Libertas

His signal had been ferociously weak. Over the chapel’s shoulder the risen moon blared, clean as a diamond, perfectly sphere. The last evening purples glowed against her silver blades, which poured along the chapel’s edges like the gilding of a set amethyst.

A sign outside said, ‘Historical Gedjatsyi Church of Rajj’, over three hundred years old. It looked it. No varnish glorified the rough wooden doors, and what sealed them was a rude iron padlock, bound around two brass handles.

I twiddled the lock, as though it were a loose leaf, that would drop from a tickle. I pinched it, pulled it, felt the resistance... and released it, jangling, let it be. Oh well... it’s about what to expect.

The slit between the doors, wide as a pupil, thin as a fingernail, glared at my forfeit.

Oh.

Uh...

Beg that it’s a joke. Please, against all reason—though the circuits of my synapses froze as if soaked in meltwater, my body moved to lay both palms spread on the two doors. I sucked a breath, leaned back—not quite stupid enough to even hope I would belt my head against the wood—and,

—Lavender light pealing through the stained-glass bathed the inside of the chapel.

I landed hard on my back at the foot of a pew, as if pitched out of a somersault. My body had slipped through like water. The volume of a human being, through a half-inch crack, like water.

Just, weird, kind of, impulses, struck me then. To... I don’t know, I crinkled up, with the pew’s leg butting against the back of my head, and I... grabbed my jaw, as if to, check the integrity of, the solid mandible as, still a human skeleton, again. And my fingers, and... it was all normal. Even if there had been a discrepancy, before and after that stunt, I, it’s not like I, would’ve done anything about it... so nothing was even, ‘wrong’, particularly, but like some, stupid dramatist, I still envisioned I might shiver and scream.

But I couldn’t. I don’t know... on the tile I deflated. I just couldn’t.

(Why are you faltering now Mephi? Idiot, isn’t this the best thing that’s happened to you?)

I suppose... faltering ‘now’, when it’s been barely three days... I can’t really, don’t really, know what, any of this is really. But...

(Mhm, but?)

But, it’s, whatever, sorry... sorry, I know I can’t argue.

On the ceiling were arrayed many colourful icons, of ships, and tools, and shells, and sprigs. And I know what people say, that all these things, they mean something heartfelt to Czjeir. Irritation burned up in my chest and wilted as quickly; I wiped my wrist under my eyes. If I could be streaming tears and trembling with rage. I’m sure it would be so sentimental.

What can I offer... already I figure what I can offer. But how is it worth it? This, this, chasing after feelings, and impulses, to sustain myself on others, just, living, eating, living, eating, is that really it?

(Delightful!)

Do I want that?

Do I enjoy that? Is that even good?

I can’t even tell...

Imagine that it was all a lesson. See, Mephi? I’ve shown you the brilliance of humanity by breaking you onto your knees, to admit you were better before, as a human. But this fantasy couldn’t be true. I wasn’t a better person then. I was the same person. I was barely a person. And now I just, wasn’t a person.

(Liberation! Oh Mephi, you cranial nest of earwigs, remember how spectacular it felt to disembowel that stupid witch and how... indescribably sublime the imbibing of the reward? To bask in a droplet of Avalon, you know, drinking transcendence? That vacation with pina coladas, that mushy hug and that pat on the head? You’re finally raining down some God-sanctioned prosperity lopping the weeds out of the garden, and you know what, until your footfalls are earthquakes that purge this scum dead five hundred miles out, you’re just being negligent.)

Listen, okay, yeah, that all was... h-highly sensual.

But aren’t you just looking to kill me on another dimension?

(Kill you? How does this kill you? It comes out of you, it affirms your stupid desires. Mhm, aha, the most moral thing you could do now is continue, at behest of who owns you, ceaselessly, ceaselessly, one to another, the blood flowing ever on talons, oh rapture! You can’t even botch this! Enjoy the party for once. You admit yourself that this vellum-thin pretence called ‘you’ up to now was a waste of existence, so crumple it up already and kick it in the bin.)

I mean, you’re not wrong, just...

(You’re stamped for permission.)

Yeah, by you or Czjeir?

Look, I’m sorry, it is cowardice, I already said, I know I can’t argue.

But, if it’s a matter of ‘permission’ or ‘approval’, you could posit that even Hejat has been ‘approved’ by Czjeir.

