I always find it quite interesting to learn where a story comes from; what circumstance brought it into existence. "What Is Your Pleasure?" and its origin is not particularly too interesting. I was inspired from another fellow's story and his comments for his plot. He wanted to write about something that was truly uncomfortable and disturbing to himself. His story was about God, and like most stories of that nature, that will most likely do it if you want disturbing. However, that gave me the idea for this cool little story.
Spoiler Alert If you haven't read What Is Your Pleasure take a moment before continuing. I don't want you to ruin the fun. It is really short and you might like it.
When I was a boy, my family was one of those good'ole fire and brimstone, "Jesus is coming back any day now" Christians. They used to scare the shit out of us with tales of the end times, the devil, and the antichrist. One, in particular, stands out. We were shown a movie called, "A Thief In the Night" about the mark of the Beast. So that made me think, why would people put something on their body that is so strongly associated with evil. There had to be some deception. Wouldn't it be more disturbing for people, who were confident in their salvation, that they had already taken the mark and didn't even know it?
Food for thought, huh?
What I would really like to do is go over how I came up with the riddles and meant in my non-rhyming head. As you can tell, I am far from a poet, but I took my best shot. It should be obvious that the answer to each riddle is either the number 6 or 666. Here was what was going through my head for each.
- I am one of three siblings, born from an exile,(Three "6" 's, told by someone named John while exiled on the island of Patmos about 90 years after the death of Christ)
- We had no mother or father, but we have one son.(The Antichrist)
- When spoken aloud,
- My name echoes three times proud.(Three 6's)
- Live your life and times that by two, (There are three stages of living: Birth life-Death. Three times two is 6)
- You’ll see my name all too soon.
- It is the beginning of time and the end of space,(Infinity)
- "From all to nothing, eyes on an eternal face.(the infinity symbol looks like two eyes)
- Do it again and break it in half,(Two infinity symbols and if you broke in half, just right, longways, it would be four number 6's)
- "Line it up and see my laugh.(Put them in a row)
- Take one piece and toss it away,(four minus one is three number 6's)
- Now three of us in front of you lay.
- My name has no letters,
- No sound of mere words.(it's a number, not a word)
- It's a name of a King,
- The one you have heard.
- This fiery King,
- His kingdom did burn,
- While a violin he played and his people did mourn.
- (Many believe the number 666 symbolizes the Roman emperor Nero, who is known to have played his violin as Rome burned to the ground)
I won't go over the last one, I think its pretty obvious.
So that's a little background on this little story. In the end, I got an awesome character out of "6", one that was fun to write.