Elflord: *dressed in a traditional black and red assassinator's outfit,
complete with ninja stars* Alright, everybody. Before anything weird starts
happening, I would just like to say that I don't- Alucard: *appears in a
swarm of bats, finally come to form* *says in his most sarcasm filled
voice* We know, we know. Elflord: *0.0* Wow, that was a neat lil trick
there. Alucard: *in goofy French accent* Hanh-hanh! Mais oui. C'est moi!
Elflord: *for the first time in her life, actually regrets knowing French*
*rolls eyes* And bi-lingual, too. Alucard: *grin* What can I say? I'm multi-
talented. Elflord: *sweatdrop* Look, Alucard, this is really great hanging
out with you, but you know- *shower of knives and bible pages zing into
wall Anderson: * appears out of shadows, swords aloft* In th' name of th'
Father, th' Son, an' th'- Elflord: *-_-* Awww, man! *pulls hair* Anderson:
*advancing with a menacing smile* Fear thee not, yan lassie! I protect ye
from th' freak! Elflord: *sweatdrop* Hey, guys you'd better not- Alucard:
*drawing Jackal* Who you calling a freak, ya freak? Elflord: C'mon, now,
this is really- Anderson: Oh ho! So ya wanna play ruff, eh, do ye?
*conjures another sword* I'll see ye try't! Elflord: *really scared now*
Hey, I- Alucard and Anderson: *turn together toward Elflord* *together*
BUTT OUT OF IT ALREADY!!!
Elflord: *hair frazzled* Look, before I keep these guys from killing each other, I think I'd like to mention that I don't own any part of Hellsing. None of the characters, none of the episodes, none of the manga, none. And furthermore, I don't own the song 'Behind Blue Eyes.' It was written by an awesome, God-like rock band graciously named The Who.
A/N: One thing I'd like to mention before we get any further. I say this in all my fics, but I think even more than ever I have to make clear that I don't take plot as written in stone. I can take the liberty to change it if I think it better suits the fic. So please don't flame me for plot reasons. I can tell you for a fact that I am very sure that this particular fic the plot probably been changed quite a bit. However, I did it for artistic reasons, not out of scorn or ignorance. Please don't flame me for plot reasons.
Blue Eyes
Sometimes I wonder if even He knows who I am anymore . . .
~No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes . . .~
Forgotten, and so far left behind. I was left behind. Of my own accord, I have left myself behind, left him behind on the wayside of the road promised to come back someday, and by the by, have lost he that was me. That I long ago realized. And accepted.
So I died. I was dead before I had begun to live.
No one is to blame for my life. My decisions were my own, led by the steady hand of the Father, His eyes always over my shoulders, guiding me to the Light of His Eternal Love. I took it in my arms, the divine love of God in me, corruption of my soul only of the Original Sin.
It is said that children are untouched by the Original Sin, that they are too young to know the great temptations of Satan. This I cannot believe. To be born, to be the descendent of the Original Man, is to first inherit the weight of the Original Sin.
The first conscious decision I can ever remember making is that I would not fight my Original Sin. I was raised correctly, baptized in the traditional way before I could ever possibly know how to choose faith. When I was old enough to know that I had sinned long before I had ever been born, I did not feel pain. Unlike most, I accepted the fact, seeing no reason in fighting the Original Sin, as it seemed so many wanted to do.
How cowardly I thought them then. And yet how coward am I, standing here before you now.
~No one knows what it's like
To be hated~
It's hard to remember sometimes, what my life was. In childhood, I could never say that I was not loved. I was raised in a good family, with two parents who I knew were supposed to love me, and two brothers, one older and one younger, to which were my best of friends, when we did not quarrel. The town was not a large or harsh one, friendly and kind, all you could want. All knew the Divine faith, kept it well. The school was no different from any other, if not a little cold sometimes. That didn't matter to me.
No one liked me at the schools I went to. I had no friends there. I didn't care. Why should I have? Thinking back, I probably even preferred being alone like that. It was an odd existence for an odd child that wouldn't have a place. But I didn't mind. I already knew the world didn't love me.
In truth, I cannot say where I first began to believe that the world did not love me. It did not seem to come on at me all at once. In all reality, I should have been a joyful child, fullest of the grace of God. Somewhere along the line, though, I must have begun to believe it. It never seemed to me, somehow, that the world could love and accept me. I didn't expect it to. I didn't expect that the world embrace me. I expected nothing that I could not have.
I don't remember when I first began to think I was not loved, to become one of ice. But I can remember the first time I was dead.
~To be fated
To telling only lies~
I can remember. So many times, I have gone back and tried to erase that night, tried to erase each gray-greened detail from my gutted mind. But still they remain, inked into the patched canvas of the damned wretch named memory that neither time nor sand not blood of Men can bleach away.
I can remember the silence of that night, echoing in my ears; the most terrible silence ever to have been borne of this earth. Throwing my red and peeling bike down on the dewy grass, so many times they'd told me not to do, awaiting the stern word from my father for keeping myself late at the school once again. Unwitting, I walked up the friendly old steps to what would have been the kinship of my porridge or potato soup or kidney pie or whatever my good mother was at.
I can remember my naivety.
I can remember the feeling in that house I felt right through that door with my cold white hands on the doorknobs, as I turned it, I can remember that awful silence in my home. The earth-shattering sound of my own footstep in an empty house, with not a breath of sound, and a fear; a fear so thick in my brain, so soundless in my ears I could hear my own panicked heart beating. My voice calling, meek and terrified, those names I was praying with all my might would just answer my pleas.
