Commitment - Predatory Ethics: Book II (4 page)

Boundless regret creased Quentin’s eyes, yet he shared none of it out of his mouth. Instead, he continued with his earlier assertions. “I am ready for duty, sir.”

“Isn’t the past year enough time to have spent on this? It really isn’t a difficult choice to make my friend. I thought, given enough time for contemplation you would make the right choice and not force my hand, but I see you still need more time.” He turned to go.

“Wait.” Quentin rushed to the door and looked earnestly at Bernhardt. “You’ve always been my closest ally. Why won’t you believe me? What must you see to let me out of here?”

Without turning around the Templar Grand Master responded in a graveled voice. It was impossible to tell whether it was emotion or a severe timbre to punctuate his words that bounced off the stone walls. “You say whatever I want to hear, Quentin. I look at your face, in your eyes, and know you don’t mean any of those words. I have very little time left my boy; it is a luxury that is in short supply. You have another week. I can no longer come and judge for myself if you’ve come around, and I won’t trust it to anyone else. One more week and you’ll leave here on your own two feet or your body will be carried out.”

The finality of the words did nothing to dissuade Quentin’s resolve to fight on. He knew his course was right because he had never wavered. Yet he didn’t recognize Bernhardt anymore. He was no longer the Grand Master; he was something else—an evolution that made this once noble man into a cunning and dangerous animal. Quentin was relieved to hear his time in this cell would soon be over. One way or another.

Rule

Time: November 1
^st
, 1973. Danvers State Hospital, Danvers, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Do you have faith?

Do you hope?

Do you wish?

Do you believe?

I don’t. I know.

I haven’t been told. I’ve seen. I’ve lived. Boy how I’ve lived. All I wanted was to watch my shows, but that just wasn’t meant to be.

I’m the AntiXos and Xos. Not the skinny guy who hangs about Xian necks. I’m the genuine article: the living Messiah. I’m dream, vision, and nightmare, and the Rapture’s been preempted.

I’m the guy they talk about.

Who are they anyway? I’ve never met them. The
they
,
them
that everybody quotes and say
they
say, as it is written, blah, blah, blah.

I’m the Messiah for good and evil. I’m in a nice padded room, a whisker’s edge away from being alone. It started as a single voice in my head but has since become a string of opinions. It’s never more than one and always just above a whisper. The variety of topics raging, unbidden through my head defies logic, from philosophy to television, music, and religion.

Ethics is first topic and is given thought enough to see our polite, modern centuries are governed by Xianity’s ethics. Do Onto Others As You Would Have Them Do Onto You is the Golden Rule, the ideal ethic. This standard or rule we use, as the compass in western civilization, is a lie.

Of what I’ve seen in my life, we are not the world of our courteous ideal. This ideal is for entertainment only, and just a distraction. We live by predatory ethics: Do Onto Others Because You Can. I’ve been done onto and am having a difficult time in coming to terms with it. In my current state I’m literally blaming myself for my father’s damnation.

Kostadino Paleologos wasn’t my real or biological father. He didn’t so much adopt as kidnap me for life, yet he did so for good reasons. He did it to give me time. He did it to let me chose between a life more ordinary and Biblical Revelation. This didn’t go over well with my real father. He sent out all manner of creatures and unspeakable monstrosities to get me back. Kosta was too smart for them and gave me more than I could ever hope for: a childhood, and a chance for a fruitful life. We avoided their frantic searches for more than ten years until they found us and made Kosta pay. Among the pain and death of a battlefield, he was possessed and then condemned by my true biblical father, Satan. Kosta was now doubtless enduring worse than torture and I blamed myself. This guilt and grief skews and splits me, my personality, and I hate me for it.

I’ve tried reasoning with me, but I won’t believe it. I call me a liar and tell myself the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and I’m right. If he never knew me, maybe Kosta would’ve died a better death or even lived longer than he did. He tried rewriting destiny, and that was the thing I condemned me for the most, rewriting destiny. Why did he do it? What made him think he could oppose prophecy, especially Revelation? These Xians take
EVERYTHING
so seriously.

If I had just lived my life without doing anything different, it wouldn’t have turned out this way. I agreed that Kosta wouldn’t have had a special place reserved for him in Hell, tortured for eternity by Satan himself.

Daddy issues, wow.

I’m having a hard time reaching me. My patience is being tested and in the doing is getting stronger. I keep trying to convince myself to forgive me for all that I’ve done. I may be making progress when I see that I am he, we are we, and we are all together, with apologies to Lennon and McCartney.

