A Final Communion

    David Friend awoke in the mouth of a filthy, damp, rust-filled cistern that smelled of iron and mold.  He had  no recollection of how he had gotten himself there.  He absently rubbed his hand over his long, tangled beard and, in spite of his situation, thought about how long it had been since he had groomed himself.  God, I need a shave.  Then he stopped.  No more speaking like that, no more thinking like that anymore.  As difficult as it would be, casually calling upon the Deity would no longer be an option.

    Trembling, David raised himself from the hard floor of the cistern, the muscles in his arms, legs and back protesting as he did so.  He felt pains both dull and sharp in his stomach.  He pushed his finger against his bare abdomen and felt his spinal cord, a habit he had picked up over the past several months which served to remind him how emaciated he had become.  His only clothing was an old ragged pair of denims with a number of odd stains and which were ripped  in a number of areas, revealing even more of his pale, scabby flesh.  His body was covered with scars gathered over seven years in which he had alternated between being a fugitive or a tortured prisoner.  The torture was a result of being too dazed to react in order to receive a small imprint with coded personal information which qualified individuals as citizens in the Unified Society.  Those with the imprint were protected and granted the full privileges and comforts of citizenship, or at least that was true for the first forty-two months of the Unified Society's rule.  Those who refused said imprint were fair game for the enforcers, the military arm of the Unified Society who were given absolute authority to harass, imprison and torture anyone they found without an imprint because they were considered untraceable and therefore a potential menace to the Society's planned utopia.  In David's case he did not refuse the imprint as much as he had not been in a state of mind to receive the imprint.  He had thought in the years since that, had he been of a mind to do so, he would have most certainly accepted it. In the considerable time he had to think on the question since then, he wondered, sometimes in a philosophical manner and sometimes with a mind full of rage, how his life may have been different.  He had little time for those musings, however, as those thoughts led to nothing productive,  and always his thoughts had to return to the matter of simple survival.

    As he left the cistern, he found that standing made him nauseous and more than a little dizzy, and he had walked no more than thirty meters  before he had to sit down again on a nearby rock.  He needed food, and more he needed water, or surviving the past seven years would come to nothing.  The war, if it could be called a war rather than a really large battle, had happened quickly, and all those who were not involved on one side or the other had to find safety wherever they could.  David vaguely recalled that this was how he wound up in the cistern, though he could not remember the details of exactly what had happened other than the sounds of things, and presumably people, being destroyed.  He knew what was happening then, just as everyone knew.  Even the members of the Society understood what was happening,  though their propaganda attempted to convince the members of their society how preposterous the entire thing was.  And, for David's part, he did feel that the entire thing was preposterous, including the Society.  Often, when he found himself on some death doctor's bed and needing to remove his mind from the acts of abomination that were being performed on his body, he would try to convince himself that everything was so preposterous that he had dreamed it all.  Once he succeeded, certain that he woke up from that dream and that he was back in his shabby efficiency apartment in downtown Indianapolis, his girlfriend of ten years snoring softly beside him.  But when the enforcers found that he had lost his grip on reality, they took him to a recovery area and attempted to strengthened his mind and his body so that they could resume their torture.  Or at least, that was their plan.  That was the first time he escaped, and of all the horrors that existed in his mind, his means of escape that day still haunted him the most.

    Everything had happened just as his weird, Bible-thumping aunt had said.  Well, not quite everything.  He still was not certain where a prostitute may have fit into all of this, and the beasts she had described to him when he was still young and impressionable and loved being scared never materialized, at least as far as he knew.  He could close his eyes and see her with her over-sized eyeglasses and her gray hair tied back so tight that it caused her face to draw back.  She would never have a normal conversation, but rather speak in scripture quotes, even if those quotes were entirely inappropriate to the situation.  David's mother disliked having the woman around him, but David loved for her to visit simply because her outlandishness pleased his childish sense of the absurd.  He still laughed when he thought of her.  At least, he thought he was laughing.  He then realized that his chest was heaving uncontrollably, not so noticeably at first, but then it became violent.  He coughed explosively, and as he did so he noticed blood splattering on the dirt beneath him.

    "Need some help, friend?"  The voice came from somewhere above David.

    "The joke is old," David croaked out beneath his coughing fit, betraying his general annoyance when someone tried to make a word play on his name.

    "I think I can assist you with that."

