Shadows

Two people had the same experience. It was the experience of mature, responsible freedom. It was the experience of the voice of the God of life, whispering… whispering in commonplace human terms. A revelation! For this, they were arrested. For this, they were detained against their wills and tortured. Together—and yet sequestered in terrifying isolation—they disappeared from ordinary existence. From routines and habits. From friends and family, work and household. From everyday sight. From recognition. From mention. From everything except a certain invisibility in the historical convolutions of Hell.

Two people. Named Abraham and Sarah, Mohammed and Khadija, Joseph and Mary, Jose and Maria. Two people: two. Like Eve, life’s mother. Like Adam, the gardener, the twilight-walker, the initial concept of a man: God’s man

One of them, the male, succumbed to pain and indignities. He died with the stammering bruise of a mystery on his lips. He died discolored and swollen. Under the hand prints and foot prints of intimate strangers.

The other of the two, of the couple, the female, she said, “Yes. Yes, I understand now. Before was a critical error in judgment, when I was under a foreign influence. It was a kind of disease, an emotional disorder, a sort of shared hallucination. That is what I would call it: a shared hallucination. Such things are aberrant, immoral, but they happen. It’s pathetic and disruptive, and it needs to be corrected. Honestly, I needed help; I was quite desperate. The authorities were absolutely right in intervening. Intervention was socially responsible. To the State. To the People. To Progress. The Party. And”… A hesitation. A lingering, uneasy silence, with shallow, rapid breathing. A lapse into momentary uncertainty, exposing the indelible scars of trauma. Then: “I am grateful. I can now return to normal, productive life. Today, and today, and today, I am again a valuable citizen.”

Later, the survivor walked away from the anus of Satan on her discolored and swollen legs, with the pain and indignity of serial violation aching between her thighs. In the ruined womb of the future. In the barren plot of the soul and… To a neighbor she confided, flatly: “I loved Jose; I loved Abraham; I loved my visionary Mohammed: But I will never, never be able to forgive him. I tell you privately, in a secret confession, in the broken weight of my stone of life: I feel betrayed.”

HB: NEW REIGN OF TERROR

The bullet from the terrorist gun, manufactured anywhere in the industrial world, has your name on it. Sometime during your life time, it may end your life. End you without warning. When the bullet rips into your flesh, it will already be stained with the blood of others murdered before you. But this is Russian roulette. At some point, your number is up.

The terrorist's car bomb, aggressively thirsting for the blood of your children, will again explode. At detonation, the razors of shrapnel, flying like butcher's knives through the viscid sweetness of honey, through soft tissue of butter, will bear, with flaming metals of hatred's heroes, the DNA of other kids, dismembered before your own. Perhaps of those on the second school bus? The bus that went the detour and reached the intersection at the moment of settling a score.

Research scientists have gathered evidence that at some time in the immensely distant prehistoric past the human species was reduced to no more than some 2,000 members, this due to cataclysmic planetary changes. These ancestral survivals of draught, famine and climate change scattered into small bands. Only gradually, over many generations, did their descendants begin coming together into larger and more organized collectives. This process continues until this day when our species swarms over the Earth and has grown, bearing threat and trauma, to an astronomical 6.6 billion.

If the scientific evidence is correct then we are truly all related, not only biologically, but familiarly as well. And as extended family, we breathe, eat, sleep, play in sexual intercourse and fantasies, defecate, aspire to ecstasy, descend into sadism, narcissism and hatred, wound, bleed, cry, scream, kill, rage and die.

There can be no doubt that humanity is a family in crisis. Earth is in crisis too. There can be no doubt that hatred is spreading faster than love, fueled by the black liquid apostles of reptilian memories. Will we go down as victims of the dinosaurs' revenge? We will go down despite the tenacity of forgotten, common ancestors? There can be no doubt that we are going down.