an excerpt from the unfinished novel Apolotrosis, 2002
He dreamt he was, as a child, walking through a field of thick crimson flowers. Below the flowers covering the meadow’s floor was the whitest snow, but he was not cold. White light surrounded him on all sides and a gentle breeze swayed the creations. He walked throughout the field of flowers taking in their purest of beauty. Where he walked, he felt a presence surrounding him as if he was holding onto someone’s hand. For what seemed like years in a dream, A boy played in this garden of paradise. He grew as a young boy and slipped into his present state. But one day, he ventured to the edge of the garden and looked out amongst the shadows to the perilous lands that surrounded the blissful meadow. He chose to leave the garden and all its comforts for the harsh lands before him, and as he stepped from the field, the land quickly turned dark and the ground hard. In his hands he had held a handful of snow that promptly melted into a black slush and stained his hands. He prepared his way for the journey and began to revel in a sense of adventure outside the garden. He walked for days in this wasteland, the features ugly and jagged along its borders. The cragged hillsides and mangled trees cast dark shadows over his once tender heart and sang to him a fallen song.
In search of a dark refuge, he moved throughout the land escaping the horrible thunder that followed him. He began to forget the warmth of the crimson meadow and longed for comfort in his new home. Although frightened by the unforgiving surroundings, he fell in love with the dark. He liked slinking through the shadows unnoticed from the stares of that presence he had once felt in the garden. He tried to allude the glares he felt from the land and often found himself running at full stride to escape his own convictions. At night he would wrestle with a great fiend that in the morning turned out to be his own reflection in black waters.
But his torment was his comfort and he grew deeper and deeper a part of this foreign land. He positioned himself high on a hill overlooking the expanse of his wickedness. Along the way, he had found chains lining the road of his reckless quest, and each time, he collected them in a burlap sack he carried with him. By now the weight of the bag was immovable. And not being able to travel any deeper into the territory, which would have been impossible anyway, since he was in the middle of his rebellion and a step in any direction would have been a step of reconciliation toward the garden, he settled in the high place and began unpacking his chains.
Each night before he slept, he took out one chain and began fastening it to another. He stayed high on the mount for several days and during that time, he grew hungry for that presence he had lost in the garden, but he loathed it and fought its advances. His shame was too powerful than the grace it offered. He fought the thunder and made war with himself. Often at night, he was beaten by his reflection and bloodied by creatures that attack only in the obscurity. On several occasions, his flesh was torn and his back was bruised.
Then, and this stirred him to the point of all fear; a beast met him at midnight and held him in the frame of his embrace. The terrifying creature cradled him tightly and kissed him with the kisses of his mouth. The beast’s hot breath was pain to his face. As the beast caressed him and tenderly rocked him, he reached down his fierce razor-sharp claws and tore into the boy’s flesh. His excruciating fist probed the inside of the boy’s chest until it rested on the tender heart beating furiously inside. Then with madness, he ripped the heart from his chest and swallowed it whole as the blood ran across his chin. The boy looked in horror, for his life was not spent. The beast still holding him like his own child reached to the ground and found a jagged stone lying there. He picked it up and placed it into the boy’s chest where, to his revulsion, it began to beat as the heart of flesh that had been removed. The beast dropped him carelessly to the ground, which broke his ribs, and scurried from the mountaintop.
In great pain, the boy began to scar over the wound in his chest and saw no great change in his heart, but he did not know that the blackness set in. His veins were full of the same black sludge that had stained he fingers as he had left the garden. As he remained on the mountain, he began to gather nearby stones. And with great labor and pain from his broken body, he began to construct a wall. He thought that he was to build the rampart to keep away the beast that had wounded him, but every night, he dined with the beast on the mount and welcomed him into his fortress. And every time, the beast wounded him and left him on the mount to die, which he never did.
He built an elaborate castle on the hill and fortified the walls with several layers of stone. No intruder could invade except that which he invited in. All the time, he continued to piece together the chains of the land late in the night for he grew fearful of his solitude. Finally the wall was complete and the fortress secure and he lay each night in wait for the beast to come and injure him with his companionship.
One night the beast became so violent that he left The boy lame after breaking both legs when he hurled him into the stonewalls of his own construction. The boy lay on the floor weeping uncontrollably and cried for his creator. He knew now in his heart how he would attempt to fend off the beast. He stood in his tower and locked himself in his room, tightly shutting up the windows. The chains he had been linking were now woven into a frightfully beautiful robe of his own design. The beast had held the chains in his hands and laid them near the listless body of the bleeding Boy. With his doors shut, the boy dragged his mangled body to the chains and crawled inside them for comfort. Once inside the robe of chains, he began to tangle himself in and cocoon himself tightly to where no man or beast could ever enter and he himself could never escape. And he slowly began to die.
But, what was so beautiful to even him was that in the prison he had created, he could faintly hear redemption’s song from the crimson meadow. As tears streamed down his face and his black heart weakened, he whispered for help. From his chains, he could see something that frightened him and reassured him all at once as emerging over the frame of the door, their appeared a crack in the wall. His eyes darted around the room and more cracks appeared all over the impenetrable walls of his own creation. Light shot in through the cracks and the whole fortress crumbled around him and great was the sound of its falling.
He awoke again in a field of flowers now more crimson stained than before. His chains were removed and nowhere to be found. The brilliant light of reflecting off the snow hurt his eyes to the point where he could not open them for a long time. He was dressed in a new robe that reminded him of that presence whose hand he used to hold. He was a little fearful, but more ashamed of his departure from the garden.
Then from among the flowers came a slaughtered lamb walking toward him. In his hand he held a double-edged rapier and his eyes burned as white fire. He approached him and spoke peace to his soul, but with great force, he thrust the blade deep though the boy’s chest. The boy winced in pain and screamed in terror as the sword found the secret places of the soul. As the sword was removed, it had stuck to the end a jagged stone. The black sludge ran across the boy’s chest, but it did not stain the new robe.
The relief was unbelievable and he was stunned that the pain of the action actually felt good. The lamb reached deep into his own chest and pulled from the cavity a heart of flesh, with which he placed into the hole in the boy’s chest and he was given life anew. The healing began almost immediately and no scar appeared where the former tear had been. The boy stared at his own chest watching it heal before him. When he looked up, he saw that the lamb had been transformed into a ferocious lion that leaned down and kissed him tenderly on the head and then walked in majesty throughout the garden.
Morning came.
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