29/04/12 One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight
It was a summer’s afternoon, and the entire tribe was assembled around a deeply familiar wooden table, out in their most lush meadow; they were feasting under the cooling white clouds and a diminished Sun, sharing incredible quantities of food, such as pork, mushrooms, chicken, and fresh vegetables. The adults amongst them drank mead, yet the adventurous child attempted to drink the sour liquor, a great source of amusement.
One looked out from his larger chair - or even a throne - and could not believe how happy he was on that day. This was all the fruit of his bountiful loom. All that the eye could see. The women, the children; he felt a burst of nostalgia and reminisced about the months he took building the massive table they were now adorning as so many pink trees. Today was a great day not because he had built a table, but because one of his sons, his own flesh and blood, had accomplished a great feat of his own: out there, under the cheers of all that knew him, he rode the horse he had domesticated, accomplishing circle after circle, pounding the grass unto a visible line. One dried the tear from his eye, as he felt the amazement that his own son had seen through such a bold initiative, that he had taken upon himself without any pressure of doing so.
As the sun suddenly grew dark from being hidden by one of the bigger clouds, a stranger came to them, dressed entirely in some exotic manner, unknown to any member of the tribe. He walked up to One, whom could now plainly examine the most peculiar face he had ever been given to see.
The stranger had small, predatory eyes, dark in coloration, and deeply lodged into the skull. His dark, curly hair was thinning and progressing away from his forehead. His complexion was not pink, but swarthy and brown. The strangest feature of all was the nose, which fully descended below the mouth, splitting it into two distinct orifices; and there, at the chin, the nose split up into two nostril tubes terminating where the ears were meant to be. The mystery of the Stranger’s ability to hear in spite of its nose was soon answered.
“What is this ugly creature?” exclaimed one woman.
“Surely it is a vulture attracted by the noise first, and then it saw the mountains of food!” replied one man.
Many laughed at the jest.
“What is your dealing, stranger?” asked One, making signs to keep the others silent.
“I want to know what makes you happy,” the stranger said.
One took a short pause.
“Everything!” he concluded.
Many laughed; not because the joke was any good, but because they were as happy as he.
…
The life of Two had been as illustrious as that of One. Bards, poets and all manners of wandering souls took deep inspiration in every doing of his life, insuring none of his feats would be forgotten. Yet Two had been deeply affected by a personal tragedy that had tinted most of his adult life: the love of his life had died in childbirth at sixteen.
He did marry again a few years later; and often referred to the experience as the casting of his soul into steel, a steel more cutting than primal iron. Yet, alone with his own thoughts, he could not visualize anything but the life they could have shared. She completed him the way none other could. And now she was gone.
One day, during an otherwise calm ship travel following the coast line, the Stranger approached them from the beach; many tales had circulated about him, many disputed his very existence, yet previous descriptions held quite an accuracy to them, that Two felt he was required to somehow bring him in front of as many people as he could possibly show. They landed the ship next to him.
“Climb on board, Stranger.”
“What makes you happy?” the Stranger asked.
“Incredible! The tales are true!” Two replied.
The Stranger blinked furiously, deliberately.
“What makes you happy?” the Stranger repeated.
“Soon I will be showing that you exist,” answered Two.
…
The world had never experienced such a brutal civil war. Three, who had had three sons, was a feeble old man, bound to bed, and sickly. He had decided, many, many years ago, that he would divide his holdings equally amongst his heirs, and retire into the mountains, and meditate. Yet his three sons had been animated by a dark lust for absolute power; a lust that ultimately cost all of their lives. The curse was not only that of surviving his own children, but the burden of having taken such a catastrophic decision, that had given its shape to every graveyard.
“It is your turn Three,” spoke the stranger.
The stranger appeared to him in a temporary streak of lucidity, as his consciousness felt nudged between a lung cough and the very dominating sensation that his back was merging with the bed linens through perspiration.
“No… I did not want any of this… This is so horrible…”
“Tell me about your life. Was there anything good?”
“How could there be? After what happened! Why did it happen? It is horrible…”
The stranger blinked.
“Well, I suppose I held it all; at some point anyway. Not many will ever reach as high as I did.”
…
Four dedicated his entire life to one and only pursuit: pushing back the armies of darkness. They had decided to invade the land of his ancestors, with no respect for what came before them. Some were black, others were brown or yellow or red; all were vile, incapable of anything but savagery, low of character and intelligence. Four killed many, many demons.
He killed them on the beach; he killed them in the forest; he killed them in the streets, and in the cities. Four had risen from the ranks as a mere soldier, yet his mission was always to meet violence with more violence, and he was always capable of fulfilling that mission.
Four felt somewhat repulsed by himself; by what he had become. Yet he allowed every rape, every murder and every theft to act upon his soul as a great Animating Flame, unleashing the torrents of violence that materialized Justice for his kin.
In the end, however, it was all for naught; his effort was too isolated, and he was betrayed by those who were in charge. They preferred to align with demons than to do what needed to be done to protect the people. They chose money over their own kin, demons over angels. Evil. Unredeemable. Monsters.
“It is your turn Four,” spoke the stranger.
Four looked up from the floor, ever so slightly provoking his metal chains into an impromptu concerto.
“You! I have wished for so long to exterminate your life! To have you so close to my hands, while I am powerless, that is such a torture!”
