Yufet
by Patrick Kapera
I am an innocent man, yet I am touched by a darkness
I cannot fathom. I walk Her empty streets while all the rest sleep, afraid
or too sure of what they will do and say to me if I am recognized. "When
a man falls," they say, "he is to be pitied, not condemned." But the truth
of the matter is that they hunt us down like animals, slaughtering us
mercilessly, never understanding what or who we have become.
I can still remember a time when I would have done the
same, when I was as small and timid, shirking away from every shadow...
"What can I expect during the Test?" I ask my good friend,
Lazara, at the dawn of the morning I am to be knighted.
"Insight," he replies, in his typically enigmatic manner.
Am I to become as evasive as he? Do all who are judged by the Stone become
hopelessly introverted, able only to see the black of their enemies against
the white plain of their own desolate hearts?
"What are you thinking, Yufet?" comes Lazara's voice
after a time. He is seated at the ledge of the second-story balcony, his
legs dangling beneath him in the fresh morning air.
"About a dream that came to me last night..." I answer,
the images flooding into my mind's eye like vague phantoms of another person's
life...
I am walking Her dark, empty streets imperiously, filled
witha sense of dreadful purpose. Every lonely alley fuels my search with
so much more angry lust. I am but a puppet, an agent of wrath bent on fulfilling
my dark master's desire.
Before the night is through, I will drink life's blood
in excess...
"What happened... in your dream?" Lazara prompts, intrigued
apparantly by sudden mental departure.
A gruesome sensation is growing within me, threatening
to tear me apart if I do not let it out. But I am unsure how to do that.
It has been so long since I let anything go.
"There was a girl," I respond, my words reflecting the
trembling deep inside.
She is beautiful, precisely what I would have desired
when I was young and free, before learning first-hand the evils of the world.
Her spirit is bright and colorful, with a joyful hope she spreads to everything
she touches. I approach from behind, calling out to her only when I
am confident taht she will not run. I smile as genuinely as I am able,
praying that it can hide my true intentions. She is friendly enough, welcoming
my company, and tells me that she is only here waiting for a friend that
is to meet her. A lover, I think. Why else would they be meeting in such
a dangerous location at such an unreasonable hour?
This is a special occassion, my thoughts continue, and
I tell her so, my laughing voice coming out like dancing leaves. She asks
me why, but she is not afraid - not yet. I am saving that for later.
"You jackal!" Lazara exclaims at me, his beaming face
the picture of envy. "Who is she, this girl? Do you know her, or are you
dreaming up fantasy women now?"
"She was like the sun, so young and innocent," and before
I can comment further, I let slip as well, "Far, far too young for the likes
of me..."
She asks me something unimportant as I struggle to decide
who should die first, and by the time that we see her suitor sneaking through
the quarter, I have made my choice.
The vista of pain pulled back across his pallid face
is almost as delightful as the weight of her nubile form as it goes limp
within my clutching hands. Her last gurgling breath rushes through me in
a hot flash, my mind races into oblivion, and the cold sweat breaking out
all over my body feels like a shower of the finest blood-red wine...
Lazara can see by my shaking form that something is wrong,
and his smile wanes. "What do you mean, Yufet? What happened in your dream?"
The rush is upon me again, and I am conscious of the violence the night before.
It had been no dream, no flight of fancy gone terrbily awry. I had killed
two people in cold, bitter blood, and hidden them in the sewers where they
would not be found until long after their identities could be discerned.
I am a monster, and I am unashamed. The pathetic, whining slime that I become
each day is there to please an audience, to keep those who would question
my actions at arm's length, so that I may continue unfettered. My work is
never done.
"Yufet, what is it? Why are you making that sound?" I
am only distantly aware of my ragged, heaving breath, and the effect it must
have on Lazara.
Animalistic impulses war upon the hated calm inside me,
and I know that I will finally let go again - soon...
I walk slowly toward the tall black Stone, my heart pounding
within my breast, trying to break free through my aching ribs. I am afraid
- of insight and of truth. I am not ready, I think as the Ebonites flanking
me back away. They cannot judge me - only the Stone can that. They will wait
until I place my hands upon it's cool surface, so that the ancient wisdom
of their Prophet can assess my standing among them. Then, they will welcome
me as a brother in arms, or strike me down without conscience.
It is their way.
I look about the Temple, and see only the shallow faces
they want me to.
