Tag: Short Story

Chapter 1

~ Black Dogma ~

As a boy I often wondered exactly how dark the color black could get. I also wondered about the brightest white, just not as often. While being forced to sit on a metal chair at a cafeteria table in Catechism class, I made drawings of demons with a #2 pencil. Totally dissatisfied with the results of my creative efforts, I wondered where I could get the blackest pencil on earth. I imagined myself making a deal with the devil to get the blackest pencil, and once he had forked it over, I’d ask him to please sit still so I could capture his unholy likeness in my current cartoon style. I never did get the opportunity to cut a deal with the Master of Demons back then, and years later when I finally did, I’d already learned just how dark the blackest black was, so bargaining for a magic pencil no longer seemed relevant or appropriate. I’d come to know that the blackest black inhabits a place of no coming back, or if you do come back, you always bring some of the black back with you. Your shadow gets darker, your life-light gets dimmer and your chances of achieving sainthood grow slimmer. Absolute black is a living organism. It resides in the place where night terrors gnash their teeth and shriek their fury. It holds its rightful place within the infinite span of our cosmos at the gateway of every sucking black hole in the Universe. Now I’m left wondering whether every black hole in space might lead to the same Catholic Hell. Eternal damnation becomes a serious consideration when you’re raised to fear God, Satan, and fire. Isn’t it interesting though, that a fiery hell on earth seems more and more plausible when you factor in the onset of global climate change? I can’t quite remember – Is digression one of the seven deadly sins? If so, you can add it to my lifelong list of transgressions so I can atone for it later. Great balls of lightning, I must get back to the point! This narrative is not meant to be funny or fictitious, or even an attempt to entertain. It is a grave warning. It’s a metaphorical fable about what might happen to you, if you dare to go looking for the source of absolute black.

I’m still sifting through the finer details (i.e., the charcoaled remains of my journey to hell’s gateway) in an attempt to find reason, or at least some semblance of rationale behind my decision to follow Darkness to its source. A central factor in my choice to set forth on a fool’s quest to find the origins of evil, was my premature introduction to the story of Jesus Christ. Like most of my childhood friends, I deeply appreciated my Catholic upbringing, on one day each year – December 25th. But when it came to Sunday morning masses and Catechism classes, I thought the toys and candies of Christmas fell short of sufficient payment, especially when I took into account the yearly quota of lost playtime hours invested. Halloween, on the other hand, asked for no penance or devotion, seeking only a one-night stand of some good old-fashioned gluttony and a propensity to play pranks on unwary adults. And at least the inventors of Halloween were forthright about its roots being firmly grounded in fear and morbidity. Halloween was, and is still, one of my favorite holidays. But the world doesn’t offer a religion based on Halloween’s moralistic principles, and even if it did, I’m sure my mother wouldn’t have approved. So, it’s back to Saints Peter and Paul church and my misguided interpretation of the story of Jesus Christ.

This is the first chapter in the first book of a trilogy I’ll be writing. The three books will be based on the true story of my lifetime (as yet unfolding…). Please feel free to criticize. But do be advised that I still have connections in the Kingdom of Absolute Black!

Chapter 2

~ Wicked Babies ~

Jesus said, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” Luke 23:34

And maybe the Almighty Father did forgive them, but I didn’t. Even as an eight-year-old boy, I was convinced that they knew what they were doing, and they did it anyway. The life story of Jesus Christ that I was taught during those many hours of indoctrination into the Catholic religion, stirred in me an enormous internal conflict. I’m sure the reaction I had to the story is fairly common among children when they learn how Jesus’ life ended. However, when I began to internalize the teachings, I am certain that I was too young to understand that the “they” in Luke’s passage did not equate to ‘we’ in my life story. In a single misstep – a naive misinterpretation – I accepted an overwhelming amount of guilt and a huge burden to make recompense for the unspeakable atrocity we committed in the crucifixion of Christ. I embraced the idea that, ‘We knew exactly what we were doing, and we did it anyway’. Here was this miraculous human being who taught love and forgiveness, healed his brothers and sisters, openly accepted sinners and saints alike, and we decided he should be tortured and killed for daring to be different from the rest of us. I became secretly enraged by all of this. I focused the magnitude of that rage inward. It’s so strange to think that I identified more with the teachings of Jesus than I did with the teachings of my grade-school teachers, and because of that, I nearly destroyed my capacity to identify with either school of thought. This is when I started to wonder about the blackest black.

The troublesome thing about childhood wonder – it can lead you a long way down a path in one direction or another, and due to inexperience, you might arrive at a place of new understanding, a place where you’re no longer wondering about that specific thing, but you find yourself hopelessly lost about every other thing. I’ve learned that the distance between absolute black and the brightest white is relative to the number of gradations on a gray scale your current senses are able to perceive. Everything comes down to life experience. When I first began wondering about the blackest black, and when I started making my plans to challenge the unholiest evil, I was grossly inexperienced. Could I have used the word innocent here, instead of inexperienced? Absolutely not. There exists a similar ‘gray scale’ between innocence and guilt that I’m not ready to explore at this point in the story, and besides, one of the very first lessons I learned in catechism was that we humans are all guilty at birth. Original sin exempts us from innocence. If there is a completely neutral gray, a tone that is precisely centered between the blackest black and the purest white, and we insert the equivalent of that gray on the scale between guilt and innocence, the church teaches that we are already closer to guilt than we are to innocence, even at the moment of birth. It’s a bit of dogma that I’ve never been able to come to terms with. It seems unfair that the human race will never be free from original sin – and furthermore, never be eligible for a complete collective redemption. But I guess that’s where the story of Jesus Christ intersects with the story that I’m telling you now.

The story of Jesus sparked in me a black/white obsession, but there were many other stories that fueled it into an internal raging inferno. So many stories of heroic avengers doing the right things, following the right paths, and coming out clean and righteous on the other side of their trials and tribulations. From the Holy Bible there was the story of David and Goliath, from contemporary literature there was Frodo Baggins from the Shire, and from Hollywood there was Andy Dufresne from the Shawshank State Penitentiary. I was disappointed in God’s failure to intercede on our behalf and infuriated with the devil for leading us so far astray. I vowed to avenge Jesus of Nazareth and every other human being that had ever been bullied, tortured, maimed or destroyed at the behest of Satan and his horde of demons. I would willfully confront the Prince of Darkness and demand full accountability. A disobedient speck of stardust countering the darkest forces of the Universe.

We all have our stories to tell, and I’m committed to telling you this one. If you appreciate the entertainment, please consider leaving a tip in the jar on the Donate*Contact page. Every small donation will help towards getting me settled into Savannah and ready for classes starting on September 11th. Thank you for your consideration!