearing. The tea table. The meal and all.

I hate her. I love her. She feels neither towards me.

I fight myself. I fight this reality. I scrape my knees running through the woods to find the clearing. I'm bitten and chased by wolves I cannot see. I call her name in hopes she will answer. I can't hear her spoon over the blood pounding in my ears. I need to touch her again. I need to keep trying to tell her.

But she's gone.

Oh God. All I am, all we will ever be, is yours.

She doesn't even know it.

What hurts the most is that I can not bring myself to blame her for what she has created. She doesn’t know the endless cycle of pain she birthed.

How could she?

How could she even know what pain is?

God is supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful. He is supposed to be full of love or hate. He should have a plan for this world. He should punish those who go against him, reward those who fall in line, or both. I don't know what he should want… but he has to want.

He has to want something.

I need her to want something.

But she doesn't.

She won’t wonder what made me do it. She won’t cry for me. She won’t even remember me.

But she will admire my soul on the plate before she takes the first bite.

It won't make her understand. I know it won't.

I just need her to acknowledge me again.