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Just a little bit further. Six steps, five, four and a half!
This is the place where I dropped it last time.
A quarter of a step and there is the mark I made … wait a moment … nine hundred and seventy-four attempts ago. I could even break the record in the last … maybe even the highest record ever, but who knows, I wasn’t making marks before.
Don’t stop. Steady pace, or else it would roll down again. DO NOT FALTER!
And here we are! The new record. Just a little while and I can make another mark. There… I wonder how far away the end is.
Look at it, I can push this boulder all the way UP!
Slowly. Carefully so my legs won’t slip like the last time… and many times before. Just keep calm and … heave-ho … and the last bit…
Sisyphus stopped. He was at the peak of an underground mountain, at the place, where he never stood before.
From the top, he could see not only Tartarus, the place where sinners suffered, but also eternal plains, where shadows of average people walked. He also caught a glimpse of the gates of Elysium, a paradise for the honorable and the chosen.
He will never make it there, even if he would be able to roll this boulder around the entire world. However, nothing was lost, after his task is done, he will be able to enter the Asphodel Meadows. Away from the cruel Tartarus to a better place! To endless plains, where the souls of people not good enough for paradise and not bad enough for hell walk. Toward eternal life in eternal boredom, without any purpose.
What a relief!
The boulder was at the tip, Sisyphus needed only to push one last time.
He made it.
Just walking around, without any higher goal, without any reason, just from here to there…
I have my marks here. The mountain is my challenge.
How many times from a thousand attempts can I make it up to the last third of the hill? Five tries to make it to the mark from the last time.
Punishment in the form of eternal frustration from a never-ending job? What do they have?
He looked around very carefully. Nobody could see him, not even Tantalus, desperately trying to reach the fruit.
“Oh damn it!” yelled Sisyphus. “Have you seen that? So close and that little stone bugger slipped again and rolled down. Well, here we go again.”
© 2013
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"Things just happen. What the hell."
Didaktylos*
* Terry Pratchett. Hogfather
Welcome to my world.
For the longest time I couldn’t think of right name for this place, so I left it without one. Amongst things you can find here are attempts of science fiction and fantasy stories, my collection of gods, bogeymen and monsters and also articles about things that had me interested, be it for a while or for years.
(There is more of this, sadly not in English but in Czech, on www.fext.cz)
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