Months before this day, I was distracted by a new Bond flick, with a new 007. The title song resonated with our present condition and I/me hummed it often, even singing the words with a bitterness I don’t remember ever reading about in any Bronte, Shakespeare, or Harlequin romance.

“When you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live, and in this ever-changing world in which we live in make you give in and cry: say live and let die!”
Paul and his Wings still were one of my favorites.

I tell me I killed him and reply I loved him. I’m blaming myself and every emotion is doubled.

God, am I losing it?!

It seems like a question, but it’s actually a statement of fact. Most days since that dark day in 1972 force us to wallow in self-pity and self-revulsion.

Well, me-pity and me-revulsion.

At night or when sleep comes, I confront and try to comfort myself and plead my case. I think I’m wearing me down, but I’m starting to avoid sleep. This was a problem until sleep deprivation made me hallucinate. Then I was able to reach me in my waking consciousness.

In June of last year, I got an apartment in Vancouver and abandoned the shack on Digby Island. I buried Kosta and left the rest of the bodies to rot. I never heard anything about them on the news so I guess each organization cleaned up their respective messes.

Anyway who cares? At night, I watched television while in the day I watched movies. When I exhausted all choices in the theaters I read, and more than ever, was grateful for the distractions. Books didn’t hold my interest that much until the epic The Godfather came out in March of 1972. I saw it after my black summer and totally lost myself in it.

I thank Puzo, Coppola, and Evans for this engrossing epic film. If it hadn’t been for The Godfather I would’ve obsessed over how horribly my life had gone. The only person I ever knew died horribly before my eyes, and I could’ve saved him.

There were other distractions. The Moody Blues began concept rock, and the ever-ready stories of the ex-Beatles still make the news. Paul and Linda McCartney got busted for pot possession in Sweden of all places, and the following month John and Yoko Ono appeared on the Jerry Lewis Telethon.

Wow.

The Jerry Lewis Telethon? John Lennon on the Jerry Lewis telethon?

The man had lost all his balls or his marbles. He was one of the greatest songwriters of all time and was backing this screeching banshee on the nutty professor’s telethon?

Oh wow, thank you, Ono, this was a great distraction. It kept me guessing about my own sanity for months. It was compounded with a vinyl release by the happy couple in late March 1973, followed by the harpy being granted permanent residence in the U.S.A.

The Ono show kept right on rolling with the bomb that they dropped early in April. They decided to form their own country called Nutopia with no laws and no borders. Its national anthem was silence.

Motherfuck.

Its national anthem was silence?

You mean the silence they heard when everybody kept looking at each other to ask if they’re kidding right? Nutopia the country with only two citizens because in this case the emperor not only has no clothes on but is a complete, fucking screeching lunatic!

A country with no laws or borders and no sense! Grow the fuck up people! This is the real world not a la-la land where gumdrops and pink fucking flowers dance around your bloated heads! There’s pain and suffering in each waking hour for most of the less privileged masses out there.

John and Yoko Ono!

Fuck, I had so much respect for this guy and now he turned into this self-righteous, self-important bitch’s puppet! Did he actually believe that bullshit? It was welcome to be taken by such idiocy and forget my own trials and tribulations.

Due to my rebellion against the forces of evil; that’s funny, forces of evil. What am I? A comic book? I wasn’t allowed to live in peace. Every few days I would run across a devotee who venerated the AntiXos, the Beast of Revelation, and son of Satan. There were many who worshiped my father of their free will, and those who were possessed, and hostages of fiends who still professed love for me despite my not seeing eye to eye with Daddy Evil. These unfortunates stared at me with the darkest despair behind faces writhing inside hellish captors. There were many who craved the power I rejected, opportunists who wanted to capitalize on the rift between father and son. They wanted to usurp Satan’s power in Hell even as he desired the adoration His Weakling Younger Brother had risen to on earth. Titles of Savior, Messiah, and Redeemer were still given up to me and I only walked away.

Redeemer?

What am I a coke bottle?

Luckily, the extent of my irritation at this occasional bother was no more than a mental fart, or else I would stay irritated. Some say it’s already too late, but I think most of my irritants are momentary and are gone with the obscenities that I use to pepper my thoughts and vocabulary.