The Ebonites are a stoic, sacred people, loath to part
with their secrets. But what of mine? What will happen to all the hidden
words I've never told anyone? All the lost things only I have seen? Will
they be taken from me? I do not want to become like them - without satisfaction
or sadness, anger or even contentment - only existing to enforce their own
distorted interpretation of the Prophet's message.
Why am I here? I believe in Mekhem, and his mission.
But I'm not sure that I believe in his followers. They say that the Prophet
resides in spirit within the Stone - that he is testing those who seek
enlightenment. But what if they are wrong?
My Judgement is at hand.
Looking at the Stone makes my eyes hurt. The layer just
below the surface ripples in slow motion like an upended glass of jelly,
and within (or beyond?), I can make out something swimming toward me. I have
gone too far to turn back, I rationalize. I have spent too many years striving
to understand the Prophet's message, and cannot risk turning away from what
could possibly be the end of my quest, regardless of the appeal of that
end.
"I need to see," I whisper as I reach out to the Stone.
"I need to understand." And as my palms meet the infinite blackness, I can
feel them drawn in with a flashfire welcome. Searing pain arches up the bones
in my arms until it feels as if they will be ripped from my sockets or burned
away forever. I can feel myself slipping inside, lost to the obscure alien
realm beyond...
The pitch of my ascendant passions heightens again as
I watch Lazara fall to his death at the steps below. His screams are mercurial
laughter to me, the sound he makes at the end a dazzling symphony of snapped
bones and ruptured organs.
I know now why he never answered my question, and where
he went after "leaving" my place. Lazara is dead, snuffed out by own hand,
and so many others that came before.
He has always been aware of me, my inner demon, as I
have remained the ignorant vessel for his insanity. My relentless quest for
illumination has become twisted and distorted, mangled by fear of the truth
and human frailty. He is a monster, and I am so very ashamed of him.
"But there is no need," the voices come to me in the
black nightless expanse, intruding on my thoughts as my body plummets into
hell. The words emerge in my soul like raging flares of emotion, detached,
without identity. "What?" I call, but there is no answer, and I realize that
I have asked the wrong question. "Who?"
Their empathic response is a long time in coming. "No
one..."
And in the endless moments that are stolen from my
freefalling form, I know that the Ebonites are wrong. Mekhem is not within
the Stone, but something else is - something old, outside what we consider
reality, and bent on our eradication...
Moments or millennia later, a muted fire appears above
me, and I float up toward it, motionless. My surroundings become semi-solid,
like oil, and a panic sweeps through me. Mortal fear that I will drown suddenly
returns to me, and I flail my limbs to reach the surface.
When had I stopped caring whether I lived or died, and
why was it different now?
Breaking the surface is like cutting a path through
sackcloth with a spoon, and the air of the rank room beyond burns within
my lungs. I am somewhere else now. The walls are jagged, like we are undergound,
and there are cave mouths everywhere.
Surrounding the pool I am floating in are several dark
figures, chief of whom is a man with only one eye. A long-tailed monkey leaps
up and down upon his shoulder, its shrill excitement echoing through the
chamber as it points a long, bony finger at me.
I am dragged from the mire, and rolled on my back. Several
of the figures hover over me, their wicked smiles unnerving. "Welcome," the
Monkey Man slurs.
"What... happened? Where am I?" I stutter through the
foul-tasting broth.
"You have failed their Test, young one," another answers.
"You are among friends."
"I heard... felt... something in the Stone..."
Low chuckling from the onlookers does not improve the
tight ball of anxiety working thorugh my belly. "Who are they?" I ask, wanting
to rise, but too weak to crawl.
"Gods," the Monkey Man says, "remnants of another age,
when things were more clear."
"And you," I ask, the ball in my throat now, and rising.
More chuckling, as the men, in turn, reveal small tattoos upon their bodies
- of a long dog's heads with pointed ears and feral grins. "Jackals..." they
hiss together, and the world fades away behind them, leaving only a trace
of humanity, scarred by neglect and venal hunger.
I walk Her empty streets while the rest sleep, afraid
or too sure of what they will do and say to me if I am recognized.
"When a man falls," they say, "he is to be pitied, not
condemned." But I fell long before my condemnation, and I no longer seek
their pity. The monster I was and the man I want to be are one now.
That has been the gift of the gods within the Stone. Reconciling their evils
with those I have wrought has given me new strength, and a new mission, and
I will not fail. I will hunt them down like animals, slaughtering them
mercilessly, for I understand precisely what they have become and who they
serve. And though I bear their mark, I will not ever bear their stain.
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