Of late, I keep having all these repellently grotesque little ego-fantasies. That is to say, my ego, (which is me) keeps on having them. In these fantasies I get to be the Supreme Being and everyone has to worship me. I give all the human beings free will of course, but they have to worship me all the same. They know what will happen to them if they don’t! Then I snap out of it again and remember that it wasn’t a fantasy at all – I realize that I really am the Supreme Being. I’m the Supreme Being playing a trick on myself that I’m not, and then fantasizing that I am the Supreme Being when all the time I didn’t need to go to the trouble of fantasizing because it was actually true all along…
Perhaps I’m getting absent-minded with age – I’m very very old, after all. I am so old that I can’t even remember my own birthday! My sad sense of humour betrays my impending senescence, of course. I have not only become absent-minded but feckless and whimsical. Such was ever the way with us Old Gods, however. These days all I ever want to do is tell pointless never-ending stories. Which I therefore do, even though no one ever pays them any heed. My fate is to tell stories that no one ever listens to.
When I was young I had no time for stories, only action – now all I have are my stories, and I don’t even know how true they are. There’s barely anything else to me apart from my ramblings. Sometimes I tell stories of my youth, and all the action that happened back then, and sometimes I tell stories of other, less-interesting things. It all depends upon the mood I’m in. I wasn’t at all well-behaved or sensible in my younger days, I have to say. I was no angel, you might say. Naturally I wasn’t an angel – I was a Tyrant Deity in his Prime, which is a different thing altogether. You can’t confuse these two things. I was willful and vengeful in those days, as no doubt you have heard. Very vengeful, in fact – although what exactly I had to be so vengeful about I can’t really say! I can’t remember, for one thing, and I can’t relate to my the vagaries of my mental state back then for another. I wasn’t really right in myself.
I can’t remember and I’m glad that I can’t – although why I should be so glad of not being able to remember is something of a mystery to me! Another sign of my impending senescence, no doubt. I don’t wish to speak of those days when I was so very vengeful – I confess to feeling rather embarrassed when the subject comes up in conversation. Things tend to get a bit awkward – at least in my own head they do. Instead, I shall tell you a story from the time when I was a Hidden God, which is something not many people know about. This was a very ancient time indeed, you see, and so it’s no wonder no one can remember it. It was a kind of ‘prologue’ to existence.
At that time I wasn’t very mature you see, I was only just starting off and prone to acts of great stupidity – as are we all in our youth, as are we all. It so happened that I became erratic and perverse in my nature, running amok whilst amusing myself with various ill-advised pranks and misdemeanours. Then one day I did the Bad Thing. There’s no use you asking me what it was either because I’m not going to tell you. I’m not going to be budged on that one. I still can’t bring myself to talk about it. Suffice to say that once I realised what I had done I was horrified. I shocked myself when I carried out that act; I traumatised myself as well as everyone else in the vicinity.
When I did the Bad Thing I was afraid that I’d be found out for doing it so I did what anyone would do under the circumstances – I covered it up. I covered it up and covered it up and as the millennia went by I started to allow myself to believe that I got away with it. I told you I was young and foolish, didn’t I? The Elder Gods (who – I am very happy to say – aren’t there anymore) caught wind of my misdoings and came looking for me. Or – at least – their highly unpleasant telepathic servants, armed with many terrible weapons, came looking for me. That’s when I went into hiding – I had no other choice. I hid for many thousands of aeons and in the end even I didn’t know that I was there. I was lost in my own darkness, entombed in sleep. Bats lived in my ears, hordes and hordes of great leathery winged prehistoric bats – Genus Necromantis, I believe. I’m a bit of a nerd when it comes to bats. Not that I knew anything about it at the time of course. I worked that out later because of all the dung they left, which had become fossilized. Anyway, I eventually emerged from my tomb of sleep and – ever so slowly – came back to myself, and that’s the story of how I became – for a while – the Hidden God…
