The Existentialist

'When the heavens condensed, they spat out the refuse and kept only the purest form of gold. He, above the scale, was the last to go. It ailed him more than could be told. Above him was a woman barely better. She had a lovely front, but her deeds were darker and redder. Damned was he to the bosom of the afterlife and awoken once more to the mortal-bound strife. His soul was sent not to hell, but not fit for the gate of paradise. He went abroad to wintry land, freezing the flesh that he could not stand. She watched his pain and took woe in his plea. Their fates were shared, but she could bear it. He would crumple and chill because faith he could not see. Woe is he and she. Born and bred of it, woe is me.' - Castiel

The room was rosy and vivid. The clouds below were as thick as a melting pot but un-grayed, and pink. The hue hit my wrists as I watched through the glass, white stained and Gothic. The idea struck me that the glass might be hiding a blood-red sky, storming clouds, and all the dogs of war underneath to reap their adeptness. 

   

They might pile their victims, locks mangled and dirty travel-wear coated in any and all colors a body could produce against their blade. Those were the hues I imagined from a brilliant pink sky against the windows of deceit. Angelic natures didn’t befall me so surely and as truly as with those above me. I was a daughter daughter of my mother, in that way.

   

A bright halo above my head shone golden, sure, sleek, and fine. It was ill-fitted for the measures of my dark thoughts. Its blessed light tore into my pensive mind. I was not able to please anyone, even myself. I was untrue to my nature. This was the sin I detested the most, untruth. There was no sin I relished in, but I let them in all the same. They crowded my days and with each one I felt that golden halo rusting. 

The saints give me chores to keep my mind elsewhere. 'Idle hands' they say, but writing has never taken me as thoroughly as they might hope. I see the pleas in these letters. I am not equipped to alleviate their pain. All I can do is report back to the saints, who tell me to write back. These people would do good from some action, not my pity. Here was a woman who needed freedom, who wrote again and again. My responses only fueled her into a hopeful state of complacency. God, please bless her soul.

If I ever met her... Well, I hope I do not. I feel something far beyond guilt for my empty letters that may only acknowledge her suffering. The saints tell me never to offer advice. They do not trust my mind.

“June 23^rd~

Dear Saint Fiacre, the tomatoes are ripe and blooming, but the basil had grown spotty – Master says I cursed them with my incapable hands.

Dear Saint Zita, I am fearful of my master. “My will is God’s will,” he imparted to meself. Mine master is a clergymen, and his words do just. His hands follow a different path and my body is to suffer from mine ill and he. God’s will, says he. But it is not.   

 

June 26^th~

Dear Saint Fiacre, I’ve harvested the tomatoes and put the parsnips in so that they may breathe life back into the soil and give back nourishment so that I may plant barley for bread. Half of the basil is dead, and I’ve relocated the rest if there happens to be sickness in the ground. I haven’t told my master.

        Dear Saint Francis of Assisi, Mine sister visited a Sunday past and read a verse from his own book. It was read, by the word “Colossians 4:1 Masters, provide your slaves with what is right and fair, because you know that you also have a Master in heaven.” My master dismissed the Colossians and my sister. He threw her out by her hair and I received not what the scripture called for. 

 

June 27^th~

Dear Saint Fiacre, the tomatoes were wonderful. That’s your doing, I know. The spices, however, I can’t seem to maintain. The basil is no longer sick, but it is always parched, no matter how much water I pour upon it.

        Dear Saint Michael the Archangel, God gives my master power, he tells me so. I beg Him for my freedom every night but never once does He change mine master’s mind. Now, though, he does aid me, allowing me to overcome my illness with a strength I’ve never known before. Yet, I fear another sickness is taking hold. I can’t control mine own thoughts and feelings. 

July 3^rd~

Dear Saint Fiacre, I’ve been given rosemary, and this spice will thrive in its pot more than the basil had. It’s the same pot as the sickness, but I put in new soil and fertilizer.

        Dear Saint Amabilis of Auvergne, I fear for my master now more than myself. Every day, while boiling the broth of his soup, I eye the oleander growing like a pestilence outside the window. Every day, my hand comes closer to opening the window, and letting the deadly flowers fall in. 

        Dear Lord, is it you coursing through my veins that allows me to grip the quill so fervently? Veins bugle everywhere and I fear I’m swelling to the point that I’ll burst. I feel as though I could write for eternities, but I shan't take your precious and limitless time. Hallowed is your name and blessed are your holy works, Lord.

August 11^th~

Dear Saint Fiacre, all the plants have wilted, all of them. They have withered at my touch. I’ve been cursed, I’m sure. It was just today that it happened, while I was examining their foliage. My dear Fiacre, I’ve failed you. I’ve failed the garden, and I’ve failed the hands that will surely set my soul free. I pray it finds you.

        Dear Saint Cyprian, there are whispers in my head, a grand many. Are these the angels calling? They don’t say very pleasant things, but some I agree with. I’ve yet to succumb to the window, but I tremble when I see it and I feel so strongly… I’m shaking with rage and trembling, and I look in the wash-pale and I don’t see myself at all. I see many strong faces, beyond the likes of man. Have you ailed me as strongly as the basil?”

On the back of these letters was a note. It read, “This is what happens when one lets anger fester in their hearts. It is not limited to themselves. It spread to her garden and eventually her master. Think, Castiel, about both pieces. Imagine the implications and soak in their realities. Leverage them with the word of God and understand. Please write to her in her time of need. Console her.” I understood that the saints were woeful at her behest, but I could not see her salvation so clearly. She did not seem to need any redirection.