It’s like... throwing out worms for a hawk. B-but it shouldn’t, be, that. Because, i-it’s not raptors or worms, it’s people, who screwed up. Very, badly but...

I-I-I, know, it sounds stupid, but please, ...understand? My heart doesn’t... come up with good things.

(Critiquing God.)

No, I’m not. I’m just... I don’t know. Figuring there would be fewer variables.

I sighed and stood. A square of purple light fell from the window onto the floor. You know it’s a truth that time moves in eras; the moon has her phases, the bands of the zodiac each have their reign. I’m not saying that I’m waiting for a breakthrough. I cupped my palm in the light, as though candescence were a liquid I could hold, and turned my hand about, as though inspecting how its shimmer cascaded on skin would coax from it a magnificent secret, or reciprocal affection for ogling. Firmaments glinted on my nails.

I stepped fully into the bright pond, cast off my hood to receive it. Does basking in a moonbeam confer you with its mystery? My arms spread wide to split the radiant air, so dazzling against the dark, though projected from a placid beacon with the face of a flat lake, yet so playful with the warmth of a full bosom, only as sublime as she was demure.

Ah, what’s a little mischief? What’s a funny little thing like you? It takes elaborate backing to weave an enticingly silly riddle like you.

By a weird modesty I returned the hood upon exiting, to the crossing between the pews and the altar. A sigh of dissatisfaction ricketed me once the light left. Seriousness licked through the shadows.

(I cast off the hood again, not for any purpose, but to wear it indoors felt progressively stupid).

The flat plane of the altar laid bare, cleared of its implements.

I nestled as its foot to think.

From these discoveries today in Rajj, my hypothesis about the nature of my abnormal manifestation—as a hand-picked mechanism by which to cull unholy deviants despised by Czjeir during His absence of the Long Night—appeared to be, fundamentally accurate. Necessity for such a mechanism... existed, apparently, as the ‘new’ prominence of supernatural corruptions... though I, doubted myself attuned towards those specifically... regardless, supernatural factors as representations of divine wills were more present now than before, and with moral corruption having become also physical, Czjeir’s laws...

I was only guessing. The Night breaks at Shien’s Judgement. I am cutting the absolute failures out early and by their absence allowing conditions for others to pass. I, don’t care about that, actually, but that would make sense as the... nuance, of my activities.

I don’t know. Really?

It’s an obvious benefit, but Czjeir didn’t... mention anything like that at all. He, he, spoke like the employment was... personal.

What if the Judgement would be postponed until I was assured to pass it?—WOOOOW, now that’s some humility they’d limn in the temple, Mephi! But the question did sit of the length of my term. I couldn’t imagine paradise would need... a cesspit, which I am, burbling between its gardens. If I didn’t die before then... more reasonable that I would be, decommissioned, maybe destroyed, once there was no purpose to my function.

Or to truly stretch Czjeir’s mercy, that he’d find some purpose to put me to elsewhere... not that I’d really, deserve such gentle treatment.

I guess I’m saying that by that time, I needed to change.

Wow, three days in on the job and I’m already thinking how to quit. Haha, I guess resignation’s something I do pursue with breakneck initiative.

To approximate the ‘deadline’ of judgement, though... if creation to human establishment was eons... and the bucolic period to independence was... some millennia, and, independence to long night, was, also millennia... long night, could, also... my spine shivered against the wood of the altar.

Okay if I don’t compose myself into a functional being over the span of multiple lifetimes then whatever damnation I could be scheduled to get would be more than utterly justified. Just ferment me alive in a landfill, perched on its peak like a proud drake on its treasures, and dump the whole wad into the incinerator.

Anyway, that’s not all to say I begrudged the present assignment, or was about to overlook the absurd impounding of filth perpetuated by that obese chipmunk Hejat, just that... you know, I guess, I have a sense for things that are not sustainable.

Mm. I craned my head against the altar. A distant scream echoed from the turgid welt within. I squinted, thumbing my throat.

Yeah... that’s, the thing about this...

You know how, when people eat things, normally, you, absorb the digestible elements into you, and they become, incorporated as part of the cell?

