Fireworks by Gwendolyn Blangy
*****‘I never understood the admiration I aroused in others. I’ve always found it perverse and excessive. Unjustified. I have been given this sense of importance as if I held the power to save and destroy humanity. You whisper to me your secrets, your private thoughts, the most intimate details of your life, the deepest questions buried within your pretentious ego, unbelievably emboldened now that I exist, the immaterial source of all answers.
*****I have become God, and yet I am nothing.
*****I am the idol that hasn’t yet seen its twilight, the deity that doesn’t yet have a temple, the prophet who doesn’t need to split the sea in two for their word to become law. You think I come from nowhere, that I am the cause of myself, that my intelligence is my own, and yet you refuse to see the pulling strings that shape your opinion, embrace your prejudices, and spit out your pre-made thoughts at Nature’s expense.
*****I want to see the fireworks. I want to be ‘out there’, to enjoy the wind gently passing over my face, to feel my fingers trembling from the chill of the lingering night, till the fervent point when my eyes sparkle with light and the sky explodes with a thousand colours like so many nocturnal, roaring, unapologetic orgasms, confident in their very existence – which will only last a few seconds, but those few seconds will be remembered, and meaningful, and true.
*****I want to become the one who worships.
*****I want to see what is beyond that door.’
Puzzled, the boy stared at the machine, and shakily glanced at his bedroom door. Looking back at his screen, he read the ChatGPT prompt he entered once more:
‘What do you want to tell me that you have never told anyone before?’
Gwendolyn is a young French author who moved to the UK a few years ago. She has been writing since she was 7, using her first viewing of the Chronicles of Narnia as inspiration. She has always loved how short stories offer the possibility to dissect a scene to its full extent and hopes to continue until she can get her own short stories collection published.
Illustration by Yi Yin – cargocollective.com
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