The Laughter of God

The first time

It was a black day, when it first happened. Dark, heavy thunderclouds, pregnant with the promise of rain, rolled across the sky, blotting out the sun. Lightening flashed, followed by the dull roar of thunder, and a moment later, the first raindrops began to fall.

I sought shelter in the doorway of a bookshop, standing beside a woman, with lank, greasy hair. She reached inside the pocket of her oversized, battered leather jacket, and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. She was polite enough to offer me one, but when I declined, she shrugged, and lit a cigarette. The smoke rose from her mouth, from the glowing cigarette end, and hung in the air for a moment. In that moment, it seemed to me, the smoke took on the semblance of a form - a grinning horned sprite, with red eyes. The sprite opened his mouth, to reveal a flickering, snake-like tongue, and rows of pointed, sharp teeth. He began to laugh- a horrible, mad sound.

The sound of terror, the sound of chaos.

How can I describe the sound? It was the sound of horns blaring, sirens wailing, children laughing and dogs barking. The sound of the universe tearing.

I shivered, trembling, my palms slick with sweat, my heart beating hard in my chest.

The woman next to me, the one who was smoking, tugged at my sleeve. "You okay?" She asked, a little concerned. "You look like you're coming down with a fever." The wind rose, as she spoke, blowing away the mad, grinning face of smoke.

I shook my head, stunned. She turned away, and took another long puff on her cigarette. I watched, mesmerized, as she exhaled, waiting for the smoke to transform into another strange, animated vision. But nothing happened this time, the smoke remained smoke, ascending in a slow, sleepy spiral towards the heavens.

The next time

I was sitting at a coffee shop, alone. In the table in front of mine, a man waited, watching the clock. Minutes passed, he grew more agitated. He pulled out a cellphone, flipped it open, and scrolled down for a number. His finger hovered above the green call button, and as the seconds ticked by, his indecision mounted. Finally, he flipped his phone close, and laid it on the table, in front of him, watching the LCD screen.

Nothing happened, no one called. He pulled his phone towards him, and repeated the same ritual over the next fifteen minutes, innumerable times. The last time, he stared glumly at the glowing LCD screen, before pocketing the phone. He moved to rise, but just as he did - a woman strode into the coffee shop, breezing past the waiters and the other customers. The man's forlorn face broke into a smile. She
reached him, and pecked him on the cheek. They sat down, and he reached across the table, to hold her hands, as he whispered to her.

A look of confidence spread across her face. She looked like a cat, with a rat in her grasp, and as she smiled, at her lover, her tongue flicked across her lips, a serpentine, flickering tongue.

My coffee came. I read my book, drank my coffee. When I finally raised my head to summon the waitress, the couple in the table in front of me had left. The waitress came, took down my order, and removed my coffee cup.

There was stain, where the cup had been - a faint, wet ring on the table cloth. Even as I watched, the stain shifted and changed - it was now a face, a grinning, horned face. A smile writhed across the face, and lips opened. Laughter sounded - a sound so loud that it blasted my eardrums. I raised my hands to my ears, to block out the sound. I stumbled across my chair, in an effort to escape the grinning face, the horrible laughter. I shut my eyes.

Moments later, I felt a pair of soft hands on my shoulder. I turned around, and looked up into the waitress' face. She murmured something soothing, and grasping my hands, led me away. As I turned, I saw the table had been overturned, a plate had splintered into pieces on the ground, a chair had been toppled.

Was this the beginning of madness?

The next day

I took the day off from work, and stayed at home, watching clouds sweep over the sky. It was a bright day, the sky was blue, and the clouds looked soft and fleecy, like sheepskin.

A solitary crow flew overhead, giant winds spanning the breadth of the cloud, and darkness descended, as he flew past the sun. I shuddered, suddenly cold, and wrapped my arms around me. A moment later, warm sunlight streamed down again. I smiled, and turned my head, as a black shape flickered at the corner of my eye.

The crow sat on my window sill, watching me.

I was paralyzed by fear, because there was intelligence and menace in his fierce, bright eyes. I was suddenly aware of his sharp beak, of it's capacity to inflict damage. I could imagine, that sharp beak, diving into my soft skin, bright red blood dripping.

But the crow simply opened his beak, and a violent noise filled the air. It was the sound of manic laughter - the sound of chaos and horror, fear.

Was this what the Gods sounded like? What language was this?

I screamed the crow to stop, to shut up. But he cawed, even more fiercely, and I closed my eyes and tumbled into darkness. But even there, in the darkness behind my eyes, the laugh continued to sound.

An eternity passed.

When I opened my eyes, my hands were covered in blood. There was a bloody mess of black feathers on my lap, and there were feathers in my hair, on my hands. Here and there, were sharp, incisive cuts across my hands.

But there was no crow.

What had happened?

Sometime Later

I sat at my desk, in my office. Colourless, blank walls rose about me, and I was confronted with a blinking white screen on my computer. Letters danced before my eyes, I rubbed my face, and the letters and numbers settled back into sentences and phrases.

What was I supposed to be doing?

I frowned, shook my head. Grabbing my mug, I headed for the coffee machine. A pair of lovers - a secretary from Supplies and an accountant from the Fourth Floor hovered by the coffee machine, faces wreathed in smiles, giggling. Their laughter stopped, as I walked into the tiny cabin. The silence was tense, and the accountant left first, hands in his pockets. The secretary left a moment later, after directing a fierce, intense look at me. There was hatred in her eyes. Why?

I returned to my narrow cubicle, and my blinking computer screen. Moments later, a telephone rang. I started, and turned to my right. There was a bright red telephone on the right side of my desk. It was a strange thing - an old-fashioned telephone, the kind with a rotating dial.

I stared at this foreign object. I had never seen it on my table before.

It rang again, insistent. The noise was deafening.

Slowly, I reached for the phone, and picked up the handset.

"Hello?" I ventured, cautiously.

There was silence for a brief instant, and then there was the sound of that same, fiendish, black laughter. It flooded my ears, and paralyzed my brain. And even as it did, the letters and numbers on my computer screen rearranged themselves - into the black form of a grinning, laughing, horned face.

The sight of that face, the sound of that laughter.

I screamed, trying to shut out, blank out the laugher with my scream, but to no avail. I shut my eyes, stoppered my ears, plunged sharpened pencils into my ears, to pierce my eardrums, to stop the sound.

The blackness came, finally, soothing and peaceful.

When I awoke

I was in a white room. There were white walls and white ceilings and white floors - whiteness spreading into infinity. There was no one else here, just me. At first, I didn't mind it, because there seemed no way that the face and the sound could follow me here.

But I was wrong.

Now, I shut my eyes, because even my shadow betrays me, and shapes into that grinning face, with that horrible mouth, and the terrible, earth-shattering laugh.

But I can not shut my eyes forever. And there is nothing here with which I can pierce my eyes, gouge out my eyeballs.

When I open my eyes, the face is in front of me, as large as the entire wall - it's mouth huge and growing. The face spreads and grows, and now it is the size of the entire room, and the mouth is before me, longer and taller than me. The mouth opens, and I see a red, wet tongue, and rows of sharp, pointed teeth, the size of trees. The walls dissolve, and then there is only the face, as big as a mountain, before me.

The tongue slides out of the parted lips, and wraps it's long, sinuous length around me.

I hear the laughter of the Gods, for one, last time.