In the first minute, the yolk of infinity swallowed me whole: everything bathed in a primordial black, silent cacophonies reverberated against the vacuum, sightless eyes watching as the tendrils of time slithered around my ankles. A spider crawled up my body, spinning the silken threads of life around my neck as it climbed all the way to heaven. The pocket watch, into which my name had been etched, ticked away the seconds as everything around me came to be, ringing like the bells of a distant church at 11:54. There were only six minutes left. 

Birds were the first creature I experimented with. The first golem emerged with a slow crawl, crying. When it fell from the nest I had thrown together with the first sticks and stones, to my surprise, a sudden flap of wings rang through the silence. It was a gradual process, but eventually the creature learned to fly, even though I had not even programmed it to do so necessarily. The sight was beautiful, and stayed with me. 

With a flick of my finger, the Tower of Babylon stood tall, a looming colossus casting a great shadow over me, and with the next it bubbled into the deep sea. Every blink painted the world anew with the blood of the former, and the Hanging Gardens dissolved into the Library of Alexandria which crumbled into the ruins of the Ancient Agora; little Italian pizzerias, quiet monasteries in Tibet and the vast American wilderness swept away with the unstoppable tides. Wonders came and went, countless dreams cast into the great bonfire that must eventually fan out. Wanderlust was tiring. It was at 11:56 that I made the world into what it ought to be. 

The fourth minute was a life lived in between lives — all my debts settled, regrets undone and unspoken words spoken. Except for you. Four or five million times, I revisited the scene under the dew of the morning glade, consumed by the petrichor of the first rain. Looking at you, I'd ask you what it was that you thought made me ‘remarkable'. You never answered, or spoke at all. In your eyes all I could see was the void. So infatuated was I with your words that I had become who I am now, yet I had never paused to consider the meaning behind them. And now, even with existence at my fingertips, they remained ineffable. 

In my tyranny, cities would be flattened and the sirens of war would echo throughout. Like a domino of sand dunes drowning a mass of fireflies, lights went out. And like tiny phoenixes, they would flicker back to life from the rubble.  My screams tore through the fantastical fabric I had woven, rippling into the recesses of the void where no sound had penetrated before. Like little daggers, your sentiments bore into my skin and cut deeper than any blade my consciousness could manifest. Yet, like a zombie, I'd wake up in the glade the next morning and do it all over again. Before I knew it, it was 11:57. 

One night, as cold water splashed against my face, the furies came to visit me in the mirror. 

"You would do well to let go of the past," they said, three white-hooded ghosts burning into my soul. 

"And what is the past?"

"The coffee-stains of mortality. Portraits of a broken self never put together again. Lights along the side of an electric liner fizzling out as it crashes into the iceberg. Living up to the hell of other people."

"And what's here?"

"Everything you could ever want. Everything but hell."

"What if I want hell?"

"Why would you?"

"What if I want wings?"

The furies were gone. 

The slow ticks of the sixth minute hid behind the crescendo of crimson currents colliding with the bank of the Styx. At my feet, the shore was lined with strange obols and anachronisms, heirlooms of a trespassing age. Upon further inspection, I noticed a recurring item amidst the treasury — a bronze coin, which had the words ‘Let go' engraved on one end, and a burned visage of a carved figure on the other. The figure, I presumed, was myself, or maybe who I used to be. Instinctively, I put my hand on my neck. It was comforting to know that the threads were still there, if only barely. Picking one up from the black sand bed, I threw it into the water. In the distance, a small wooden boat was ferrying down, with a lone boatman as its passenger – Charon. 

Charon did not feel the need to communicate with me. The expected transaction, we both assumed, was obvious and it was just a matter of my serving up an offering. Yet, at the edge of the universe, mere inches from salvation, like an oak with roots older than time, I stood frozen, staring morosely at the horizon, waiting for something that even I could not begin to comprehend. Perhaps I was looking for some sort of guarantee that the decision I had made was the right one, but no such confirmations ever came or will come. Just like that, the sixth minute was gone.

Sneaking a furtive glance behind his decorative mask, with the seventh minute hanging over my head, it was then that I noticed that he had your eyes. I did not know what it meant, but I do not think he was you. Nevertheless, it was the final nail in the coffin: I knew that I had to know. Handing a coin from the sand to Charon (it was a different, gold one, empty and without inscription) I climbed onto his boat. With gentle tides lapping against the shore, we set off on our journey to somewhere, somehow. 

Soon, it became dark. Then, there was light. It was 12:00.