I remember that last corner turned, and the scream that would never hear the breath of air. It caught there in my paralyzed throat, somewhere between existence and non-existence. Four figures, limp and stoic, torn and ravaged beyond all recognition by some incredible soulless, heartless, bestiality, forgotten forms propped in the most grotesqueness beyond Heaven and Hell. Knelt before a desecrate altar, painted in the most odd and vivid red, strange names and figures never known to the eyes of pure youth, painted in the languages of evil, disgustingness, and disgrace, words of hatred and heresy uncountable.
I remember the first time I saw the most Holy of Divine symbols made to be horrendous.
I remember sitting there, the screams within me caged, building in my red, tired throat, my stomach full of incredible sickness never to become fruitful, my ears full of a terrible silence that would eat me alive, and yet could not make a sound to save myself from it. For hours upon decades, so it seemed, I sat there, looking, unable to move, to run, to even breathe.
I remember that long, long night.
I remember the sun rising on that horrendous cross the next morning, my eyes still open and dry without sleep. Listening to the school truant officer slamming on the door, come for my brothers and me, like some faraway symphony, without even the voice or will to call out.
I remember the scream at last.
I remember having no lie, no truth to tell.
~But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be. . . ~
Some say that my conscience as a man was strengthened by my experience with the fell beasts, and that is why I am the man I am today. They tell me I am an example to all of the Divine faith, of a man who refused to give up, a man who chose to dedicate his life to His Divine work, who took up arms in His name.
They are wrong.
'Conscience' would never have been the word they would have thought of if they'd seen me, staring at the wall for days upon end, never speaking a word, never making a sound, never showing a sign of life. The word would have been 'Sick'. For nearly two months, perhaps a little less each day, I would shut myself, afraid of what would creep into me, my mind and soul always in fear,. Little was the hour of night that I would find sanctuary from them, a weakened will, clinging to the only thing I knew to fight against evil. My young, white hands laced before me, I'd kneel at the feet of the Father, and in it, search for what I thought was my last salvation.
I had died, and I knew not how to live again.
A good spell in front of the fire, as the saying goes, began to see me back on my feet. Slow and sure, after a good while, going back and forth from the doctors and the parish, from one sterilized hell to another, I learned to come human again. But what I also learned was something I hoped I would never need.
Hate. Such a strange thing is, this hate. It is a fire, hate is. Like that of the pits of Hell, I embraced that fire with both arms open, in full knowing, in full light of His mighty Love. I did it in His full blessing, chose it in His own sacred name. I loved this fire. It was mine and I its, all within the Light of a single second. It was my own burden, guided by the all-knowing hand of the Father, and in True grace, I accepted.
It was His gift; a gift so powerful, so potent of the Power of Christ that the world would never hurt me again. This fire was my sanctuary, my Sacred Ground, my sword as well as my shield. Hate. Though it was Forbid, it was still of Him. I wanted to know Hate; hate, full and simple.
And I wanted more.
I wanted to show those fell beasts that had desecrated my life just who they were up against. I wanted to see them in the pain I had felt. I wanted to see their agony, their utter misery. I wanted to hear their feeble, high-pitched shrieks of falsehood repentance which I would refuse with triumph. I wanted to feel their corrupted souls begging out for a mercy they would never be granted. I wanted to send them back to the fiery depths that had borne them a scourge on the Earth. I wanted to laugh, laugh with every deep, true, pure and awesome fiber of my being as I heard their descent into the world of their Eternal torture.
But oh, I wanted more. I had to dream of more.
~I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free~
I wanted it to never be again.
Somewhere, deep inside, I must have felt guilt for the fate that I could not change. I must have felt something like responsibility for those four things on the floor of that white family room now defiled by that unholy thing writ in their essence, for those that had come to my home and, intruders that had stolen my life away, that had killed me. I must have felt something to embrace His fire so vehemently, so entirely, never imagining that fire could consume me, too.
I wanted it never to be again for someone to die the way I had. I wanted it to never be again that someone would have to be alone the way I had. These fell beasts would go on and on and nothing would be done. Of all things I hated so much with His awesome fire of Hate, I hated this fact, this truth that no one would face.
I hated them. How could they stand there and see it and say it wasn't there? How could they just be there, scratching their heads, when it was obvious what was to be done? To call themselves Holy men, and to be on the wayside letting chaos ensue?
Lad that I was, I promised I would never be like that.
I was not going to let them stay. I was not going to let it happen again.
For two years, I bided my time, growing older, and seeming to them (so ignorant they grew) forgotten the pain. But they knew. Deep down, I think some knew what I had inside of me, that fire, His incredible fire that blazed within, that hate, that hate that reached to everything in my life, nothing spared. And why should I spare it? The world would not love me. It would not see my hate, my fire. It would not acknowledge me. So why should I spare anything when it hadn't given a damn to spare me?
As I grew, learned, trained for what I'd be, they could never know that within me, something was smoldering, eating me from the inside out, never letting alone from the grasp. His fire, this fire of hate, it would eat me alive if I couldn't get free. If I couldn't get free, it would take me, too.
A new, potent oil had been thrown upon the fire. Within me smoldered vengeance. A vengeance with a thirst.
~No one knows what it's like
To feel these feelings
Like I do~
I knew what I had to do. I knew long before they thought to ask me.
The Father at my parish gave me one last sad, backwards look when I answered, resounding "Division Thirteen, Iscariot". He knew what I'd answer before he'd asked. He just nodded at me and told me to start to gather my things, that he'd forward a message to them as soon as possible, and to be ready for the train in three days.
I was sixteen years old.
To train for XIII was a monstrous task. After all, only the few, the absolute best are even considered for acceptance. But I knew not limits. I didn't just strive to be the best, I WAS the best. With His fire burning within me, I strove unlike any man has every striven, driven by a Force now so much more than myself.
