There was no fanfare, no gnashing of teeth, no self-flagellating agonies to throw at the feet of the divine. There was none of that. There was only silence; and in the world outside of poetry and artifice, ultimate silence was utterly devastating. And let’s be honest here - devastation was the terrain upon which he felt most familiar. He was able to find his footing among the cragged and gnarled landscape. He was a navigator through a world with no map, a world that contained mortal threat around every corner, on every precipice and at the bottom of every contaminated stream. And there was more - every living thing was only half a living thing, such was the extent to which the dark had swept in, seductively, and placed its hold on all in its path. All manner of plant and animal conspired and plotted the darkest revenge. He trod among their anthracite shells, their clicking mandibles, their empty, reflective eyes, and he knew their rage, shook beneath the weight of their panicked desire to swarm him and devour him until there was nothing of him left for which to consider a man. He plied his arrogant trade across the mosses and ivies, bursting with acrid oils and lined with piercing barbs aching to penetrate his flesh, inject their venoms beneath the surface and wait for him to cease, to become the sacrament of the most unholy order.
But he was not afraid. He knew the alternative, and the alternative was oblivion. The alternative was to plunge head first into the maw, to finally succumb to the wet, crisp air that is constantly drawn into the insatiable, hideous void. A void - an absence, a lack of what, of something ... no, of anything. This was the sort of thought that bled through his consciousness were he weak enough to follow the scent as it filigreed around his mind, wisps and tendrils, and took the place of all else. No, this would not do, this was the way of men who stood in the way of trains and believed that will alone would be their salvation.
He knew better.
So what had brought him to this place, to this fate? Was it inevitable? Or, was there a fork at some specific point along the way through which he might have had the chance to stop and make a decision, choose one of two paths, maybe one of a number of paths?
For those who are not initiated, this is not an important question. In the end it doesn’t matter to sit and waste your time pondering the significance of this or that choice. The reason it doesn’t matter is because, again, in the end, the path that is taken bears little resemblance to the paths taken previously. Which is to say, the past, while resembling the future, is merely a palimpsest. The future unravels before us, oblivious to any and all, and the past now sits in the gallery and takes its place among the entombed, the withered and the decaying.
And so this is a story about decay. We are the purveyors of decay, here in the blood-soaked shop of the Butcher. The years of honing our knives, wearing down our blocks, eviscerating the carcasses, snapping bones, stripping flesh, cutting sinew, wrapping it all, gift-like, in brown paper, has made of us the bloody seers of this life, and it is our message that all is not well.
History has lied to us all, made the devil out of a liar, and built for us a god from the sewer. And dutifully we have heeded the call, blindly, naked, shivering, drooling, dumb with rage, simultaneously empty and filled with longing, and, at the end of the day - entirely alone. And it is in this deception that we have thrown ourselves as loyal subjects, as mercenaries for an insidious cause, only to have nothing to show for it save our self-righteous indignation and hollow threats.
And all throughout this landslide of nonsense mankind has made the cardinal mistake of listening to the wrong prophets when it was time for wisdom.
HE has wormed through the underbelly of madness to bring you the truth.
HE has sickened to inhale the dank and musty breath of the most wicked.
HE has swallowed the half promises and late-night confessions, and he has survived the inevitable, the predictable and the outright translucent pleas to the other, the next and the better.
HE is the Butcher, and despite his being utterly and completely blind - HE sees all.
People always remember that Oppenheimer imagined the verse from the Bhagavad Gita when the Trinity test lit up the American desert and hurtled us exponentially closer to our doom - Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds. It’s good stuff, but it’s what Kenneth Bainbridge told him directly after the explosion that gives a much more accurate fit to what it is we have laid before us, cold and on display like a naked corpse - Now we are all sons of bitches.
And that’s what your steadfast Butcher told you.
Now who’s next in line?
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