Enslaving God

I stood before the door.

I knew at some point it had to open.

After all, how long could such an invitation be neglected?

Arms lifted me above the room I occupied and drew me to the window. All I need do was release the latch and I could fly, for those hands sought to free me from my foolish moorings, from the penance of gravity; they sought to liberate me from this brutal earth which so despised the ideals of release.

I watched the sun pursue the horizon, and reveled in its hope to overcome its boundaries. But once again it succumbed to the limits of the horizon, and settled itself behind them.

A warm breeze swept over me briefly, and I felt the elation that can only be realized by the freeman.

Sooner or later it had to open.

All that I was depended on it.

There would be a burst of light which preceded its wanton intrusion, and the spectacle of true happiness would follow in its wake. I would be washed by that entrance, left clean of my foolish and horrid indulgences; for if force and hate warranted them, and how could such a thing ever seek to see itself beloved?

I would be reborn by the turn of a man-made implement, and redeemed by a subtle intimacy. Could it truly be that all could be forgotten, that all could be repaired?

I believed this, for what else can one attend to but his faith when all else has been defiled?

I sought the prelude of footsteps that would lead to the gentle twist of the knob.

I faced the sun, resolute in expectancy, that such a thing could yet occur.

I had suffered too long to find this room empty of hope, bereft of that which might free me again, to float among the silent nomads of the sky and be drenched in the colors of the emperor of skies.

I had borne the death of too many to find this place desolate and quiet, had held before me too many desires to find them all suffocated in the blanket of complacency. Had I not the right to find happiness after this long and arduous journey?

Had I not earned the right to realize that which I had forsaken through this horrendous slavery of spirit?

Although I had not escaped whole, and I would not relinquish hope.

The sky had turned to the color of amber, wavering as the horizon engulfed the sun and its remaining light. I watched the transition of the world in that room, without the slightest of uncertainties.

She would come.

She must come and bring with her the means of extrication from my queries.

These she held in her very being. I expected no words, only the embrace of familiarity and warmth.

I would not lose my faith in her.

She would come.

She would come.

She would come.

And I would rest again, this time forever, in the realization that all was for not, and that comfort would replace pain, and that fortitude would be rewarded with a light which would leave the emperor of skies in envy and breach the very edge of the world.

*****

I met her gaze, and our eyes locked as they so often did. Her arms shifted from her hips, and freed from those bindings formed a protective cross about her chest. She frowned in a feigned act of disapproval, stuck out her tongue. I covered my eyes.

When I removed my hands, she was on her way out of the room. At the door she stopped, smiled again, and left, bounding down the hall.

I pulled my pants over my legs, and tied them at the waist. They were baseball pants whose elastic had been removed from the ankles, and they hung uncuffed above the tops of my feet. I shook out the T-shirt I used as a pillow, and pulled it over my head. It smelled old and stale, stained with the dirt of the garden. My shoes were too big for my feet, and I adjusted the newspaper I had balled into the ends of them to accommodate their size. The length of the shoes made me clumsy in step, and I often tripped when running. She would always laugh at me when I fell.

In the garden we would dig or fill. I preferred to dig. The sound that the dirt made when it struck the tops of the wooden boxes was distressing to me, the thudding as the occasional rock fell upon them frightening. It wasn't that I was jumpy, it was...just distressing.

I took a shovel from the stack and followed the woman out to the plots. She used chalk in a sifter to outline the area that was to be dug. I knew well enough how deep it had to be.

'You start here dearie. When you're done, you come and get me.'

She patted me on the head, and then stopped. She raised a gnarled finger to my face and drew it down the inner corner of my eye, removing something that felt like a small stone from my eye. She brushed it down my cheek, and held my face in one hand, holding it up as she leaned down. Satisfied, she turned and walked away.

I tracked him quietly.

He looked over his shoulder several times as he made his way down the street. He was a rebel. He had made a name for himself by disrupting union data systems with a disease that affected their machinery, whose pathogenicity was so virulent its damage was often irreversible. He had never interfered with us but it was suspected that was soon to change.

We had been informed that he had obtained illicit information containing postulation on our location.

He crossed the street before me, and I disappeared into shadow to compensate for his sudden change of direction. I feared, however, that I was betrayed. I continued to follow, and his pace quickened, fear perhaps accelerating his steps as it had already hurried his heart. That was the sign...he had seen me.

I stepped from the shadows, and walked behind him. When he turned to see that I had materialized, he stumbled and fell. I stopped and watched him, not two meters away. My robes announced my membership in that group which had become the alternate definition of terror.

'God,' he whispered as he climbed to his feet.

I shifted my head slightly to the right, peering at him from under my hood.

'No,' I said.

He turned and began to run.

I brought the long hollow tube out from beneath my robes and exhaled quickly into one end, forcing the air from my diaphragm. His steps slowed, his shoulders hunched, and he collapsed only a short distance from the point of his retreat. The street was wet and dark, and the lights collected in the puddles along the curbs.

I rolled him over, and took the roll of papers from under his long coat. I opened them as he stared up at me. It was an article on the manipulation of perception as ordained by the union. There was nothing about us. I looked through page after page, but found no mention of us.

He squinted as I grabbed him about the shoulders and drug him to the side of the walk, and propped him up against a building. I looked him over. I followed his body up and down and finally returned to his face. I withdrew the hood from my head, and he closed his eyes again refusing to look at my face. I knelt before him and waited for him to look at me. Finally he relented.