I did not feel bad for those that got left behind. They had not His holy fire. I had the reason, the drive, the need, and the will. I had what it took to be Division XIII. But most of all, I had Hate; hate for those fell devils that had taken everything from me, invaders, vile intruders to this realm, disgusting creatures that suck the very life out of Man. More than anything I had ever wanted, I wanted them dead, every last single one of them. I wanted them to feel it from my hand. Justice would serve itself; to do to them what they'd done to me. They would feel His fire burn them alive; the fire of my hate, the fire of my vengeance.
This must be what would make me free.
I was trapped, and that somehow, somewhere, my freedom must have been waiting for me. Somehow, with that insignia of the Holy Order of Iscariot, I felt that my freedom would come to me; that at last, I would be able to scream, scream my heart out and more. It would release me from the chains of my imprisonment at last, the loneliness lifted from mine eyes, and His Holy light shinning down in unimaginable brilliance. I would not have to be a thirteen-year-old boy, sitting staring in the face of utter evil, unable to move, in a world that didn't love him. Transformed from the ashes of His awesome fire, the fire of my every hate, my every passion, I would be reborn of the flame, a phoenix, at last to be him that was me.
How wrong I was.
For in that fire; His fire, my fire, the fire of Hate . . . I, too, was burned alive.
~And I blame you~
Incredible that I was so blind. Just goes to prove what men really are . . . fools. Some days, it seems a wonder to me He hasn't already done us out, such wretches we.
The experiment was little pain to endure next to all that I had already done. Every time I thought of giving it up, I thought of the pain I would exact upon all of them, thought about the glorious liberation of being freed of my prison of ice. I would at last be able to raise my head up high and say my name with pride. No longer would I be something uncounted, overlooked. Now I would be the one to strike fear into their fell, empty hearts, show them the power of man before they were sent screaming back to the Nine Circles. His flame, my flame would destroy their evil, illuminate the darkness into Light.
I simply couldn't see.
Because slowly, oh slowly, I could feel that hate begin to come back to me. The fire of my hate, His divine flame; it was a blaze now, an inferno. And yet, I lived thrived on the chaos, the wildness, the utter feral hatred. I loved the way it felt, this reckless, flying hatred, an obsession burning of the depths of my very self, alighted by His mighty hand. It filled my every waking moment, every last part of me immersed in it.
You could smell the decay in me.
To those fell beasts, I was surely Fear. With each one of their black, empty souls I sent to the next world, I prayed the chains fall away, the bars of the prison of ice melt away with the bearing of the flame, that the flame would be quenched with time. But with each one, I watched in horror as the bars grew taller, the chains heavier, the fire of His glory, burning higher and higher, a pyre on which I would be laid as my own hatreds fueled it. Trapped within a self consuming inferno destroying upon itself, I cried out with silent screams for Him to save me.
For the first time in my life, He offered not an answer.
I cursed them. Guilty, I cried out to the now empty heavens, guilty! You, you fell beasts, you malignance. You are guilty of everything, everything!!!
Yes, how guilty, how sinful I thought them then. And yet how guilty, how sinful am I standing before you now.
~No one bites back as hard
On their anger~
At the base of all things hatred, all things feral is just one: survival. To survive, the will must be present. For the will, there must be threat. For threat, there must be resistance. For the resistance, there must be one thing; fear and anger. Everything comes down to fear and anger.
I can never remember being afraid of myself before this time. Through all the pain, all fear was on others; the disgusting creatures of night, the world that would not love me, the world that would not recognize me, the chains, the prison that bound me, the fire I had embraced become inferno; everything but me, and of course, Him. But in the one moment when He did not answer, I learned for the first time how to fear what I was.
And in that terrible birth, I came to know the reality I had hidden from for so long, the one that I had been blind to for so long.
His fire, the fire of my hate, of my passions in all it's entirety, had been consuming me and me alone.
With everything I had, I had to find some way to deny it. Deeper into the blaze I flung myself, regained with the false, misplaced hatred. So many dead, sent to their blazing judgment and still never enough to quench the fire within me. His fire, His fire that was once my sanctuary had turned against me and all I did was futility in its Light. Holy protection . . . forsaken me? Forsaken me, His forever dutiful servant? No! No, I could not believe such things. This was surely some Holy challenge, some test of my will, my faith in Him.
But in my mind, somewhere, I could not deny what was lurking there. Hate. All this hatred I had portrayed in them, in me? All this time, killing, destroying them out of a hatred meant for myself? Oh, how I wished I could have said no, no, a thousand times no! How I wished that I could hide it from myself, lie, oh yes, lie like I'd never lied before. 'All are guilty of trespass and sin,' I told myself when I would fall back upon myself into those dangerous musings, bathed in the blood of my work. 'You are only a mortal man. You can lie.'
It never worked.
The heart that fears itself is a heart that hates itself.
~None of my pain and woe
Can show through~
So now, what am I? Who am I? For all my life, it seems I have been asking and answering that same, repetitive question, and yet never satisfied with answer I have discovered. It is as if nothing of me exists at all.
And sometimes I wonder if even He knows who I am.
For behind this ice prison of mine, no one can see me. I have built the walls so high, the bars so thick, no one can see through to where I am.
Even I can no longer see in.
I have lost myself, left him by the wayside of the road promising to come back someday, and by the by, lost he that was me.
But no one will help me find him again. With silent, blood curdling screams, I am calling out to the gray, the mass, to He that is above, and yet no one will notice, no one turns their head or even looks up. His Fire, the fire of my Hate is turning upon the one who it was once made for, the one who deserved it all along.
No one knows me under this mask, behind these blue eyes. I've become amenity, a distortion, a man of no names. So badly it has been burnt by his Fire, the mask that cloaks me, it is penance, a judgment on my weary soul. A martyred man, I stand, still as deep in the depths of loneliness and woe as the day I died.
