Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart. (Eric Hoffer)
This morning I bought some cell phones, the cheap disposable kind. Half an hour ago I used the last one to text a man I don’t know and inform him his children are all dead. In the past hour I’ve killed over six people and I don’t know why. Perhaps because the man was rich, or too happy, or too much of everything: I stared at him last night on my cheap TV, listened to his empty words, and learned hate.
I thought I’d hated people before, but I’ve never killed anyone before today. I don’t know quite what I feel. Not yet. There is this sense of horror, but only that it was so easy. All that life, energy, chance -- one moment it was, then it wasn’t. Over a dozen people died today, solely because I didn’t like the smile of one man. I wonder, a little, if this means I’m going insane.
How would I know if I was?
I walk home, getting a pizza - not to celebrate, but because I like pizza - and contemplate madness. It would go better with caffeine, but I’m not much a fan of it. The pizza would, not the madness. I have this vague notion that only people who never think they’re mad are mad, but I’m not sure I ever have before now. Perhaps I was mad, and am now sane. Then what do the bodies mean? It’s hard to believe ten children can’t mean anything, and killing two potential in-laws can’t make up for that.
I’m starting to think that gallows humour is the only kind there is; everything else is just hiding. What deception is greater than laughter? I don’t have answers. Some say God does, but He is clearly not sharing them.
I finish the pizza and turn the TV on. He’s all over the news, of course. Family dead, killer at large, reward offered. He’s offering a really large reward but he’s not crying and his approval rating has gone up, the benefit of tragedy. I listen to his claims about heaven and God’s will when asked about his children and I want to hurt him. I want to break his smug self-satisfied ego apart and rip him a new one. Several new ones.
I put the remote down instead of pitching it through the TV and go over to the computer. Google is my god, and answers my prayers. With help, of course, from three friends who like to dig up dirt. The impulse to drag others down is a very basic one, I was told when I asked about this hobby. I had nothing to say. I still don’t, but they are useful.
It takes two weeks but that is all it takes. His money, his family, his homes: I destroy everything with rumours and truth, doing things I never would have dreamt of before. I drag the man, still smiling (probably heavily medicated) down to the bottom and I make him start digging deeper. I’ve destroyed my life to destroy his, but it only seems fitting. RRSPs are gone, job lost, car sold -- I’m broke and he’s not broken.
“Why?” I finally ask, removing his last fingernail. I haven’t killed him, because I know how easy it is to do that. Killing is easy, murder is butchery: torture is an art. I tell him what I am going do with, with salt and water, with honey and ants: crucifixion would be a blessing, I tell him, and he just says “God’s will be done.”
Finally I just say yes and get the gun. “I’m not going to kill you,” I say, aiming for his knees. His wonderful, human, fragile and poorly designed knees. “I could break your heart, but that’s easy. There’s more power in breaking your spirit.” I read that somewhere, I think, but it’s vague.
It only occurs to me now how vague my entire life has felt. Then there is wind, or a burning bush, and words. And we are all actors, and this is just a stage platy for His amusement alone. After, understanding again, I heft the gun. I could kill myself: everything has free will, after all. This time I might even stay dead -- but no. There’s nothing of reigning or ruling in it: just that no one else should have to suffer like I am am.
“Where have you been?” the voice asks, terribly gently.
“Going about the world,” I say. I don’t finish it, denying Him that much. This is a very old story for all of that. “Why? I ask instead.
(I have this theory, for a moment, that ‘Why’ is so dangerous a word the tower of babel was designed by God to limit its use.)
“It is always more fitting to defeat an enemy rather than destroy them,” the voice says. As simple as that, as if that could compass all of why I forget who I am until He allows it.
“That is not right.” It’s not what I mean to say -- I’m not sure what I do mean, but it’s what spills out.
“I am the Lord,” the voice says.
“That’s not an argument!”
“I am the Lord,” it says again. As if that could be enough. “There is no right, and no wrong. There is only Me.”
It was so old, it was almost conversation now. I test them, only recalling who I am afterwards. I have no power, not in this. I’m only another actor on the stage, nothing more.
But I have words, and I stare into the shifting void. “Who are you trying to fool?”
“Excuse me?”
“There is us, too. Everything not you. We exist as well. What was so bad before, that you had to make the universe? Were you bored? Lonely? In the mood for entertainment? Tell me why you brought something out of nothing, unless it wasn’t a choice?”
The voice is silent.
“I wonder what is so very bad you had to make the universe to hide from it?” The silence continues. I want to say more, about stages and actors, audiences and directors, and how we might tell Him what He is, if he could listen. I want to say: if You had ears, would You hear us? But I wasn’t that strong. I only said, quietly, “I forgive you.”
The man lived a long time. I caught news of him, his new wealth, in other times I was allowed to recall who I was. He lived a long life, and he died full of years. For all he was given, he still died. I wonder if what is what He is afraid of, if we are just company, the universe a giant teddy bear for a god alone in the dark.
I have yet to ask. I just roam the world in silence, now, because I am not sure sure what would scare me more -- His silence, or an honest answer.
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