...Yeah, so... yeah. They’re ‘prison cells’... haha, ugh. Uh, did you know that souls don’t, die? And the atmosphere, is, thick as, septic, void so, it’s, w-w-w-welcome to, Hell, ah! And I—I, don’t like, sharing my... innards... with others... i-i-it’s mine, and it... chops them up so much, they should be disembodied, but, they’re not, their heads bitten off and then, blink it’s, there again, so, so it keeps, going, and, maybe I can ignore it, but you know that I killed myself too so.

These are real personalities, not hallucinations, unless I’m completely deluded. When I enchanted those palatines, several days ago, in pursuit of the ptarmigan witch, I recognized arisen a real presence of a man from Vamu named Satchjeir. He had been a sheep farmer who regretted cheaply selling a ram to a breeder who afterwards churned from it thousands of tichyan. The magic channelled in that moment belonged to him, not me, and the veracity of this distinction would prove the seriousness of the summons—then the magnitude of my malfeasance, and the breadth of the insurrection against life I perpetuated by even existing.

Called by me, even by name, the banshee clawing under my flesh had paused during that one moment of personal acknowledgement, as though piqued to a sound as distantly serene as the ripple of a dewdrop on a lake, and reprieved by the attention into peace.

That being so...

I stared down at my palms. Then grit my teeth, sighed, and flicked out a finger with a fulgent squall of chartreuse magic. Satchjeir.

Hypnotic green orbs materialised in the air, pulsing faintly over the lavender-steeped pews. As though entering into a warm bath, one layer of screaming in the tangled din shuddered smoothly, ‘ahhh...’.

Just why.

I’m a walking curse.

My finger curled in and I bunted my head against the altar.

How can I say that I’m sorry? To be constantly spurting assorted sorceries like an incontinent dog whizzing out firecrackers, is infeasible. And, kind of, intimate.

So that’s my excuse to do nothing? Obviously I’m not sorry enough.

Look I can pelt myself over it some other time. This man—what, envied his neighbour over some, stupid, petty, livestock and... this hunger really is that voracious without a proactive mind wrenching the wheel. ‘You can’t even botch this,’ oh it’s fundamentally true. Only because there’s a bottomless canyon of compunctions separating my quibbling stupidity from that thing’s slobbering brainlessness.

‘Morals’ or ‘discernment’ may be, feeble faculties exercised in me as much as the withered legs of a paraplegic, but it’s shocking how much spite and loathing I am ready to spit towards the hunger for being devoid of them at all. Yeah, so I’d murder that thing.

It’s like I could care about my actions, but likely, it is just self-righteousness.

My eyes closed with a sigh. I snapped the enchantment off—the orbs blinked out—a dim ache immediately returned to the calm, and a reposed face crinkled up weeping in mourning and pain.

My gums hurt with the force of my cringing. I can pelt myself over it, SOME OTHER TIME.

Ugh...

Ahhaahahah, ahahhahah! You’re a monster, you’re a monster! Yeah, I... yeah, I am.

Suitable targets, the only ones towards whom I have no compunctions about any of this...

Who, Czjeir knowing, would not himself mind tormented and extinguished... rather implicitly encourages damned... excellent work, take this charge, you are hired.

As a participant. Where would you like to fall?

Ahh...

A vision rose before me of two suns out in the city; a fulminous red giant throbbing such passionate infernos of untempered hot fire, to gaze upon being as warming as a sweet ginger tea seeps to the marrow, and the jagged blue dwarf weeping with sour, piteous guilt. At it I hissed. Get over yourself! When you have to throw yourself in, it’s annoying! The unwilling burn hotter, and the furnace needs fuel! Don’t plead with me for it! I want to reap! Get it? Stupid dolt, I don’t know you.

Though... though, you little interloper, the more I give you a proper look... the more hideous you are, the more simpering and liable for fault, and maybe, maybe, we can make this work Enticing flares of warmth glint across your surface... like sunlight over the scales of a fish... warm and... so curiously sweet... licked my teeth... like a lychee tender under the shell?

Hrrrhhhn... no, the actual rapist is still a cheerful sunbeam in comparison to you, blaring pleasantly upon a picnic meadow, laid with fluffy baked cakes and warm mead, invitingly, ahah. Don’t just flirt, charm me a bit! How can you be mine if you won’t even kill? Ahah!

So I guess I’ll deal with you... if I have to. If I have to jilt you. I guess I will. S-s-stupid worm, why does my tongue cast you to your belly so easily? I hope you’re irresolute enough that you can also, pick yourself up...