    Then, as quickly as it had come on, the coughing fit abated, at first gradually, but within seconds it had disappeared.  The return of his well-being did not end there, though.  The ache in his stomach was gone, and the constant buzzing that he had felt in his brain for some time before he found himself in the cistern had subsided.  Even the world around him seemed more pleasant.  The sky had become a brilliant blue and the sun, while very bright, was not in the least bit oppressive.  There was a soft breeze that had come up from what David perceived to be the south, and it brought with it the scent of maple and rose.  It caused his long, unruly hair to dance about his face gingerly, even though that hair had been matted down with oil and dirt.  This brought about such a sense of calm in him that he considered that he was now in a delusional state and must be on the verge of death.

    "You're not dying," the voice said.  "And besides, if you were having delusions, you'd be the last person to know it.  How logical would that be?"

    "Who are you?"

    "I think you know who I am."

    David looked up, and what he saw in front of him was nothing like he had expected.  A thin young man was sitting on a rock above him wearing a pair of faded carpenter's jeans, an immaculate pair of sneakers and a white t-shirt with the word "Petra" printed across it in over-sized newsprint.  His wispy blond hair was cut just below his ears on the side, just above his collar in the back, and a thin goatee decorated his chin.  David could not help think about how the man reminded him of a drummer who played in a band that David was once a part.  The difference was that the young man's eyes were as clear and as blue as the brilliant sky, and David thought that, if he looked into them long enough, he could see his own soul in them.

    "Sort of casual for a messiah, don't you think?" he asked, then winced and awaited the rebuke for his impudence.  Instead, the young man chuckled softly and casually made his way down the hill.

    "What did you think I'd look like?"

    "I don't know," David said, and he still could not look at Him.  "Tall, long beard, soft eyes, crown of thorns planted in your head. . ."

    "And how would you have reacted to that?"

    "I'd pretty much sh. . . I'd probably soil myself."

    Again, the young man replied to David with a soft chuckle, and David begin to feel an affection for the person in front of him, an affection that he immediately knew was not borne of logic.

    "I appear to you in a manner that will make you feel the most comfortable.  At this moment, I'm all across the face of the planet, having this same conversation with those who've survived this ordeal.  In China, I'm talking to a peasant in the robe of a Chinese monk.  In a nursing facility in Florida, I'm speaking to a lovely elderly woman in the garb of a doctor.  And there's this businessman ten miles from here whose family was devoutly Catholic and who I'm appearing to in soft robes, long brown hair, a neatly-trimmed beard and a glow around my head.  I'm not certain what the Europeans were thinking when they painted those iconic portraits of me, because I never looked like that when I was physically present on this earth."

      It was David's turn to chuckle, and as he did so he found himself liking the young man in front of him even more.  In fact, it was more than just liking him.  He told himself that he had to fight this feeling, that he had just been through seven years of hell because of the person in front of him.

    "Is that how you see me, as the source of your pain during this ordeal."

    "This would work much better if you at least pretended that my thoughts were my own."

    "But I do know them, and pretending would hardly be productive.  And that's what you've been all about the past seven years, correct?  Keeping your thoughts productive so that you can survive?  Today, I'm offering you the ultimate survival."

    David leaned forward and ran both hands through his tangled beard.  "So, that's it?  It's all over?  I survived whatever it is that just happened?  The Unified Society, what, doesn't exist any more?"

    "That's why we went to war.  Although you are right, it was more like a really large battle.  But the upshot is that the hard times are over, the darkness has been purged.  The human race, this Earth, is about to enter its one-thousand-year golden age.  And you, David Friend, can be part of it."

    "But, you understand that I really never rejected the Society, not really?  I just never accepted it."

    "You never really did understand what your aunt was trying to tell you, did you?  That's understandable, she could be a bit overbearing.  Let's put it this way, I'm very forgiving.  I want you on my side, David, just like I want everyone on my side.  All you have to do is accept what I'm offering, accept me, and you won't be able to believe what the rewards will be."