The poet Apep of ‘Condemned Equal’ was a demon. I was confused before. Apep had never been to hell, according to the biography portion of the prolog. It mentioned that he was not taken to heaven as he was ‘far too troubled,’ but I felt that should not be a factor if he was a holy man. Like the likes of me, he was stricken with a sickness of sorrow. If only he were here with me as a fellow joyless angel, I might have found comfort here.

In the excerpt, he seemed to revere this place and wished dearly he was there again, sympathizing with the angel who fell from heaven not by his own accord but by the other angels’ ruling. The woman was very holy, addressing the patron saint of gardening, maids and female servants, family and animals, war, poison and its remedies, and sorcery and demons. If she was so holy, why was she to be saved? Was the lovely Valencia to be further tormented by her master with no remedy given? 

She was not in her right mind by the end of them. She had malicious thoughts, which seemed an odd mistake to make, given their stark contrast to her character. These voices, what if she thought they were angels, like me? And if she should listen to them, has she sinned? If she thinks, if she truly believes, that she is doing the word of God, is she a demon herself? How can she not anger at her master when anger was set into her body from her birth, a natural reaction to the nature of her oppressor’s acts. 

Apep, in his last line, said that woe is he, born and bred of it. Was he bred to be a demon, of demonic parents, or was he bred of woe and sorrow? Or is he the demon of sadness, the manifestation of woe? I wanted to meet these ‘demons’ and ask them so many things, but I could only delve into the deceit I had to uphold if I wanted to remain here in heaven. I was allowed to be sad, but I must be grateful and gracious. In all other aspects, I had to be an angel or I would share the fate of Apep. Woe is me, indeed. I wrote to the saints everything they would wish to hear. Yet, I did not claim it to be my own beliefs. I could not see the salvation of either. They seemed too heavily connected to me. I could not separate myself from them to see with unclouded eyes. They seemed too lost to understand or to be led from what sorrowed them.

Valencia may keep her heart more open for her master and clear of any resentment. She needs to trust that God has a plan for her if she wishes her suffering in life to lead to grandeur in what follows. Now, she might seek out the prophet, the child, for he will cast the demons from her once more. There, she could find her salvation.

I took down my own thoughts from the writings of Cane. All that is deceit I despise, but I repeat it here. What am I then, but a product of that which I dread, trapped in a body whose hands I fear, whose pen rings untruth, and whose soul is trembling. 

“[W]hen Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him… [He] saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me’” 

That verse I already knew. It went unneeded over the papyrus and I went down to the writings of him, not the man, but the demon. He went on to say, “My name is legion, for we are many.” When the child of Him had cast them away, this Legion, they did not retreat to their hell; they were passed to a servant of the name Valencia Schur. She took them while weeping at the heels of her master. He had a whip in his palm and her infirmity prevented her from pursuing the tasks he had assigned. 

Her script was poor as her hands were stiff from her arthritis. They shook as she wrote. Very few lessons of schooling her master had given her, as well. Legion had crept into her mind where her lesser thoughts dwelled, those that her master had heavily forged with his abuse.

I saw her, I looked into my mind and visited that cruel step. I saw her rough skin covered in what it sought to protect. I saw it crawling with a foul and barking evil. Who else knew of it? Surely He knew. What was I to do about it? It happened at that moment, as I read the scripture. Another possessed at the very moment I read, was there no other way to view but an unholy invocation?

I sit in the study with the same clouded mind, waiting for Legion to swallow me. They may just breach heaven with such a faulty angel's head as a fiery gateway. I was treated as such, a portal. The merciful He liked to stay near. What a dreary angel I was. Yet, it is not a sin to be unhappy. It is not a sin to acknowledge and dwell on the cruelty that plagues the land below. I would not know where to find happiness in me. It. only exists in theory. 

I know I am a tool of darkness. He knows the same. Wherever I am, the room darkens. I was not meant to stew in this heavenly place. I was meant to be a scourge to the Earth, like my fallen parents. Never have my thoughts guided my actions. My pain is mine to keep and hold. It is my one and only possession. 

Yet, the Legion would just be set free again. Then, another would be ‘ailed’. It seemed too complicated and bound to end badly. If Legion stayed in Valencia, wouldn’t that be better? Valencia hadn’t done anything wrong. At that thought, I slapped myself across the face best I could. No, that was a cardinal sin, to kill out of wrath, regardless of how her master treated her. She hadn’t seemed too angry in her writings, even as he threw out her sister. Behind me, in the white, marble wall, I recognized the voice of Azazel, the patron of goats, I suppose. When I asked Kemuel what the different between saints and angels was, he said that it was who the Earth below remembers, and that, here, we are all saints. Azazel was named after the sacrificial goat that the people used to slaughter to redeem themselves of their earthly sins. He was indeed holy and, perhaps, a bit goatish, but one would really think so unless they knew him name. 

“Greetings,” he said to me. It sounded peculiar and overly-formal to me. 

“Shalom,” I greeted in turn, waving my free hand in an arc and folding my scripture to my chest. Though the elder trusted me to unravel demon-work, goat boy might get cynical. He was the type with child-like astonishment, eyes and mouth wide as he learned anything he deemed ‘un-paralled with the ambition of God’. God, I’d say, wasn’t too ambitious in his place. If he was, there wouldn’t be free-will. 

I had walled the monster up within the tomb.