“Tell me about your life. Was there anything good?”
“You are the one! I accuse you! For having perpetrated the most enormous crimes upon my people! For having destroyed all hope and beauty from the universe! For being an agent of Evil!”
Four took a breath, and continued speaking with great zeal.
“I accuse you of murdering a loving wife! I accuse you of seeding corruption in the hearts of those whom have power! I accuse you of all ill that have befallen the world, for that is the Truth! One day you will hang from a rope! You are the most wretched demon of them all!”
“You are very lucid for an angry person. Yet you do not see that you are the one who is going to die tomorrow. This is peculiar.”
“My son! If you hear me somehow, somehow! Somehow! If you hear me, then you must kill him! Nothing else will bring me joy!”
…
Five had a strenuous life. For ninety long years, he had been charged with cleaning the streets of his city, a task that had transformed his entire physique into a leathery, stiff material. When asked what made him happy, he replied, “I worked hard.”
…
Six was a very talented comedian. He took the plane almost every week, performing for some audience somewhere in the world. He had amassed quite a bit of wealth. Yet his life fell desperately short, for one simple reason: he was not capable of generating a strong relationship with anyone. Indeed, he lived in a world in which everyone stole and lied, even killed and raped. It was impossible to trust anyone. At the end of his life, he regretted not having found someone to have a family with. Yet, in a comic twist of fate, life did not care about his regret, but about his joy.
Which happened to be joy itself.
…
Seven’s entire life felt as if he had been ten seconds too late to catch his train. If only he had taken music lessons sooner, as a child, then he would have been more successful, made more money, and his one chance at a serious relationship would not have walked through the door. If the landlord had taken a liking to him, then he would not have had to move across the city, where he got shot and, in a fit of rage, used racist language, losing all of his friends. Seven’s life was a tangled mess; when taking a seat back, it became obvious the structure could not hold on its own. Yet, through this mess, one strand lit up with a glimmer of genius - his autobiography was wacky and nonsensical, a surprise hit guaranteeing him a comfortable arrangement in his old age.
“It is your turn Seven,” spoke the stranger.
“You are not early, are you?”
“Tell me about your life. Was there anything good?”
The stranger blinked at him.
“Well, even through the worst adversity, I have never felt like a victim,” Seven confessed.
…
Eight came to life in an era of computers and sprawling cities, none of which were his doing. At birth, the doctor mutilated his penis by performing a circumcision. At four years of age, his father anally raped him on the bathroom’s floor. At six, adults including a doctor and his parents grew convinced there was a “shadow” on his pancreas, and performed a life-altering surgery forcing him to recover for half a year. At eight his parents tried to push him to get hair extensions; at ten, they wanted to have him on puberty blockers. It became clear, however, that Eight was simply not willing to comply with the ideas his parents had for him, and they lost all interest for him. It was a peculiar relationship, for they had done everything they had felt they could get away with perpetrating upon a child without risking to be punished by the state; yet the child had been born an autist, and where a more normal child would have been confused about his trauma, and more susceptible to be twisted into a mockery, a living toy, Eight remembered with pristine clarity the full range of his parents’ actions. It was one thing for him to have never played his parent’s crooked games; yet it was doubtful he could latch unto his sanity for any extended period of employment, courtship, or any other such life’s pursuit; and so it was another matter entirely that he did not possess the sheer will to succeed.
It took him sixteen years to fall into the pit of substance abuse.
And he fell hard.
Life became a haze, a beautiful, inoffensive, yet stimulating haze. He had friends in the dilapidated walls, and felt incredible music as the police’s symphony of cars burst through his eardrums every hour of every day.
In his adult life, Eight came up with a revolutionary idea for a kitchen appliance; hackers, whom had complete access to his computer, shared it without his knowledge, and an entrepreneur from the other side of the globe became rich from the stolen idea.
No, his great accomplishment came forty years after he was born: he completely stopped consuming drugs. Be they legally prescribed or not, be they liquid or explosive, red or green, expansive or free; be they strong or weak, small, addictive, it no longer mattered to him, and he threw away what would not flush down the toilet.
“It is your turn Eight,” spoke the stranger.
“My ancestors spoke of you.”
“Tell me about your life. Was there anything good?”
“Not having you in it.”
“There must be something. There must be something.” the stranger insisted, blinking at him.
Eight could not resist the urge to expose his vulnerability. Yet there truly was nothing good in his life.
“Why don’t you just kill me?” he ended up asking, “Just kill me, and have it over with.”
“Oh no, you do not understand your situation, Eight.” corrected the stranger, “This is most definitely not a murder. That would be wrong. You will die, and it will be a suicide. If not you, then it will be Nine, or the one after. I am extraordinarily patient.”
“As long as I am me, I could not fathom taking my own life.”
“Then you lack imagination. You claim your ancestors warned you about me, yet here you go, making such a provocative assertion. I am bound to prove to you just how completely wrong you are.”
The stranger displayed his hands.
“Look at these immaculate hands. Tell me where you find the stains of which you claim existence.”
The hands were black and necrotic; somehow, it was so that the strangers’ ears functioned in spite of blending into his gigantic nose, yet his eyes did not appear to register that information which was glaring to the most shallow and cursery look. Eight replied:
“The truth is that I have never seen something more despicable than your hands. I am happy about my life, if it only means that I stand closer than you upon the path of the Righteous.”