With silver hair matted with dried blood, a figure emerged from the snow-swept alley, shivering and wincing in pain. It was dark, cold, and God had the taste of copper in his mouth. He grimaced as he touched a broken rib, recalling the otherworldly music of angelic choirs, the glimmer of endless streets of gold, the radiance of a mighty throne ...
A blast of autumn wind suddenly brought the Almighty back to reality, and with it came the clamour of marching feet, shouting, muffled gunshots and ... singing? He could not make out the words, but it sounded like Russian. The cacophony resounded through the streets, growing louder and louder - even louder than a choir of heavenly hosts. God covered his ears and gritted his teeth. Their echoing voices sounded to him like the end of the world.
A ragged crowd surged around a street-corner, a hungry tide of women, soldiers, workers and children, rifles at the ready and crimson banners raised high. Their eyes shone with a singular purpose, and with voices raised they proclaimed that a new epoch was at hand. God began to tremble as he felt the weight of mortality, of actuality, of history began to envelop him. Standing in the middle of the street, shivering in tattered white robes, the Lord of Heaven was reduced to a frail spectre. The crowd approached resolutely – it appeared as though they would swallow him whole. He closed his eyes and wished for the end.
The wish did not materialize, and the crowd parted around him, uninterested. The masses were resolutely transfixed on something beyond his frail form; a white palace made of marble, gleaming bright and luciferian, an absurdity rising in stark contrast with the crumbling apartments and reeking squalor in its periphery.
The jubilant crowd pressed in, and before he realized what was happening, the frail divinity was swept up into a parade of the oppressed, his nostrils filling with the stench of sweat and vomit and petrol as they convened upon the white palace like a swarm of ants. It wasn't until somebody handed him a crimson banner when God remembered everything. The fear was gone, and in its place a glowing fury erupted as he began to recall the persecutions of the saints long observed from his heavenly throne. Slaves crucified in their thousands along Roman roads ... Peasants crushed under the hooves of imperial crusaders ... Writhing masses of emaciated children in dirty streets, begging for coins - arms and legs shorn off for profit in dark satanic mills.
As the once impenetrable gates before the palace collapsed beneath the crowd, God found himself shouting slogans along with his new comrades, cheering as the red flag was raised over the Winter Palace, as heaven itself was turned upside-down.
Into the early hours of the morning, it was said that God could be found wandering the halls, a crumpled cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth, utterly amazed by what was now in motion.
A new world was being born.
transfigurations 