Work in Progress: Flirting With Disaster
First page
A shy creature, The Great Abyss did not like being stared at. No surprise, if you go into the abyss business, you’re probably not a people person. That’s why It took nearly two thousand years to start staring back as a way to show everyone else how rude they were being. Once It did most of the people standing on its precipice – without asking! – and looked into Its glorious depths quickly took the hint and went away.
It was justifiably proud of Its depths. Back at school the other students and the staff were so impressed with them that they’d held bake sales and car washed to raise money for hiring an assessor to come and give It an “official” measurement. While It did not break the record, which was currently held by a planet that had nearly split in half, It was in the top 10, a fact which certainly helped It get the position of Abyss. (The job was open because the now ex-Abyss had dyed itself blonde and moved to Maui to take up surfing after a mid-life crisis where It realized It wanted a much shallower life.)
One day The Abyss looked up to see if anyone was looking down, as was Its habit. At first all It saw were a couple of fairly immature poets who had the decency to know they were in over their heads and move along. Then a single eye, a fairly large one, protruded over the precipice and seemed to wink before, It presumed, scuttling away. Hard for It to be certain as the would-be winker, like all its visitors, was a long way up and, physics being what they are, backlit by an indistinct sun.
Truth be told It wasn’t sure if It wanted something to be making an eye at It. The Abyss had had a couple of dalliances in Its time which had not ended well. The most recent was with a Cretaceous-era Weltanschauung. Unfortunately, It had found the spirit’s incessant talk of the world being doomed quite tiresome, albeit entirely justified. Since then It had grown quite comfortable with being a single It of a certain age. It had come to enjoy spending dramatic, brooding nights alone, watching the gravitational waves come in, playing with the three strange quarks It had adopted as pets, and working on Its stamp collection. A very serious philatelic scholar, It had published a monograph on the cancellation inks of Edwardian England that, a century later, was still considered as the definitive work on the subject.
Despite all that It realized It wanted some flirtation. Just the thing to make Its shadows run quicker and put a little life into Its gloom. Which is why, when that eye appeared next and very clearly winked again, The Abyss did the very forward thing of winking back. At that, the eye leaned farther out over the precipice, revealing a mouth which made what was quite clearly a smile and then all went away. A respectable time later a messenger appeared on Its doorstep and delivered an envelope holding a calling card the lustrous color of pearl divers’ dreams. Printed in an ink blacker than doom, which was only available from the oldest and most respected kraken, was the name Krakatoa and an address in the most fashionable neighborhood of the Sunda Straits.
It tipped the messenger with the knowledge that hope is good for nothing except prolonging the torment of man, closed the door, and let out a happy giggle. It waited a few of the longer time measurements, long enough to raise the question of whether It would respond at all, then mailed a calling card of Its own, carved from black hole with a proper London fog for ink. On the back, a note indicating correspondence would be acceptable.