The Greatest Ker Ever Fuffled

The prompt was simple: write about a kerfuffle. What came out was something I did not expect. I have spent a fair amount of time learning to live with the particular chaos of anxiety, the way it accumulates inward until the pressure demands release, and somewhere in that experience I found the Big Bang waiting.

It turns out the universe and a panic attack have more in common than you might think. Both begin with everything held too tightly for too long. Both end with something new. This one goes out with love and gratitude to the Turtles of Alchemy, whose prompt cracked something open.

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I have always contained multitudes. The whole of the universe, in fact. Everything that exists, existed, or will exist began within me. I never grasped the extent of my power, believing it was meant to be kept to myself. Instead of expanding as I grew, I contracted inward, accumulating layer after layer until I threatened to explode, holding my arms around me in a desperate embrace.

At some unknown tipping point, I could no longer restrain the mounting pressure and I burst forth, releasing all that lay inside me into the infinite void. My inner chaos unfurled, spiraling through space and time; the aspects of me continued outward and clashed relentlessly. Fragment by fragment, what had once been united separated and recombined, colliding in vast, billowing clouds.

The force of my rupture subsiding, the laws of nature began to take shape. From the turmoil, order emerged and a silent calm settled over creation. No longer a singular essence, the fibers of me extended into the deep darkness while gravity, ever the meddler, drew the scattered mists and twisted them upon each other. Slowly, the curling vapors coalesced until their own pressure caused them to erupt as I had once done.

From the darkness I once held, new fragments transformed themselves into beacons of light, ignited by the fire of creation and endlessly revolving, they illuminated the cosmos. The infinite cycle continued its expansion and contraction, perpetually in motion from the energy which had erupted from within me. Over millennia, gases and vapors became planets and moons, seeded with the potential for life. Some believe the process remains unfinished, that the relentless expansion will ultimately reverse itself. As disorder once yielded to order, it may someday return.

Still, despite my tumultuous beginning, all that exists today began with my great kerfuffle.