Promethean: Chapter 7
Criticism
Follow these links to read: Front Matter & Ch. 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6,
Departing familiarity, upward from his marrow swam that something. His skin trembled. He closed his eyes and saw it there, thrashing in the waters within him. It was mad, for it had been waiting. Not angry, but psychotic and hungry with zeal, tasting its prey—him. Devourer of man’s spirit in the most frightful way: cannibalistic. For the leviathan, the most misrepresented and misunderstood monster, is that immense, formless everything; consumer of one, of many, of all. The great destroyer or creator, depending on the soul swallowed. The delicate dissolve, never seen again, pridefully achieving only the certainty of not dying a coward, for at least into its teeth they leapt. The enduring emerge, having been made ready through training and hardship. Having faith that they will be found worthy, humbly begging to be released. Which was he? He did not know. Both fates harried him. Did he have the courage to be eaten? Was he humble? His toe answered no.
Entering what seemed a forest, a prowling, taunting specter hissed, Return to me. It stalked, bony fingers clawing his garments, scratching skin beneath, less pain, more relief, reminders of carnality. Return to me. He stopped and felt its soft, warm swathing. He could crawl back to its ersatz tranquility, or he could painstakingly hobble forward inch by inch and mile by mile as the sun rose and set, trading places with the moon, both bodies watching, cheering his struggle day and night.
Return—
“No!” He yelled, marching on, singing a soldier’s song; one never heard previously, a melody that began as a hum that sired a chorus, then a verse; a ballad of gibberish, for he knew no words to convey fear, grit, doubt, and resolve all at once. Soon his hands and thighs were cymbals and drums, announcing victory. He continued to sing while beating his chest and thighs, driving the specter into the swaying, groaning trees, where it menaced from a distance, glaring behind waving branches.
But these were not woods of pine, oak, or poplar. These were people. The ones who could never leave and never return, trapped in the plains of purgatory within sight of prison and paradise, staked across the land between, scaring those daring to become. Along his periphery, on both sides of the path, jeered the jaded and cynical: those who had heard the whispered words and listened to the demon lying to him. “Stop now, bungling hack! Nothing ahead is achievable! Quit and be with comrades!”
“Friend, oh dear… It is you!” said one of the impaled. “It’s me, Jude.”
Looking left, he saw an old chum, a fellow safety officer he had not seen in years. They had patrolled together as new cadets, but Jude was declared dead not long after. He never knew why, and in the rat race, he was too busy to care; too obsessed with obtaining rank and status. They had just met, and though Jude was a nice, well-meaning, funny guy, he was not worth remembering. No one was or could be, at least for long, not when preoccupied with checking the boxes to qualify for a blue-ribbon neighborhood.
“Tell me what way to go,” he said, sickened, seeing fat rats lying at Jude’s feet.
A pole protruded from the man’s chest. His head hung low, and with little strength left, he spoke of his sorrow. “With the bright lights behind you, I am your long shadow. We were the same then as we are now. But as darkness has risen in you, you have arrived beside me. Be my neighbor, watch this spike now growing from the ground there—it is yours. Trust me, it is better to suffer one thing forever than infinite things all at once. Stay here. It is better than the life you’ve left behind and the one ahead. You’re between two possibilities, truly both the same. You will see your tail. It will seem the next best thing. But you will be the snake that preys on itself.”
“Who told you this? The one who put you there? Your error was fearing it less than the monster now dripping from you. What these gnawers’ bellies drag with once gnawed at you. Jude, we’re not the same. What’s in me, all the rats in the world could never eat, for it grows faster than their teeth. If I give up here, I’d be consumed by this thing in me for eternity.”
He turned and trod onward, battle ballad splitting his lungs in half, drowning out the fatalistic cries of those lusting to spectate him being spiked. They wailed as he sang, opining on every note, beat, and word, hushed confessions gurgling from their ragged throats. “Forgive us, please, we beg! In weakness, we turned away.” Sensing his success could rescue them, he advanced, giving a thumbs-up without another look. The specter watched from the thicket, having tended that orchard for eons, feasting on rats; seeing in him a will unmatched, the defeated demon pinched a tail and bit one in half.