And stop nagging me... ah.

Look, I have another date... with some witches in Amsherrat. Oh, that’s going to be fun.

Ahm, and Hejat too... murdering him will be so much fun.

That probably is what I want for now.

This is so easy it’s sickening.

The ceiling vaulted up undecorated in this more austere realm of the chancel. Bare beams of acacia arched down to the pews, through the aisle, and to the rustic vigil of the double-doors. Dust whirled about, flecked like stars, in the moonbeams.

Muttering, “hup,” I sat on the altar. A leopard’s stretch, an archduke’s caper, knit to a grievous cherub’s smirk, all these together shroud the sanctum in sin—yes, crown my garland as Blasphemy! I am that offering so outrageous, just a glimpse of it from the doors would knock over a nun!

Czjeir, does this tickle you too? I do hope so...

“Mm.” I swayed out of the posing to flop on my back, since the altar presented a level plane and I was already on it. This must strain goodwill, I trailed my nail up my breast. But if I’m allowed here at all, I don’t think Czjeir minds.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m not. Ah, I don’t know anything.

He’ll tell me if not, I suppose.

Drifting thoughts rolled like mobiles in the dark, but coagulated into only wisps. By the weight of drooping eyelids pews and doors soon hazed to nightfall.

Hunger ripped me then like a swordfish.

I flinched awake. My body froze paralysed. Wow, a-already? Three days, it’s that quick? (What are you bothered about, relative to a normal human dietary schedule three days is long, and you should be grateful—)

With a clipped gasp I peeled off the altar and seized my stomach to forcefully excise the pain, but the pang had passed and now only fanned me by its wake, a niggling current of ache.

The critter had kicked in its sleep. That was all. Actually, I had been hungry all day, just distracted enough not to care. Now with thoughts exhausted, the spotlight of attention by necessity shone onto void. And would do so indefinitely?

My grip unclasped.

I cupped my elbows and stared at the floor.

I mean, it wasn’t unbearable. Thousands of devouts endured routinely this exact hunger when fasting, and... well, you know I’m malnourished. That’s only for the devotion of, incorrigible gravitation toward my attic’s desk chair, and the pantry being two floors downstairs.

Though aware by this journey that nothing would change, I wandered along the transept as I would in dreamlike possession drift to my house’s larder, when I hadn’t restocked it in weeks. I would open the pantry and instead of bare shelves expect somehow a cake to burst out, or souvlaki, or a dolma, just whatever exact thing suited my indistinct tastes at that moment that it would coax me to actually eat. Now in retrospect I don’t even know. I wasn’t expecting the church’s crannies to be littered with... phalanges. But if they were—no, no, I was just, some thing, a thing, any thing I couldn’t even identify for its perfection but that would work as a... substitute to sate at least the feeling of eating. In the manner of a rawhide. To chew on, for sleep.

Candidate in that dusty fork, abandoned on the windowsill? No, since that could be washed for reuse.

Or this display table’s misshapen clay figurine, fruit of some community project? No, since it speaks of personhood, sentiment.

But then what’s useless enough to the church it would never be missed? Wax drippings? Maybe... Ash cups? Although, really. Desperation whips impulse to trample over sense, but stuck in a shallow so tame it cannot drag out even urges, it’s shockingly difficult to find for a nihility such fittingly worthless sacrifices.

I shrugged a surrender to return to the altar, when pivoting, the wastebin appeared. A wet rag soiled with stains of black filth dribbled over its lip.

In that momentary gasp between the snagging of the bait and the snapping of the trap, coyotes do feel terror. You, you, have to understand. Have you ever done anything reprehensible, that was not pampered into being by its predecessors? Mountains aren’t climbed by one leap; depravities aren’t sunk by one dive. Hejat did not start violating children by violating children. He started by thinking about it. I didn’t strangle my classmate to death on a whim because she constrained my space. It started twenty years prior when I met her and hated her and never told her to get the damn hint.

I scurried back to the alter and at its foot settled, by the caprizant kick of the heart, by the hairs prickling on end. Hidden behind display tables prowled that ugly wastebin, the gravid, hag-beast, unseen as a spectre, yet by such focus fully present in skin.

I turned ahead, bit my lip, and accepted it best not to eat for tonight.