    David closed his eyes and tried to fight the sense of euphoria that he knew was emanating from the young man in front of him.  He did not feel right about this, and despite that sense of euphoria his mind wandered back to one of the endless days that he had spent in the death laboratories.  He had met a young girl there, she was seven and had large dark eyes and light, curly blond hair.  She had been frightened the first night she had been in the labs, locked in a room with cages inhabited with all sorts of humanity in varying states of dying.  She had sobbed uncontrollably that night, and of all the things that David had endured during his internment there, those sobs haunted him worse than anything he had personally endured.  His cage was less than ten meters from hers, and he could see her, stripped of her clothes in an attempt by the enforcers to remove her humanity.  David knew her cause was lost, but that night he needed to help this girl, to make her feel safe somehow.  He had never been particularly close to children, did not even like them, to be truthful, so he did the only thing he knew how to do, which was to hum the theme songs to the cartoons that he had watched during the afternoons of his empty life.  The girl knew them, and she hummed along, then the two of them began to sing the words, at first soft, then with attitude, and as they did so her sobbing subsided.  Then David did something unforgivable, something he would immediately undo if there were any means to do so.  He assured the girl that she would be all right, that she would be safe.  That was never to happen.  Over the next few days, she was exposed to tortures that a girl her age could never imagine in her worst nightmares.  She screamed and she cried and she pleaded, though to no avail as her tormentors saw her as something far less than human, and soon her spirit would die and she would no longer be a little girl.  In the rare moments she was not being tortured, she would be in her cell next to David, and those dark eyes would peer at him, and though her body was failing he could feel the hate through them.  She lasted six days, six days in which David prayed for death for himself and for her.

    "Her name was Mariah."

    "I never did learn her name."

    "She's forgiven you."

    "Doesn't really matter."

    "I take it you're angry at me for Mariah?"

    "How. . . I mean, how could something like this. . .?"

    "How could I allow Mariah to endure what she did?"

    David sat silently, awaiting the wrath of the young man in front of him.

    "Or, how could the Father allow Mariah to endure what she did?  The Father is He who is omnipotent, I'm an aspect of Him, but I'm not really the decision-maker."

    "You're confusing me."

    "Yet, it's really so simple.  The problem is you humans.  We've tried everything to simplify ourselves for you and yet your philosophers and theologians seem determined to make it all complicated again.  We really don't need a translator for anything we've put forth for you."

    "That's not what I was talking about."

    "I know.  Your thoughts weren't in a good place.  I was breaking the tension, allowing you a chance to center your thoughts again.  It'll make our communion go a lot better."

    "Okay, I think I'm as centered as I'm going to be.  So, what about Mariah?"

    "Some things are so hard to explain to human beings.  You're always caught up in the moment, caught up in what's affecting you in the right now.  And there's always so much more going on than that.  Mariah went through six days of horror, just as I went through the same type of horror.  Then, when it was over, she came to be with me.  With my Host.  She's with me now even as we speak.  And she's happy, David, more overjoyed than you can imagine.  Her existence is a good one now, just as yours can be if you can let this go."

    "But where was the choice?  You had a choice in what you wished to do.  Where was her choice?  Would she have gone through what she did if someone gave her a choice?"

    "David, let me let you in on something, a misconception you seem to have.  There is not a thing we did to influence anyone's choice in their actions, even though we knew that everything was destined to be.  For the most part, we've left mankind alone, to make its own choices.  And, you're right, Mariah, on her own, did not have a choice.  But society did.  When we took our chosen, there was nothing compelling those left behind to elect an oppressive government who would act inhumanely to those in its care, even though we knew this would happen.  Humankind did this all on their own, and humankind chose to look the other way when these horrors took place.  That's true for all of human history.  How many catastrophic events have been the product of a human being or a nation of human beings and how many times has God been blamed for the results of these catastrophic events?  I hate to tell you this, but more often than not, mankind has been guilty of its own destruction, and God has simply become a convenient excuse to assuage its guilt."

    The young man's eyes were still as clear and intense as they had been earlier, but there was a storm behind those eyes, and David felt that he was beginning to incur that legendary wrath that he feared.  He sat silently, and momentarily the young man's eyes regained their sense of calm, and the sense of peace that David had felt surround the young man earlier was back in place.

    "You're still very young, David Friend," the young man said, the calm having returned to his voice.  "Your entire race is.  But there is so much that's going to happen, so many wonders that will take place in the next one thousand years.  You'll want to be part of it, David, you really will.  And it won't end when you die.  The second your body perishes you'll be with me, at my side, and there will be no pain that can touch you.  That's what I'm offering, if you accept it."

    David did not lift his eyes, but spoke to the dirt in front of him.

    "You know who Deidre was, don't you?"

