Took you long enough.
I shouldn’t be here, and I’m not stealthy enough to really be hiding any. I guess I was never one to be cautious. So I sit here and watch you glide out from behind the curtain, ready for your next performance. There’s a scroll in your hand, can’t tell if it’s scripture, your own notes, or both. The degree of what’s real and what’s fake is blurred enough as it is. I just wonder what you have to tell the world this time.
You don’t see me back here, hat in hand from the last pupil, but here I am. I remember I used to think when I was a dumbass pup that there weren’t faces behind those masks. I mean, I had six generations to hype y’all up as my boogeyman, the monster under the bed, the evil in the world that sucks at your soul. Easy to do when it’s all you hear, but it was all fiction.
I remember telling you when we met that I couldn’t even think as far as six months back without just being full of regret and disgust at who I used to be. And I used to say it as who they made me, the innocent empty canvas painted blood red with the spears of civil war. One island, two peoples, and everyone themselves is their own island. And for all my life until six months before you saved me, that’s all I was- a lonely empty land stripped bare.
It’s been three years since and I still can’t think back further than six months.
Everyone’s here for a sermon. That’s what you’re here for, and you’re already clearing your throat. It doesn’t matter that you don’t have a microphone. One temple is so humble, consumed by the nature it’s a part of, with trees as pillars and woven grass as curtains, benches of harvested, blessed wood and floor paved into stone. And one pulpit, just for you. I pity the tree that gave its life for you. This place is so secluded, that we can hear the birds chirping through trees the next ten miles over. Instead, we hear you.
I hear your voice clear as day. Turns out that mask that scared me so much straight from the crib didn’t keep your voice from cleaning the sin out of my ears, and it didn’t keep your eyes from scanning me with emotion that I was never allowed to read until we were both in too deep. Wish I could have worn a mask. A little one sided that you could read every emotion on my face but you just kept me guessing. That’s my fault, though. I talked too much, couldn’t keep it in like you do. That’s all anyone desperate like me ever needed to see. A mask, red robes, and the word of something bigger than us.
I didn’t have any choice but to tell the truth.
“It’s easy to believe,” you begin, “that the gods are invisible.” I used to think that your voice was magical, some voodoo power thing I guess my mind still hadn’t debunked. When I heard your voice it consumed my entire body. I didn’t just hear you, I experienced you and every word you said. Even before I touched you, I felt you. I was a part of whatever was holy that you were experiencing. Turns out, no one else ever had that way with words that you did. Right now I’m trying not to let go, trying not to fall out, trying to believe that nothing ever changed, that the leaves don’t change every day.
I have my hat in my lap as you speak, but I don’t hear what you’re saying. I just think about how my hat doesn’t hide anything that I want. It’s a simple idea but it rings through my mind more than I want. I feel my company bulging through my pocket, as ridiculous as others would fear it to be. If you saw it, I wouldn’t need you to yank off your mask to be afraid. Maybe then you could be as honest as me.
I tune into you again, a familiar feeling. “In the trees we think are so large and intimidating, in the rain that covers us with cold water, in the clouds that are so unobtainable and the seas that are so accessible, perhaps you feel a sensation you can’t explain, that can only be described as your company. That is where you can feel the presence of the gods.”
That’s a nice idea, but I can’t believe it. I can’t believe anything you say, because I don’t know what’s true or not. I protect myself by denying everything, but it’s funny you say that you could feel company you are reverent of but you can’t see. That is easy to believe, and it makes me angry enough to want to execute my ideas early, because you had company. You had company you could see, that was reverent of you, that saw you as the one safe space that took away my fear. Why am I not nearly as worth it to you as an invisible god you can’t see, can’t confirm?
I was real. I was never fiction.
I can’t listen to you preach, listen to you quote scripture you know too well to deny that you are anything but a sinner. I saw you commit them, I felt you commit them, I was them. I was the sin you pushed away as if you never committed it, and you expect me to believe in the gods when I wallow in your sins, ones you never take ownership of?
Before, my hate was based on fiction. Now it's far too real.
I occupy myself with thinking of them. The ones filling the pews, who went into the temple expecting validation for their beliefs, who expected people like them as always. The ones with no ideas that they didn’t get from here, that they claim as their own that they wait for you to encourage anyways. They’re pathetic, but I don’t want them. I want you. I’ve always wanted you in one way. In the opposite way, I’ll get you.
If I’m going to hell, why delay the trip?
“I believe the gods are everywhere,” you say, like you know. I think for a moment that if you’re right, the gods are certainly here, watching me, and I could use them as an audience.
I pull the gun out of my pocket and aim it at you.
Everyone gasps and a few people scream and a couple of masks fall off. Yours doesn't, so I can't see your expression. But you've made your choice, and I've never been happier to leave more to the imagination.
Before I hear your voice again, I pull the trigger.
