A Story: Day 45

[S] A story of a story (45,381 / 1,000,000)

A few more steps and the man’s toil would be over… for the day. He heaved against the great weight before him, the muscles in his legs and shoulders bulged with the effort. His back foot slid in the dirt before it caught, and he pushed the boulder a few more centimeters up the hill. It was by no means a massive hill, but the hill wasn’t really the problem – the boulder was. At least eight times the body weight of the man, hauling the gigantic rock up this hill every day was no easy task. Simple maybe, but not easy. Heaving the boulder over the crest of the hill, the man felt the immense weight ease as the boulder settled into a well-worn divot at the top of the hill… at last.

The man let out a great sigh to match his great task, and wiped his sweaty brow with a forearm. He leaned against the now at-rest boulder, and slid down it to sit. So strained were his muscles, he could feel blood rushing through them with each beat of his heart. In the distance, the first glimpse of sunrise poked out from behind the horizon. Between the man and the horizon stretched an eternity of mist, which cloaked the land around his hill. He was truly and utterly alone in this place, though he remembered not how he came here.

When the man had first found himself in this place, his daily toil had taken him the whole day. He would barely manage to heave the boulder to the top of the hill before the sun would hide away for the night, and he would collapse into a fitful sleep; only to find himself – and the boulder – at the bottom of the hill the next morning. He had of course tried abstaining from his task, but if the boulder was not at the top of the hill by sunset each day, his sleep became a living hell. The first night he had left the boulder alone, nightmarish visions came to him in his dreams. Crows tearing out his intestines, a field littered with burning corpses, and the face of a woman. The woman disturbed him most. A beautiful face that he recognized – loved even – but which looked upon him with eyes full of immense hatred. Her name he could not recall. Just as he could not recall his own name.

Attempting to leave this place proved an even worse fate. He had delved into the mists around his hill before, but had quickly become lost in the endless white ocean. Unknown voices whispered accusations at him while he groped blindly through the mists.

“Liar… Cheat!”, disembodied voices hissed curses in his ear. He would amble through the mists until fatigue took him, and he would wake up back at the base of his hill. He began to think the hill and the boulder weren’t so bad.

The man didn’t know for how long he had been here in this eternal place, and he wasn’t sure who – or what he was before. But he had chosen not to languish here. He would not give in to despair. After countless days pushing the boulder up the hill, his muscles grew and developed. Soon enough, it took him only half the day to complete his task. He spent the rest of those days lounging on the hill, wondering about the world, the mist, and himself. After more time, the man would reach the top of the hill by midmorning, tip the boulder back down the hill, and push it back up once more by midday. The man felt a sense of gratification at this; it was as if the task was no longer his duty, but something he chose to do of his own volition.

After thousands of days of performing his task (or was it thousands of millennia?), he would wake before dawn and have the boulder at the top of the hill by sunrise. Like today, he would rest his back against the cool stone of the boulder and meditate as the sun climbed into the red sky. While he sat, he allowed thoughts to flow through him, but he would not cling to them. Once the sun was high in the sky, the man would rise and stretch his muscles – a necessary step to keep his over-developed body limber.

There was a single tree at the top of the hill, which produced apples that he ate to sustain himself. Like his task, the repetitive same-ness of his sustenance had begun as a torture, but through the application of his own will, he had come to enjoy – even relish the simple pleasure of a juicy apple.

The man often wondered about the shape of the world, and if there were others like him in it. He knew of the woman who came in his dreams, and the voices in the mist. Surely there must be others out there; were they each shackled to a mist-shrouded hill, with their own boulder to push each day? Or was he alone in this endless expanse? A singular place for a singular man. But what made him special? The eyes of the woman flashed into his head when these thoughts arose. The hatred in them was not only seen, but felt as though it were a hot coal burning in his chest. Maybe he was in a singular place for a singularly wretched man.

These thoughts, like others, the man allowed to pass over and around him. He was like a boulder - no thoughts could tip or shake him. Only the strength of his own will could effect change here. He had learned that much, if nothing else, during his eternal toil. The warmth of the sun on his face pulled the man out of his thoughts, and he opened his eyes and stood. He surveyed the endless plains of mist stretching out to the horizon in every direction. The man raised his arms above his head in a great stretch, and he smiled.