    "Of course.  Deidre was your girlfriend prior to the calling away of the chosen."

    "And you recall what happened to her?"

    "Yes, David.  I see it through your eyes.  The day of the calling, a driverless auto running at full speed smashed into her car, causing it to roll over.  She wasn't far from your apartment and you saw it all.  The car burst into flames and she was caught, trapped in the car.  You reached her while she was still alive but could find no way to save her.  You watched her burn to death in front of you.  I know that it was truly horrible for you."

    "We lived in sin, you know."

    "Yes."

    "I've never been particularly repentant of that."

    "And you're looking for me to reject you for that?"

    "Well, vengeance is yours. . ."

    "You have a quick sense of humor, David.  A little sardonic for my taste, but it has also probably assisted you in your survival.  As for you 'living in sin,' as you call it, I think the point that we've tried to make is that you all live in sin.  And, no, we don't like it, but in the past we've listed a number of personal sins we don't like and, in case you hadn't noticed, we've never ranked them as to which sins were more of an abomination to us.  It's certain members of your society that have had no problems in calling some worse than others, mostly in order to stand in judgment.  Certainly, we've stated that sexual interaction without the commitment of marriage is a sin.  We've also listed gluttony as a sin, but have you ever seen a convention of clergymen here in the United States.  There are quite a few of those people who don't readily walk away from the buffet.  The important thing isn't that you've followed every rule to the letter, the important thing is that you accept me."

    "Okay.  Okay.  But, here's the thing.  Do you know what I think about every day before I wake up, no matter what my situation is, no matter where I am?  I think about Deidre's glasses.  They were always too big for her face, you know, I always told her that she'd end up looking like my aunt.  I think about her skin.  It was too oily, she complained about it constantly.  I think about how she could never stand up for herself, that she constantly avoided conflict no matter how someone may have hurt her.  I used to get so frustrated with that.  And, the second I wake up, I think about how much I miss those things.  I miss the good things, too, like her smile and her laugh and the way she made peanut butter waffles and compulsively watched Wheel of Fortune.  And, yeah, I miss the sex, too.  And then I wake up fully and realize that I'm never going to see her again, never experience her again.  Am I right?"

    "Yes, I'm afraid you're correct."

    "You see, I've always heard my aunt and her religious crowd talk about how we have no right to complain and how we never see the bigger picture, how there's some sort of grand scheme that you've got planned.  But, for most of us, for most humans, that doesn't matter.  Because it truly is the small things that get us going and that matter to us, those tiny constants in our lives that make everything worth living for.  I used to know guys who would drop everything on Sundays to watch football and girls who had cataloged every pop song from every artist they could find.  I've known people who can draw battle maps of the Civil War from memory and people who could tell you the secret identities of every super-hero ever created.  Those are small things, insignificant things, not really worth dedicating your life to, but those were small people who really didn't have much more than those small things in their lives.  No great scientists or world-changing politicians in the bunch.  If you took away those insignificant things all they would have in their lives would be to eat, to procreate and to die, not a single one of them would get jacked up by the thought of some grand scheme.  And do you know what the most important small thing is that exists for people like us?  It's the people around us, even when we're not getting along with them, even though we would never admit to it while they're there.  And, in the end, for someone like them, for someone like me, that's all that matters.  I could not care less about some cosmic grand scheme or my part in it.  All I want is to see my Diedre again."

    David fell silent again, as did the young man in front of them.  David heart trembled over what he was about to say, yet he knew that he had to say it.

    "Diedre was a Wiccan.  She didn't believe in you at all.  She saw you as nothing but an icon of oppression.  I'm guessing that leaves her out of the club."

    "I'm afraid so," the young man said, and David could hear the sadness in his voice.

    "And I'll never see her again, will I?"

    "No, you won't."

    "Then I guess I'm not interested."

    "Think about what you're doing, David, please.  There must be something that could change your mind."

    "You already know the answer to that, don't you?"

    A sad smile appeared on the young man's face, and he nodded gently towards David.

    "I'm sorry, but I guess I'm on my own."

    But the young man was already gone, leaving David standing alone by the hillside.  Immediately, the sky turned the hue of gray it had been on the day of the battle, and the wind became cold and bitter.  The pain returned to David's stomach, forcing him back on the rock on which he was sitting before his communion with the young man.  Despite the pain, the world felt more natural for David this way.



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