Sometimes I think I can still hear the sound of my voice . . . a voice that went mute long ago, mute long before I could have known it was. Slowly, it had escaped me over time, sanded down day by day, year by year, His words slowly coming to be one with mine. But now my words are choking, spluttering madly, drowning in a pool of my own lies. I am screaming out, but my screams are lost in the mist of sorrow and loneliness, a desolate forest burned by His fire, the fire of my hate. And no one can hear. Even He cannot hear.
I fear that soon, even I will not be able to hear.
~But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be~
Even the accursed have the right to dream.
For in the dark hours of the night, when I awake in the witching hours, and it sounds as though no other soul on this faceless Earth still walks, and can almost imagine that it was all simply a dream; some horrible nightmare conjured up in the mind of an overexcited preteen. I could almost swear I can feel the morning sunlight dripping onto my face, and the sound of my mother cooking, banging around pots and pans in the kitchen, the smell of hot griddle cakes so close I can hardly keep my eyes closed in eagerness.
But reality is always there. Sometimes I wish that just for once, I could hope, as some do, for that which is impossible. It is childish, yes, but a wonderful childishness.
I wonder if He chooses that reality, or if we are the ones responsible. Are we in some kind of constant world of pain and sorrow, forgiveness granted only to the good? Or is this land of darkened spirits of our own making, like my prison?
For indeed, every time I see someone beginning to die, as I did, I cannot help but wonder why we must suffer so. Even children, too young for them to understand their Original Sin . . . must they suffer, even? How many young ones must know the pain of dying before they've begun to live? I feel the turning of my heart, barren and cold as it is, burn with new passion for these young ones, so much like myself.
For I dream, yes, dream, of a day when His fire will not be a fire of my hate, but one of my love. A dream, perhaps, that I am not damned forever.
What is hate that love cannot be?
~I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free~
Yet to the shadows I am always drawn. In the shadows, I am nothing but a shadow, a non-existence I have come to be, the only way I know now to survive. In His shadow, I have become a dark servant, one who seems not to serve but to antagonize His intention. In that cloak of morbid loneliness, one finds strange apathetic comfort.
Even the touch of the chill is better than no touch at all. In that touch, one is able to find nothing, feel nothing. His Light comes not as dawn, but dusk. From which the bane of my existence roam, I still follow, perhaps not now in vengeance, but for the sake of existence. His Fire, the fire of hate, still it burns within me. I pretend it keeps me warm in the lonely hours of midnight. But it is no such fire. This is a fire that has burned everything in its wake, and now is the fair sight of passerby. It is a fire to chase away the darkness, to chase away the truth, the vulnerability.
The truth is also the lie. He works in ways both great and terrible; mysterious. And yet sometimes, it seems so perfectly clear it's a wonder Man never saw it before. As I found myself becoming almost that I had abhorred the most, there came to me the vision of a revelation that no one in a thousand years would ever had heard
The Hell below our feet is nothing like the Hell we create for ourselves here on the Earthly plain. With every one of those dirty beasts I thought I abhorred the most dying under my hands, sent back to their blazing eternity, I built my own Hell for myself, made the walls of the prison higher. With every blaze of His fire, the fire of Hate, I fed the inferno again.
It is said that Love and Hate are kin to one another. Hate, to me, was his Love, trespass so beguiling I knew never that I was digging my own grave. In my own sin, my own lust for vengeance in pounds of flesh, I never saw that I was becoming the very thing I thought I hated the most. I am just as much of a filthy animal as any of they, hiding behind the skirts of long lost memory of vulnerability and the cross of a holy bloodlust. I have fed it time and time again, and yet its hunger grows.
This hunger cannot be quenched by vengeance, by blood anymore. And to the ones I think I hate the most, I almost feel, in the heat of the Holy inferno, the fire of His divine justice, His fire, my fire, the fire of hate . . . to reach out for a Love that is not there.
~When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool~
For I long for something that would stay my hand at last, that at last this bloodshed, this eternal hunger could at last be quenched not in blood, but in an opened hand. I long for a day that the Fire may die away, become again the sanctuary it was so long ago. I long for a day where the sun does not rise in the Flames of Hatred, my shaking hands forever bound in its servitude. I long for a day that the pyre will grow dark with cold, dead embers in His awesome light.
I long for a day of Love at last.
~When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh, act like a fool~
For I tire of the shadows, the amenity that I have lusted after for so long. Tired and ragged, I have trudged in circles in the mist of loneliness and confusion, only to find myself once again trampling again the same path. I tire of the nameless man in the mirror who can tell me nothing but half-choking truths, words half his own, half force-fed by some omnipotent power. Foolish and blind, I have stumbled, and I wish to stumble no more. I abhor the sound of the non-laughter of a madman within, his eyes full of ire and wasted dreams.
I tire of being the lonesome.
~And if I swallow anything evil,
Put your finger down my throat~
No longer will I swallow the sickness, the Fire, the hate that has plagued my soul for thus long. I will not commit suicide in every day, every moment, every second to earn His love and never be enough I have nothing to offer but myself. For the first time, I know myself is enough. No longer will I wither, starving from within, willingly small and unworthy, burning on the pyre in vain of His glory. Futility I will follow no longer. I cannot be that which I hate anymore.
No longer will I starve for salvation.
~If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat~
No more will I leave myself in the cold to freeze for my sins. I have walked these blackened, burnt grounds, watched them grow cold with my heart, frozen with the bitterness of Judecca. Comatose and beaten by the harshness of my own whip, I have thrown myself down upon the steps to ask Thy mercy. No more will my heart turn over in its icy chest with every step I take upon Thy sacred earth. On Thy breast I will lay my wearied head to sleep, know the warmth of your easy breath as my lullaby. I will seek the warm love of Thy heart, not the chill and burn of Thy vengeance. I will know the Light of Thy pure soul, not the Darkness of Thy wronged death.
