“I'm am writing
this as a final testament before my execution is carried out. I've
spent every hour of captivity appealing my case, claiming innocence,
fighting the system. I even resisted sleep tonight, frothing with
turmoil until I raged myself into a delirious sleep.
I
woke up with the dream still vivid and as fresh as first snowfall.
It's so fascinating that not even God with all of heaven understands
it. My fingers tingle, and my teeth chatter just thinking about the
mountain sized canvas appropriate to paint this picture. Now I accept
that right or wrong, I shall be executed, and that’s the way it
ought to be. Now I plead for justice, but not for me. I beseech
Robert Johnson, the outlaw who escaped a life of crime, only to have
it chase him and take him to the grave. He is the only one who knows
what I feel, knows why I had this dream, and with him guiding my
writing hand, maybe I can do justice to the majesty of this dream.
I entered
the dream by awaking to the meowing of the most demanding cat. When I
lifted from the mattress, I found no cat, yet it's call echoed
through my cell. Everything had changed. Crumbling bricks defined the
walls. Straw carpeted the cold, stone floor. With no window, my only
light came from a dangling bulb illuminating a noxious antique color.
I stood up, and saw a furless sphinx rubbing against the bars,
calling for me. They too had changed. I took hold of the bars, the
peeling rust piercing my hands as I tried the cell door. To my
euphoric surprise, the door slid open with a grinding screech. The
cat meowed, and whipped its tail as it turned away to tell me to
follow, and I did.
Darkness
flooded the cell block, but each cell casts a light against the
catwalk. Row after row of imprisoned men and women that stretched for
what felt like a mile. I looked up, and down. Stacks of light rising
until they looked like stars. The magnitude sucked the air from my
lungs. There were more cells in this prison than cars in New York
City! If I stopped to study the inmates for too long, the cat would
hiss at me and claw at my feet until I followed it again. Yet I
couldn't help myself. Most people didn't concern me. These people
anyone would place in prison. A gangster beating a shop owner, a cop
extorting bribes, a con artist swindling old ladies. A professional
assassin. All kinds of crimes, from murder to burglary, the kind of
people I showered with the past fifteen years. What hooked my
attention was history's worst. I saw Elizabeth Bathory, Saddam
Hussien, Talat Asha, Vlad the Impaler, Joseph Stalin, Maximillion
Robespierre, Josef Mengele, and many others. I asked whoever would
listen, I’m no role model, but am I really worse than these
people? Then the inhabitants I saw were people whose
transgression I couldn't determine. They received the most
dilapidated cells with leaky ceilings and infested with rats, and
spiders. Children playing with toys, old men playing chess, young
girls talking on the phone, frustrated writers trying to get their
work just right. I said to the cat, I'm worse than these people,
why are they here?
The
cat led to the end of the cell block. A rickety elevator lowered us
to the ground floor. Dark, and cold, the cat's patter led me to a
table with a bowl and a book. The feline sat on the table and pawed
at the book. I opened and read. A history of Cambodia from 1956-1979.
I read the entire thing. It began with the North Vietnamese invading
the landlocked the country. The soldiers performed unspeakable
atrocities. One girl they killed by inserting chopsticks into each
ear, and hammering them inwards. They took baby boys away at gun
point and trained them to be soldiers. They starved villages by
confiscating the rice harvest, and took young girls as slaves. The
Americans tried to stop them by being the “better” people. They
delivered food and medical aid to the tormented villages. If the
Vietnamese found that American medical supplies or aid in the
village, they would exterminate the populace. The Americans found
that to beat the North Vietnamese, they had to be worse than them. It
worked. However, the American's didn't approve of these actions, and
the Americans pulled out of Cambodia and Vietnam. When they did, the
Khemer Rouge took over, and a genocide that killed one third of the
population commenced.
As
I read water dripped from a pipe stretching the height of the
facility into the bowl. Inside, I saw the most evil thing I had ever
witnessed. The sun will rise soon, I can't go too far into my life.
Bosnia 1993, when I was still young, fighting the Serbs. The
commander was a father to me. The bowl reflected him telling me to
keep women,children, old men on the ground as he shot them all. I
stuck my hand in to shuffle the image, but it came back together as
the water settled. The cat began to drink it.