A few of the supplicants who showed up at my door I was rid off by just flat out punching them in the face. It worked surprisingly well, and the look of complete shock on the first was worth repeating. He had been the fourth pilgrim that day blathering his love and swore to follow me to Hell and back. I had had enough for that day and before I knew it, I clocked him square in the face. It hadn’t been a hard punch, more of a dismissive shove with my fist, but do actions ever speak louder than words?

Yes, sir.

The black-dressed geek just covered his bleeding nose and ran, crying like a schoolgirl. The nose burst like a blood blister all over the face. It was simply awesome. This puke just wasn’t taking no for an answer. I repeatedly verbally warned him, but he thought I was kidding. The punch proved my point, and he went home to some other geek past time. Lord of the Rings or comic books in his parent’s basement.

I was surprised at the variety of people who freely sought me out. How did they find out about me? How did they know? The answer came from one of the possessed unfortunates.

His name was Xar-eel. He was a ninth-circle devil, urbane and very much a modern fiend. He liked being on Earth and had little interest in returning to Hell. It wasn’t that he disliked his birthplace, but he found Earth much more exciting and full of promise. There he was a third son to a Hell-lord and didn’t have much of a future. He had joined the Crusade on earth that was begun for the gathering Storm.

Crusade?

Storm?

He used these terms with an intimacy that confused me. It was the first I heard either. The Storm was what brought him to earth. Those born in Hell were crossing over and staying, filling the ranks of their faithful. The cattle they once expected to hand over earth were now in need of persuasion. They could no longer count on Revelation. No longer count on the conflict between Good and Evil everyone once waited for.

They did? Everybody? I would repeat in disbelief.

This exasperated him. I wasn’t trying to be funny or flippant, but as far as I had seen and heard he was the only one referring to the Storm.

Ooo, scary.

Come on!

You’ve got to do better than that!

What about this Storm, well, what is it?

Will we see thunder and lightning and literal meteorological clues to its severity?

He said it began the moment I wasn’t born where fate and Revelation had decreed. Without my participation, fiends like Xar-eel would not get anything of the spoils from the prophesied End of the World. Without me, there would be no Biblical Tribulations. So they were here to do whatever it took to change my mind or take the earth by Storm.

I thanked him and said then there was no conflict. I would not be following any plan save the one in TV Guide. He flew into a rage and promised to change my mind. When he returned, he told me he understood my preoccupation with entertainment. It was the entire race’s preoccupation. Everywhere you looked people shook of the day’s troubles and watched television. Conversation wasn’t even a pastime unless it was about television, movies, or music. People met and exchanged observances about their favorite entertainment.

It was a pity, he often lamented, because in Hell human lives were their entertainment. There was a never-ending supply of sinners who dropped from above. They were sport to anyone who wanted. There was never any shortage and entertainment was plentiful. In Hell, there was no make-believe.

“So why was he here?” I asked. Why the Storm?

He responded the choice souls were taken by the higher demons. There was no way to move ahead if you were born to a lower level. Lands, titles, property, and position only went to the eldest, leaving Xar-eel and many others adrift and looking for something more out of his life. He wasn’t going to be content with fifth-, fourth-, or third-rate souls any longer. He wanted more.

“Ambition? Naked, raw ambition, desire,” I blurted out. “Is that it? You’re just plain greedy for what you don’t have?” Despite his abhorrent background, Xar-eel was an interesting guy. I really couldn’t fault his pedigree because mine was infinitely worse. My ancestry made his look positively righteous.

We had begun meeting and talking at coffee shops and diners. Our conversations wound around many topics, but the Storm and its Crusade kept coming around. Xar-eel continued his point.

“Why would it be so hard to understand wanting to improve your lot?” he asked.

One time, we left the coffee shop and were in an abandoned nineteenth-century warehouse. Xar-eel was driving his point home, explaining why he had come to earth to make a better life for himself. He continued that desire and ambition made the world go around. They made reality. I stopped listening an instant later because what I saw couldn’t be real. It staggered my senses.

He had been making intriguing points, and some I had never contemplated. Hell was just like Earth, but everybody had a purpose. They lived to punish the sinners who fell to them. His point would’ve made a bigger impression, if I didn’t see the tribute he had had prepared.

Any description could not compare to looking at it in the flesh.

Oh so much flesh. A mind bending, unrelenting variety of flesh, and I couldn’t look away.

There was a posed massacre waiting my approval. Xar-eel twirled in glee and ended in a deep bow, muttering prayers for my pleasure beneath his breath. I don’t know if I said anything. I only remember that a part of me broke off, took control, and pushed the rest dumbstruck back, deep and out of consciousness.