The world ended yesterday. God must have remade the earth while we slept for it was impossible for anything to have survived the storm. Recreated, the city was badly made. The were hardly any trees standing and most of the buildings were broken. Timothy, the crazy man, said that this was Earth's reaction for the way we were badly treating it. He said there were too many dirty factories and too many oil carridges. But I am skeptic. I know it was God, punishing us for our filthy habits, for trying to imitate his creations in our mecanical way: cinemaskopes and photography and trying to create life. But why then did God leave my laboratory intact? It was I, after all, who was trying to create the most perfect flower. The flower beautiful enough for my bride's bouquet - splendid as her perfect blue eyes. I knew this would happen, the punishment, but I believed in forgiveness, for it was soulfully for love.
Pergaps I was right all along. Perhaps He is more angry with some other inventor in the land.
I decided to search everywhere for some source of evilness desguised as science. I knew of most the other alchemist of the town. Damien did his best to turn iron into gold, but the best he got was melted iron. He made his melted iron into utensils of all sorts and sold them to people who couldn't. I guess he really did manage to turn it into gold. Nevertheless, he continues to try his original endeavor. I don't believe God would be angry with a merchant. Tristan was strugglind against Death. He did what he could to discover imortality. The most he got was making a frog stir after it was already cold. God would never destroy all of us because of such failure. Tulip, who besides his name was truely a man, spent the most of his days trying to decifer old indian parchments. No one knew whether he is accomplishing his deed or not, I knew I must begin searching at Tulip.
Reaching his study room, I felt he had something to hide.
"You have survived the storm, I see," I said to him, walking through the wreck of his house.
"Yes," he answered me, stashing his papers away into the open drawers of his old wooden desk.
"What are you doing here, Andrew?" he asked me, on a manner that was not very polite.
"I think the Lord is punishing us," I said, recovering myself of his previous assault.
"What can he possibly be punishing us for, you fool?" he spat coarsely.
"For creating," I said, defending my theory. "Only the Lord can create life and modify it."
"It was only a storm," he said, now more quietly. "There is no rath of god in the weather."
"Is that what the indians tell you?" I was violent now. I was certain of being right. I must prove myself to this liar.
"The indians tell me to create. They say there is no god. Only man, women and nature. They say we are part of nature, that we are nothing above it."
"No God!" I must have screamed, he made me so angry. "How can you say there is no God? Are you mad?!"
He chuckled lightly, the kind of laugh that absolutely does not fit this scenario. He smiled at my shock and said, softly:
"Come, I will show you what god has not done."
He moved his desk revealing a trap door that led to the basement. It smelled strongly of formaldehyde even before we took the stairs. Tulip lit a candle and gave it to me. He lit another one for himself and bid me down the steps. The stench of dead bodies only grew stronger, as did my fear of finding out what indeed had caused the storm.
As we walked down, the yellow light of the candel revealed tanks of water containing some form of dead animal. I couldn't make out exactly what it was. Upon reaching the bottommost step, I saw the worst.
It was a bed, simply, with a boy lying on it. He was no older than twelve. At least it looked like a boy, but there was a huge cut with stiches on it where his sex should have been. And then I realised with horror what the things in the tanks were.
"Why are you castrating such young boys?" I asked furiously, unable to accept any answer.
"This in not a boy. She was never a boy, she was only born with the body of a boy, but she is really a girl."
I was startelled. This was the least possible reply I could expect. I could say nothing.
"You see? Your god made this child wrong. I must fix her."
I knew there was nothing wrong with his body. If there was anything to fix, it was his mind. Wasn't psicology such a great art to cure these things? The ridiculous suggestion made me even more angry.
"How dare you! How dare you change what God created! People cannot choose if they want to be man or woman, that is chosen for them and must not change! God has a plan for each of us in our own sex!"
"God doesn't exist," he answered quietly. "And people have the right to choose."
No, I thought, they didn't.
I knew God wanted me to destroy this man. I wandered how many other young boys had been sacrificed by this man.
It felt like rain again when I left the house. The open sky smelled moist and I could almost feel the first drop. It would clean me from the formoldehyde I had thrown Tulip and his horrid sexless creature into. I knew God would never punish me for punishing a heretic.