It came in the air one drowsy summer, and they breathed it in unawares, like dust or pollen. Past billowing, frowzy curtains it rode the evening breeze through open windows. It settled on the pews and pulpits, nestled on ornaments and cushions in elegant drawing rooms, slipped between the bedsheets with newlywed couples. It was drawn in on the slow, even breath of sleeping children; gulped down by gasping lovers in the dark; inhaled tenderly with the scent of a Valentine’s Day bouquet. Down into the lungs, it made its way in microscopic motes, insinuating itself into tissues and cells, sinews and synapses; wrapped itself in fat cells warm and safe; flowed dreamily through the blood.
Curled around the heart, it lay unsuspected, undetected, dormant - save for in the Chosen Few. In them the particles woke and provoked uneasy thoughts - a sense of standing on shifting sands in an unchartered world they no longer owned and controlled. A rainbow world of transformational love that dared to shout its name out loud and proud for all to hear.
The changes in them were almost imperceptible at first – a shift from doubt to certainty. They saw the world through new eyes, clear and bright: saw the sinners on the sidewalk, in cinemas and schools in their short skirts and skinny jeans; saw their pouting, painted lips, and how their pert bodies strutted with the sure confidence of youth and health and freedom and their right to choose.
And something inside them, in every fibre of their being, told them that something must be done. Deep the hearts of the Chosen Few, a feeling grew of fear and fervour. They looked in the mirror and saw a blessed saviour looking back through steely eyes.
Through the window, they saw their garden - unweeded, rank and gross in nature - and set about with fire to scorch the earth it grew on. Cleared the ground and sanctified it with righteous tears. Took the shears and secateurs and marched out to clear the creepers on the courthouse walls, the ivy on the halls of residence, the moss in the churchyard. They sought the root of the disease and found it in the clinics and the hospitals and grubbed it out - scrubbed and bleached until the wards and corridors shone like a heaven fit only for the angels.
They climbed the high tower last of all, up the steep and slippery stairway to the soaring chamber at the top, these chosen few, where they took the books from the shelves and read them with new eyes. Neatly they scored through the wisdom of the ages, updating and defacing. Sometimes they delicately tore an offending page from its anchoring spine and tossed it to the winds and watched it blow, and the people below looked up to wonder what it was that had passed so high above their heads.
And having writ, their moving fingers moved on to the clock on the wall, for there had been a time - they were sure - when the world had been better – more controlled, more regulated, more policed. When the ignorant masses had looked with reverence on the chosen few and worshipped them. Thanked them for their interventions and known their place. When they had ruled like kings. Like gods…
So they reached up higher still, pushed their blunt instruments into the clockwork of the universe, and caring nothing what they did to those below, they turned back time.
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