The
sun rose, and the light spilled through slits along the walls and
filled the facility. The light exposed Egyptian artifacts stolen from
tombs decorating the walls. In the center of the cell block stood
erect the nose of the sphynx. The cat meowed, and cleaned it's paws.
I approached the statue, its nostril big enough for me to live in.
Immaculately smooth, but for one loose stone. Even in my dreams I'm a
left brained thinker. I removed the stone, and at once the facility
began to shake. The ceiling opened up, and the walls peeled away. I
curled into a ball, and feared that the wreckage would crush me. When
the explosion of noise stopped, only a cloud of dust remained. When
the dust cleared, the Antipope stood before me. A scepter of the
inverted cross firm in his grip. Black robes fluttered in the wind,
his papal tierra adorned with the inverted cross, his face not flesh
but bare bone. Yet his black pits glared at me with the fiercest
demand I've witnessed. He declared: “You called. I came.”
“Wrong.
You questioned the extent of evils perpetrated by others to justify
your own actions. You called, so I came. Now you will come with me,
or I will fracture your spine, and drag you with me.”
He
lead me through a dark forest, across a long, rickety bridge, over
burning farmlands, over a a fence, and through a tunnel, until I
found myself in an ancient city. In the center imposed a massive
pyramid of shining jet. The Antipope spoke: “That is the Enclave. I
will lead you there, and you will find what you seek, provided you
are no halfwit.”
He
saw my attention drawn to the streets crowded with corpses wrapped in
sheets. Color drained from my face at the sight of the people with
their faces bruised and ruptured with oozing bubos, shivering and
limping along like animatronic toys rather than flesh and blood
creatures. In the distance smoke rose. I could smell it. The Antipope
noticed this, and explained: “This city was once the most powerful
in the known world, but those days are at an end. They are besieged.
Those flames are from their crops burning. The people have been
rushed to the city, on order of the good king Pericles. They can’t
fight. They can only watch their family’s farm be destroyed. Within
the walls they began to create the best art, study the sciences, but
all these people and animals crammed into tight quarters gives the
plague field to spread.”
“One
drop...” He told me “One small crime is a drop. I know what you
did. Say you merely kill one mortal. You've put a burden on his
family. Now they must pay his debts. They are now more inclined to
perform evil acts themselves, and the evil they perform will spread
on, and on. Each infraction is another drip in the bowl.”
The
sun is beginning to crest over the horizon. I will not have enough
time to finish, so I will be brief. The Antipope opened the door to
the Enclave to me, and I looked back only as it slammed shut behind
me. The interior staggered me with how much stolen treasure filled
it. Icons of the spynx centered on every tile as a faint call
compelled me towards a smoking chamber. Inside, I found a senate
chamber, and the occupants struck me with such terror that I hid
behind a curtain. Each seat was filled with a fictional villain. From
fantasies and horrors, to fairy tales and folk legends, they sat in a
circle of hundreds of seats, each one staring with indictment towards
the center of the room. Pericles, with his head drooped, explained
that he was doing the best he could for the city. The enclave however
looked on, unimpressed, and put him in shackles with the order to
lock him up in the prison.
The
Enclave then held council of who should be in charge. A man walked
from the shadows, and volunteered his nomination. I couldn’t
believe it. The greatest Roman Emperor of all time: Caligula! He told
them how he would restore the city to its former glory and end the
siege. First, quarantine the diseased, and use the dead for
biological warfare against the enemy. Second, anyone accused of a
crime is to be drafted. Third, attack the enemy and end the siege.
The Enclave applauded the God-Emperor.
The sun is
over the horizon. The world is awakening. I hear the guards coming
down the hall. There isn't much time.
I
wanted a way out more than anything, and I was so close to sneaking
out the door I came in through when then they called my name!
Tentacles reached from the tiles and took me by the feet, dragging me
to the center of the chamber where I begged over and over again for
my freedom as they glared unconvinced. At once they began to condemn,
snarl, and bite when a loud hush silenced them. They all looked to
the Authority of Evil in his throne, and when my eyes fell upon his
awesome majesty, I grasped the conclusion I sought. My heart raced
faster, and my eyes grew wide as a realization the size of the solar
system came crashing down on top of me. It all made sense! He said
thus, “M-
END
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