No more will I know You not.
~No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes~
* * *
It storms outside tonight.
In the darkened hallway, amidst the strewn, skewered carnage of his kill, a great man kneels, one hand upon his sword. Under his breath, he mutters in Latin a short prayer one by one over the still bodies of his numerous foes. In his other, shaking hand, he clutches desperately to a simple Rosary, keeping the count.
A single, silver tear, caught to light by a crash of lightning, rolls down the Father's pale, chiseled face.
What he prays for, no one knows.
And it storms outside tonight.
THE END
Elflord: *hair frazzled* Look, before I keep these guys from killing each other, I think I'd like to mention that I don't own any part of Hellsing. None of the characters, none of the episodes, none of the manga, none. And furthermore, I don't own the song 'Behind Blue Eyes.' It was written by an awesome, God-like rock band graciously named The Who.
A/N: One thing I'd like to mention before we get any further. I say this in all my fics, but I think even more than ever I have to make clear that I don't take plot as written in stone. I can take the liberty to change it if I think it better suits the fic. So please don't flame me for plot reasons. I can tell you for a fact that I am very sure that this particular fic the plot probably been changed quite a bit. However, I did it for artistic reasons, not out of scorn or ignorance. Please don't flame me for plot reasons.
Blue Eyes
Sometimes I wonder if even He knows who I am anymore . . .
~No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes . . .~
Forgotten, and so far left behind. I was left behind. Of my own accord, I have left myself behind, left him behind on the wayside of the road promised to come back someday, and by the by, have lost he that was me. That I long ago realized. And accepted.
So I died. I was dead before I had begun to live.
No one is to blame for my life. My decisions were my own, led by the steady hand of the Father, His eyes always over my shoulders, guiding me to the Light of His Eternal Love. I took it in my arms, the divine love of God in me, corruption of my soul only of the Original Sin.
It is said that children are untouched by the Original Sin, that they are too young to know the great temptations of Satan. This I cannot believe. To be born, to be the descendent of the Original Man, is to first inherit the weight of the Original Sin.
The first conscious decision I can ever remember making is that I would not fight my Original Sin. I was raised correctly, baptized in the traditional way before I could ever possibly know how to choose faith. When I was old enough to know that I had sinned long before I had ever been born, I did not feel pain. Unlike most, I accepted the fact, seeing no reason in fighting the Original Sin, as it seemed so many wanted to do.
How cowardly I thought them then. And yet how coward am I, standing here before you now.
~No one knows what it's like
To be hated~
It's hard to remember sometimes, what my life was. In childhood, I could never say that I was not loved. I was raised in a good family, with two parents who I knew were supposed to love me, and two brothers, one older and one younger, to which were my best of friends, when we did not quarrel. The town was not a large or harsh one, friendly and kind, all you could want. All knew the Divine faith, kept it well. The school was no different from any other, if not a little cold sometimes. That didn't matter to me.
No one liked me at the schools I went to. I had no friends there. I didn't care. Why should I have? Thinking back, I probably even preferred being alone like that. It was an odd existence for an odd child that wouldn't have a place. But I didn't mind. I already knew the world didn't love me.
In truth, I cannot say where I first began to believe that the world did not love me. It did not seem to come on at me all at once. In all reality, I should have been a joyful child, fullest of the grace of God. Somewhere along the line, though, I must have begun to believe it. It never seemed to me, somehow, that the world could love and accept me. I didn't expect it to. I didn't expect that the world embrace me. I expected nothing that I could not have.
I don't remember when I first began to think I was not loved, to become one of ice. But I can remember the first time I was dead.
~To be fated
To telling only lies~
I can remember. So many times, I have gone back and tried to erase that night, tried to erase each gray-greened detail from my gutted mind. But still they remain, inked into the patched canvas of the damned wretch named memory that neither time nor sand not blood of Men can bleach away.
I can remember the silence of that night, echoing in my ears; the most terrible silence ever to have been borne of this earth. Throwing my red and peeling bike down on the dewy grass, so many times they'd told me not to do, awaiting the stern word from my father for keeping myself late at the school once again. Unwitting, I walked up the friendly old steps to what would have been the kinship of my porridge or potato soup or kidney pie or whatever my good mother was at.
I can remember my naivety.
I can remember the feeling in that house I felt right through that door with my cold white hands on the doorknobs, as I turned it, I can remember that awful silence in my home. The earth-shattering sound of my own footstep in an empty house, with not a breath of sound, and a fear; a fear so thick in my brain, so soundless in my ears I could hear my own panicked heart beating. My voice calling, meek and terrified, those names I was praying with all my might would just answer my pleas.
I remember that last corner turned, and the scream that would never hear the breath of air. It caught there in my paralyzed throat, somewhere between existence and non-existence. Four figures, limp and stoic, torn and ravaged beyond all recognition by some incredible soulless, heartless, bestiality, forgotten forms propped in the most grotesqueness beyond Heaven and Hell. Knelt before a desecrate altar, painted in the most odd and vivid red, strange names and figures never known to the eyes of pure youth, painted in the languages of evil, disgustingness, and disgrace, words of hatred and heresy uncountable.
I remember the first time I saw the most Holy of Divine symbols made to be horrendous.
I remember sitting there, the screams within me caged, building in my red, tired throat, my stomach full of incredible sickness never to become fruitful, my ears full of a terrible silence that would eat me alive, and yet could not make a sound to save myself from it. For hours upon decades, so it seemed, I sat there, looking, unable to move, to run, to even breathe.
I remember that long, long night.
