Sergio De La Pava - Personae

—¿At what cost to you?

— Don’t care. I’m past redemption. The dangerous man is not the one willing to mete out violence, it’s the one willing to absorb untold violence with no regard for his safety. I have no regard left for my soul either if staring at it contemplatively is going to allow that evil to flourish. I’m going to do what needs to be done and when all is past we’ll probably meet again. Then be careful I don’t try to remove you from our world.

— Humanity needs more than you.

— I’m not interested in humanity save for two examples of it and for the sake of those two I’ll unleash Hell itself then let out nary a scream as its flames consume me.

—¿For what? ¿Are you that fond of delay as concerns the inevitable? As I’ve tried to show you, their world will remain full of billions, each free to devise their own particular form of mayhem. Beyond that is the question of the physical world you and they inhabit. You say Man didn’t have to be created but once created he had to be free to create that mayhem. ¿That doesn’t mean it all had to play out in such a merciless lion’s den does it? The reason Yahweh’s such a jerk is that Man was struggling to explain some truly horrific physical phenomena like flooding that left their world looking like all land had capriciously disappeared. Now you have more sophisticated explanations for how events like earthquakes and tsunamis happen but you’re still no closer to understanding why they happen. ¿These things aren’t truly necessary are they? They’re critical only insofar as they give us insight into the mind of God and what a picture! He’s fond of painting himself as a father but a father, as you know, protects. ¡And if he somehow fails in protecting, as you did, he remedies! Instead God watches the lifeless bodies float and the waves of suffering ripple out without end.

—¿What are you saying? ¿A world without water? ¿Do I need to list water’s many transcendently beneficial qualities?

—¡No, you need to explain why it’s not perfectly buoyant! Why your father places you in such constant peril then refuses to clean up his mess. ¿Because who is of greater use to Selena now? ¿Her earthly father who practically clears a jungle on her behalf or her absentee heavenly one?

—¡Enough of you! The globe is as it is and if you listen closely enough you can hear it laughing at my irrelevance. There’s no amount of vocal thought will change what I’m going to do. I know what you’re trying.

—¿Namely?

— So if that’s enough to stop you, consider yourself stopped. If it isn’t and you intend to succeed through force make your move now or leave.

— Manuel — it shook its head. ¿You too? ¿Why is it whenever I’m portrayed it’s like I’m trying to ruin something? ¿Is that my reward? I’m just trying to wake people, people whose idiocy offends me regardless of how comfortable they may be in it. It is I who exalts the eternal verities yet my opponents shamelessly argue that an idyll is being perverted. ¡The truth! Truth like, no one ever complained of nonexistence. ¿How is that a perversion of anything?

—¿Why do you care? I mean, about your bad name.

— Just bodies but every good army needs them. Mine swells daily but it only does so because I treat every prospective recruit like a potential four-star general.

— I’m an army of one, leave me alone.

— It’s not that kind of process but fine, I will. Surely you won’t deny me some parting thoughts however. ¿Why look at yourself and feel repulsed as you so clearly do?

— Not looking at myself, looking at you.

—¿And you don’t see where we mirror? Existence is a curse and something that emerges from the accursed cannot be expected to produce anything save for spiteful enmity and opposition.

— Again you confuse the order of things. It only feels like a curse you’re opposing because you spend it in spiteful enmity.

— No! That’s naïve propaganda. Think of the moaning multitudes who thought that true until they woke from their pleasant dream to find themselves in Hell. Nothing less than your beloved two now move to join the teeming humanity immured in that place.

— No such place. I know because I’ve been there. You’re trying to get me to think like my dimwitted ancestors who openly wondered when the kingdom of God would arrive instead of recognizing it within themselves and exporting it in the form of actions based on Love. If we fail to create it that’s on us along with the consequences of that failure but there’s no place to get sent. Like you, it doesn’t exist.

— Insultingly untrue.

— And as for my two, whoever harms them will think Hell heavenly compared to where I send them.

— The kingdom of God may not be a place in the classic sense but even I concede that it refers to phenomena, like your Love for example, that undoubtedly exist. Naturally then Hell must also have its own actually existing referents. These referents share the same ontological grandeur as Love and you can intuit their great power when you experience states like jealousy or wrath.

— No. They’re mere negations, drawing power only commensurate with how violative they are of the most powerful force we know. You say we’re in a lion’s den. I concede that. It’s an uninteresting fact about the physical world we live in, it doesn’t tell me how to do that living. For that exemplar I don’t have far to look. You say you traffic in spiteful opposition? I reject that emptiness. So you are free to continue to do so but understand that I am one of those you oppose. I stand for what you most despise and your defeat is certain if only because of that fact.

— You can’t truly believe that. I don’t claim to have anything remotely approaching his natural power but I will never submit. If the human history of warfare has taught us anything it’s that there are ways around such a disadvantage. It will always be easier to destroy than construct. Think of that church, so painstakingly built only to be razed in minutes. Everything you build Manuel, including a family, is built using grains of sand.

— Then I’ll build structures of such beauty that continued presence will not be necessary for permanence in the mind’s eye of all who witness it.

It lets out a defeated but smiling exhale.

— You’re certainly free, that word again, to try. Like my opponent I don’t interfere. But know this about this defeat of mine you foretell. Understand that merely latent power, no matter how great, carries no import. ¡He won’t use it, ever! Anything suggesting otherwise is at best human sophistry. You are, all of you, alone. Delivered into evil by a truth unknowable to you yet monstrous in its scope. Beset by a sea of trespasses so searching in vain for a soothing voice in the dark. ¿Searching like a suckling infant and what do you receive in response? Silence. Always that lacerating silence from a nowhere entity that audaciously claims to be everywhere. He can’t be coaxed into so much as an encouraging word yet abject servility is going to be his reward? Think of that as you move to your death because what courses through your veins in those final moments is what controls.

It rises up and it is as if Anger itself stands across from him.

— Unless of course none of that matters because you’ll soon be turning back to go home and pray.

Manuel puts his face in his bloody hands and cries for the first time since he was a child. He is experiencing the pain that comes from the recognition of a weakness that can’t be overcome. When he lifts his face he witnesses the final seconds of a transformation. The eventual new form is hard to predict at first as the Figure shrinks onto all fours.

On the ground it looks as if a forgotten species is being turned inside out that it might be thoroughly examined for the edification of future generations. Then he sees it is a dog. Of all the world’s dogs it is the dog he left heaving its final breaths. Still mortally injured, still heaving, the beast summons what final strength remains and runs at his neck. Best he can do is raise a palm and that does nothing. The dirty teeth look like thorns growing out of his neck and their jaw is locked deathly tight. He cannot locate the canine’s neck to choke its life out and the lack of usable air is putting him in a dreamlike state.