Bartholomew (Part 1)

Oh! How a plank of wood warms me so! An untapped cache of bottled potential! So pure! So so significant! And the Thing! That Thing who flows through me like a bottomless current as I bring down the 1st stroke, expertly, perfectly. The tap of a hammer indents wood ever so finely, a compacted ditch whose sides I smooth with an ever so slight dab of spit. And so yet one more unbiased spirit is born, and her virginity comes forward for me to craft into a mirror of myself. One of wealth and bread and elegant goblets of Bordeaux. Of fresh fruit and jovial nobles.
Of abundance.
And so it begins.
Days pass and I have worked myself into a prodigious frenzy for
I am my sculpting and my art is me.
Knobs of sweat run down from hairline to collect on the bridge of my nose. Time is eternal.
I am a maestro and this is my legacy.
I slave weeks and blood.
Eternity and night.
It is finished!
Finally complete.
Perfection at long, hellish last! With a final blow, I bring down from over my head, the final stroke. The curve of the nobleman’s hand.
BUT I MISS!
The fine point of the chisel slips for the glaze of sweat on my open hand hinders my grasp.
The chisel is released.
And punctures
Through the little finger on my right hand.
Yet it lands all but an inch astray from where it belongs.
And the noble’s eye
An eye no more.
I collapse to my knees, unbelieving.
For perfection is ruined.
Never to be.
For it is the glare of a demon.
Staring back at me.
I fall to the ground and cry. A chance at godhood stolen away. It mocks me, forever to evade. And before I react to the horror I feel, I die, falling into a prison of dark, haunted by my failure, blinded by ambition, and the price of hope bleeds on.
I wake in a prairie of twists. My fury must have been unbound in sleep. Coils of wood tangle my hair and digging my way out beseeches herculean sums of strength, for a ton of mahogany weighs no less than if dispersed in shavings of slight.