I remember the sun rising on that horrendous cross the next morning, my eyes still open and dry without sleep. Listening to the school truant officer slamming on the door, come for my brothers and me, like some faraway symphony, without even the voice or will to call out.
I remember the scream at last.
I remember having no lie, no truth to tell.
~But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be. . . ~
Some say that my conscience as a man was strengthened by my experience with the fell beasts, and that is why I am the man I am today. They tell me I am an example to all of the Divine faith, of a man who refused to give up, a man who chose to dedicate his life to His Divine work, who took up arms in His name.
They are wrong.
'Conscience' would never have been the word they would have thought of if they'd seen me, staring at the wall for days upon end, never speaking a word, never making a sound, never showing a sign of life. The word would have been 'Sick'. For nearly two months, perhaps a little less each day, I would shut myself, afraid of what would creep into me, my mind and soul always in fear,. Little was the hour of night that I would find sanctuary from them, a weakened will, clinging to the only thing I knew to fight against evil. My young, white hands laced before me, I'd kneel at the feet of the Father, and in it, search for what I thought was my last salvation.
I had died, and I knew not how to live again.
A good spell in front of the fire, as the saying goes, began to see me back on my feet. Slow and sure, after a good while, going back and forth from the doctors and the parish, from one sterilized hell to another, I learned to come human again. But what I also learned was something I hoped I would never need.
Hate. Such a strange thing is, this hate. It is a fire, hate is. Like that of the pits of Hell, I embraced that fire with both arms open, in full knowing, in full light of His mighty Love. I did it in His full blessing, chose it in His own sacred name. I loved this fire. It was mine and I its, all within the Light of a single second. It was my own burden, guided by the all-knowing hand of the Father, and in True grace, I accepted.
It was His gift; a gift so powerful, so potent of the Power of Christ that the world would never hurt me again. This fire was my sanctuary, my Sacred Ground, my sword as well as my shield. Hate. Though it was Forbid, it was still of Him. I wanted to know Hate; hate, full and simple.
And I wanted more.
I wanted to show those fell beasts that had desecrated my life just who they were up against. I wanted to see them in the pain I had felt. I wanted to see their agony, their utter misery. I wanted to hear their feeble, high-pitched shrieks of falsehood repentance which I would refuse with triumph. I wanted to feel their corrupted souls begging out for a mercy they would never be granted. I wanted to send them back to the fiery depths that had borne them a scourge on the Earth. I wanted to laugh, laugh with every deep, true, pure and awesome fiber of my being as I heard their descent into the world of their Eternal torture.
But oh, I wanted more. I had to dream of more.
~I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free~
I wanted it to never be again.
Somewhere, deep inside, I must have felt guilt for the fate that I could not change. I must have felt something like responsibility for those four things on the floor of that white family room now defiled by that unholy thing writ in their essence, for those that had come to my home and, intruders that had stolen my life away, that had killed me. I must have felt something to embrace His fire so vehemently, so entirely, never imagining that fire could consume me, too.
I wanted it never to be again for someone to die the way I had. I wanted it to never be again that someone would have to be alone the way I had. These fell beasts would go on and on and nothing would be done. Of all things I hated so much with His awesome fire of Hate, I hated this fact, this truth that no one would face.
I hated them. How could they stand there and see it and say it wasn't there? How could they just be there, scratching their heads, when it was obvious what was to be done? To call themselves Holy men, and to be on the wayside letting chaos ensue?
Lad that I was, I promised I would never be like that.
I was not going to let them stay. I was not going to let it happen again.
For two years, I bided my time, growing older, and seeming to them (so ignorant they grew) forgotten the pain. But they knew. Deep down, I think some knew what I had inside of me, that fire, His incredible fire that blazed within, that hate, that hate that reached to everything in my life, nothing spared. And why should I spare it? The world would not love me. It would not see my hate, my fire. It would not acknowledge me. So why should I spare anything when it hadn't given a damn to spare me?
As I grew, learned, trained for what I'd be, they could never know that within me, something was smoldering, eating me from the inside out, never letting alone from the grasp. His fire, this fire of hate, it would eat me alive if I couldn't get free. If I couldn't get free, it would take me, too.
A new, potent oil had been thrown upon the fire. Within me smoldered vengeance. A vengeance with a thirst.
~No one knows what it's like
To feel these feelings
Like I do~
I knew what I had to do. I knew long before they thought to ask me.
The Father at my parish gave me one last sad, backwards look when I answered, resounding "Division Thirteen, Iscariot". He knew what I'd answer before he'd asked. He just nodded at me and told me to start to gather my things, that he'd forward a message to them as soon as possible, and to be ready for the train in three days.
I was sixteen years old.
To train for XIII was a monstrous task. After all, only the few, the absolute best are even considered for acceptance. But I knew not limits. I didn't just strive to be the best, I WAS the best. With His fire burning within me, I strove unlike any man has every striven, driven by a Force now so much more than myself.
I did not feel bad for those that got left behind. They had not His holy fire. I had the reason, the drive, the need, and the will. I had what it took to be Division XIII. But most of all, I had Hate; hate for those fell devils that had taken everything from me, invaders, vile intruders to this realm, disgusting creatures that suck the very life out of Man. More than anything I had ever wanted, I wanted them dead, every last single one of them. I wanted them to feel it from my hand. Justice would serve itself; to do to them what they'd done to me. They would feel His fire burn them alive; the fire of my hate, the fire of my vengeance.
This must be what would make me free.
