Non-smutty short story: The Counter

 

THE COUNTER

I try always to work from first light to last, and I expect I would work through the night if I did not fear that the darkness and my need for rest would make me lose my place and I would never know.  A lunch break – such decadence!  The thought gives me a perverse excitement.  Because when I begin again each morning, of course I must actually begin again; the tide has come and gone, the breeze has mixed the grains around, and really nothing is at it was the night before.

If I stole away for lunch on a still day, though; if I stole away and turned my back to the beach; if I stole away and managed not to tell It; and if that should be the day when at the end my counting is done – my blood is pounding!  For what if, on that day, a tiny breeze, an unnoticeable breeze, were to steal up from the sea and lift just a few grains from the counted side to the uncounted, setting my tally off?  Would Creation then be off balance for all eternity?  And those little men that It talks about – would my miscounting put them off, cause them to have ten toes instead of twelve, or affect the number of hairs on their heads?  Perhaps their hair would not last all the days of their lives . . .

I never asked for this job.  When the first volunteers were called, I chose to remain a formless entity, and they got the best tasks – painting the sky, creating mathematical principles, deciding how long after the Beginning television should be invented.  When the next volunteers were called, I still hung back, and they were given interesting things also, though not so nice to my fancy.  But at last It sought me out, and explained about the promises It would give and the metaphors It would use, and asked me to count the grains of sand on the beach.

“But this is intolerable!” I replied.  “I shall never get them counted in the space of a day.  It will delay the Beginning indefinitely.”

“Practice,” It said.

So each day at first light I set out at the far end of the beach, and each day I come a little closer to the near end, counting, counting, counting.  And I know that within this millennium I will complete my task.  But as I come closer I feel the resentment building, that all this is for those men, Its favored, while I, who have done all this, have been promised nothing.  I told It once that I felt this way, and It laughed, and said Its friend had placed those thoughts within me, and I would get used to them.  It should have taken me seriously.