The Final Chalice

Morgan Sennhauser
Short Story
A story written to use as many different forms of the word cup that I could.
2001
Last revised: September 13, 2007

The Final Chalice

         Somewhere, incredibly remote, there is a man with a spotless white robe, standing in front of a sink, where he will remain standing for the next five thousand years, if all goes well.  The sink is full of perpetually steaming water, bubbly with soap.  On the left side of the sink there is a seemingly endlessly long counter, covered in an organized line of what looks to be drill bits, but turns out to be thousands of brushes, all of various sizes and bristle strength.  There is just one cup sitting on a small table on the other side of a sink, a simple clay goblet.
         The man starts by running his hands over the rim of the grail, wiping off the largest chunks of residual waste.  He then takes the Washcloth of Eternity, politely scrubbing the chalice with the looped fibers.  Folding the washcloth with eternal patience, he looks through the brushes, and pulls out a spiraling brush made of angel hair, tipped with a sponge of baby breath.  He uses this to gain access to a small crevice near the bottom of the stein, caused by too rash of heating in the kiln in which it was fired, two thousand and some years ago.  Seemingly content with the cleanliness of the orifice in the pannikin, the man sets the draught down to the side, and begins to drain the sink of its soapy water, now slightly tinged.  When the sink is empty, it mysteriously refills with clean water, and a tap appears, from with flows the holiest of holy liquids.  The man holds the mug under the flowing dew, and, with a set of brushes further down the line, slowly cleanses the Soap of Serenity off the cannikin and then, piece by piece, begins to disassemble the crockery, molecule by molecule, then atom by atom, then subatomic particle by subatomic particle, then quark by quark, and takes the smallest of the brushes, and begins to clean each face of the particles, slowly reassembling them into what is just a small piece of the largest world's most complex jigsaw puzzle.