I was trapped, and that somehow, somewhere, my freedom must have been waiting for me. Somehow, with that insignia of the Holy Order of Iscariot, I felt that my freedom would come to me; that at last, I would be able to scream, scream my heart out and more. It would release me from the chains of my imprisonment at last, the loneliness lifted from mine eyes, and His Holy light shinning down in unimaginable brilliance. I would not have to be a thirteen-year-old boy, sitting staring in the face of utter evil, unable to move, in a world that didn't love him. Transformed from the ashes of His awesome fire, the fire of my every hate, my every passion, I would be reborn of the flame, a phoenix, at last to be him that was me.
How wrong I was.
For in that fire; His fire, my fire, the fire of Hate . . . I, too, was burned alive.
~And I blame you~
Incredible that I was so blind. Just goes to prove what men really are . . . fools. Some days, it seems a wonder to me He hasn't already done us out, such wretches we.
The experiment was little pain to endure next to all that I had already done. Every time I thought of giving it up, I thought of the pain I would exact upon all of them, thought about the glorious liberation of being freed of my prison of ice. I would at last be able to raise my head up high and say my name with pride. No longer would I be something uncounted, overlooked. Now I would be the one to strike fear into their fell, empty hearts, show them the power of man before they were sent screaming back to the Nine Circles. His flame, my flame would destroy their evil, illuminate the darkness into Light.
I simply couldn't see.
Because slowly, oh slowly, I could feel that hate begin to come back to me. The fire of my hate, His divine flame; it was a blaze now, an inferno. And yet, I lived thrived on the chaos, the wildness, the utter feral hatred. I loved the way it felt, this reckless, flying hatred, an obsession burning of the depths of my very self, alighted by His mighty hand. It filled my every waking moment, every last part of me immersed in it.
You could smell the decay in me.
To those fell beasts, I was surely Fear. With each one of their black, empty souls I sent to the next world, I prayed the chains fall away, the bars of the prison of ice melt away with the bearing of the flame, that the flame would be quenched with time. But with each one, I watched in horror as the bars grew taller, the chains heavier, the fire of His glory, burning higher and higher, a pyre on which I would be laid as my own hatreds fueled it. Trapped within a self consuming inferno destroying upon itself, I cried out with silent screams for Him to save me.
For the first time in my life, He offered not an answer.
I cursed them. Guilty, I cried out to the now empty heavens, guilty! You, you fell beasts, you malignance. You are guilty of everything, everything!!!
Yes, how guilty, how sinful I thought them then. And yet how guilty, how sinful am I standing before you now.
~No one bites back as hard
On their anger~
At the base of all things hatred, all things feral is just one: survival. To survive, the will must be present. For the will, there must be threat. For threat, there must be resistance. For the resistance, there must be one thing; fear and anger. Everything comes down to fear and anger.
I can never remember being afraid of myself before this time. Through all the pain, all fear was on others; the disgusting creatures of night, the world that would not love me, the world that would not recognize me, the chains, the prison that bound me, the fire I had embraced become inferno; everything but me, and of course, Him. But in the one moment when He did not answer, I learned for the first time how to fear what I was.
And in that terrible birth, I came to know the reality I had hidden from for so long, the one that I had been blind to for so long.
His fire, the fire of my hate, of my passions in all it's entirety, had been consuming me and me alone.
With everything I had, I had to find some way to deny it. Deeper into the blaze I flung myself, regained with the false, misplaced hatred. So many dead, sent to their blazing judgment and still never enough to quench the fire within me. His fire, His fire that was once my sanctuary had turned against me and all I did was futility in its Light. Holy protection . . . forsaken me? Forsaken me, His forever dutiful servant? No! No, I could not believe such things. This was surely some Holy challenge, some test of my will, my faith in Him.
But in my mind, somewhere, I could not deny what was lurking there. Hate. All this hatred I had portrayed in them, in me? All this time, killing, destroying them out of a hatred meant for myself? Oh, how I wished I could have said no, no, a thousand times no! How I wished that I could hide it from myself, lie, oh yes, lie like I'd never lied before. 'All are guilty of trespass and sin,' I told myself when I would fall back upon myself into those dangerous musings, bathed in the blood of my work. 'You are only a mortal man. You can lie.'
It never worked.
The heart that fears itself is a heart that hates itself.
~None of my pain and woe
Can show through~
So now, what am I? Who am I? For all my life, it seems I have been asking and answering that same, repetitive question, and yet never satisfied with answer I have discovered. It is as if nothing of me exists at all.
And sometimes I wonder if even He knows who I am.
For behind this ice prison of mine, no one can see me. I have built the walls so high, the bars so thick, no one can see through to where I am.
Even I can no longer see in.
I have lost myself, left him by the wayside of the road promising to come back someday, and by the by, lost he that was me.
But no one will help me find him again. With silent, blood curdling screams, I am calling out to the gray, the mass, to He that is above, and yet no one will notice, no one turns their head or even looks up. His Fire, the fire of my Hate is turning upon the one who it was once made for, the one who deserved it all along.
No one knows me under this mask, behind these blue eyes. I've become amenity, a distortion, a man of no names. So badly it has been burnt by his Fire, the mask that cloaks me, it is penance, a judgment on my weary soul. A martyred man, I stand, still as deep in the depths of loneliness and woe as the day I died.
Sometimes I think I can still hear the sound of my voice . . . a voice that went mute long ago, mute long before I could have known it was. Slowly, it had escaped me over time, sanded down day by day, year by year, His words slowly coming to be one with mine. But now my words are choking, spluttering madly, drowning in a pool of my own lies. I am screaming out, but my screams are lost in the mist of sorrow and loneliness, a desolate forest burned by His fire, the fire of my hate. And no one can hear. Even He cannot hear.
I fear that soon, even I will not be able to hear.
~But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be~
Even the accursed have the right to dream.
For in the dark hours of the night, when I awake in the witching hours, and it sounds as though no other soul on this faceless Earth still walks, and can almost imagine that it was all simply a dream; some horrible nightmare conjured up in the mind of an overexcited preteen. I could almost swear I can feel the morning sunlight dripping onto my face, and the sound of my mother cooking, banging around pots and pans in the kitchen, the smell of hot griddle cakes so close I can hardly keep my eyes closed in eagerness.
But reality is always there. Sometimes I wish that just for once, I could hope, as some do, for that which is impossible. It is childish, yes, but a wonderful childishness.
I wonder if He chooses that reality, or if we are the ones responsible. Are we in some kind of constant world of pain and sorrow, forgiveness granted only to the good? Or is this land of darkened spirits of our own making, like my prison?
For indeed, every time I see someone beginning to die, as I did, I cannot help but wonder why we must suffer so. Even children, too young for them to understand their Original Sin . . . must they suffer, even? How many young ones must know the pain of dying before they've begun to live? I feel the turning of my heart, barren and cold as it is, burn with new passion for these young ones, so much like myself.
For I dream, yes, dream, of a day when His fire will not be a fire of my hate, but one of my love. A dream, perhaps, that I am not damned forever.
What is hate that love cannot be?
~I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free~
Yet to the shadows I am always drawn. In the shadows, I am nothing but a shadow, a non-existence I have come to be, the only way I know now to survive. In His shadow, I have become a dark servant, one who seems not to serve but to antagonize His intention. In that cloak of morbid loneliness, one finds strange apathetic comfort.
Even the touch of the chill is better than no touch at all. In that touch, one is able to find nothing, feel nothing. His Light comes not as dawn, but dusk. From which the bane of my existence roam, I still follow, perhaps not now in vengeance, but for the sake of existence. His Fire, the fire of hate, still it burns within me. I pretend it keeps me warm in the lonely hours of midnight. But it is no such fire. This is a fire that has burned everything in its wake, and now is the fair sight of passerby. It is a fire to chase away the darkness, to chase away the truth, the vulnerability.
The truth is also the lie. He works in ways both great and terrible; mysterious. And yet sometimes, it seems so perfectly clear it's a wonder Man never saw it before. As I found myself becoming almost that I had abhorred the most, there came to me the vision of a revelation that no one in a thousand years would ever had heard
The Hell below our feet is nothing like the Hell we create for ourselves here on the Earthly plain. With every one of those dirty beasts I thought I abhorred the most dying under my hands, sent back to their blazing eternity, I built my own Hell for myself, made the walls of the prison higher. With every blaze of His fire, the fire of Hate, I fed the inferno again.
It is said that Love and Hate are kin to one another. Hate, to me, was his Love, trespass so beguiling I knew never that I was digging my own grave. In my own sin, my own lust for vengeance in pounds of flesh, I never saw that I was becoming the very thing I thought I hated the most. I am just as much of a filthy animal as any of they, hiding behind the skirts of long lost memory of vulnerability and the cross of a holy bloodlust. I have fed it time and time again, and yet its hunger grows.
This hunger cannot be quenched by vengeance, by blood anymore. And to the ones I think I hate the most, I almost feel, in the heat of the Holy inferno, the fire of His divine justice, His fire, my fire, the fire of hate . . . to reach out for a Love that is not there.
~When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool~
For I long for something that would stay my hand at last, that at last this bloodshed, this eternal hunger could at last be quenched not in blood, but in an opened hand. I long for a day that the Fire may die away, become again the sanctuary it was so long ago. I long for a day where the sun does not rise in the Flames of Hatred, my shaking hands forever bound in its servitude. I long for a day that the pyre will grow dark with cold, dead embers in His awesome light.
I long for a day of Love at last.
~When I smile, tell me some bad news
Before I laugh, act like a fool~
For I tire of the shadows, the amenity that I have lusted after for so long. Tired and ragged, I have trudged in circles in the mist of loneliness and confusion, only to find myself once again trampling again the same path. I tire of the nameless man in the mirror who can tell me nothing but half-choking truths, words half his own, half force-fed by some omnipotent power. Foolish and blind, I have stumbled, and I wish to stumble no more. I abhor the sound of the non-laughter of a madman within, his eyes full of ire and wasted dreams.
I tire of being the lonesome.
~And if I swallow anything evil,
Put your finger down my throat~
No longer will I swallow the sickness, the Fire, the hate that has plagued my soul for thus long. I will not commit suicide in every day, every moment, every second to earn His love and never be enough I have nothing to offer but myself. For the first time, I know myself is enough. No longer will I wither, starving from within, willingly small and unworthy, burning on the pyre in vain of His glory. Futility I will follow no longer. I cannot be that which I hate anymore.
No longer will I starve for salvation.
~If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat~
No more will I leave myself in the cold to freeze for my sins. I have walked these blackened, burnt grounds, watched them grow cold with my heart, frozen with the bitterness of Judecca. Comatose and beaten by the harshness of my own whip, I have thrown myself down upon the steps to ask Thy mercy. No more will my heart turn over in its icy chest with every step I take upon Thy sacred earth. On Thy breast I will lay my wearied head to sleep, know the warmth of your easy breath as my lullaby. I will seek the warm love of Thy heart, not the chill and burn of Thy vengeance. I will know the Light of Thy pure soul, not the Darkness of Thy wronged death.
No more will I know You not.
~No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes~
* * *
It storms outside tonight.
In the darkened hallway, amidst the strewn, skewered carnage of his kill, a great man kneels, one hand upon his sword. Under his breath, he mutters in Latin a short prayer one by one over the still bodies of his numerous foes. In his other, shaking hand, he clutches desperately to a simple Rosary, keeping the count.
A single, silver tear, caught to light by a crash of lightning, rolls down the Father's pale, chiseled face.
What he prays for, no one knows.
And it storms outside tonight.
THE END