He Lived

I found myself immersed in a darkness so vast that I struggled to think. Every attempt to understand or to recollect the circumstances which led me there failed me. I knew not whether I had died, or whether I was asleep. Every train of thought dissipated quickly into the eternal nothingness which surrounded me as though encumbered by weeks of sleeplessness. What disturbed me most was the fact that I did not know whether or not I was standing. Nor did I know whether my eyes were open, I tried to poke them, but I could not feel anything nor, for that matter, could I feel the strain upon my muscles to know that I raised my arms. I could not feel, in the absoulte silence, the beating of my heart, or the expansion and contraction of my lungs, or the inflow of my breath. Time passed, I imagined, for I remembered the momentary glimpses of my past thoughts. But I did not know for how long.

A blinding light glowed in the distance. Without any sense of place, I did not know whether this was a mere fire fly a few feet away or a city set to blaze. I ran to it. With a rage as though escaping from an eternity of damnation, I knew that whatever my fate should be, it would be better than this.

I did not grow tired. But I also did not know for how long I ran. As I placed every step before the next I lost memory of the one before. I continued like this, until a palace shaped in the form of a star grew out of the radiance, made not of any tangible thing, but instead emitting a perpetual red glow which not for a moment lose it's severity. It's growing warmth did not burn me, and it's piercing light did not blind me, but instead filled my soul with every passing moment with greater and more insurmountable feelings of distress and hopelessness. I felt like a spider caught in a jar. I glanced down, but there was nothing, I began to realize that perhaps I was running outside of my will, or maybe not running at all but that the radiance was approaching me.

Then, with a force vastly overpowering the entrancing radiance was a stench like the fetid remains of a million human corpses left to rot. For a moment I was grateful to sense again, but then a sudden grief crushed what little joy I managed to find, a dizzying spell of noxious and distracting pain tore me into countless pieces. I looked down where I would expect to find my form, and billowing beneath me was an endless vortex of human suffering. I felt upon what was left of my conscience the helpless anguish and defeat of every child ever left to whither alone in hunger; I felt the crushing pain of every parent ever forced to mourn the early passing of a child at the hand of war; I felt, at every moment, every act of vicious hatred ever inflicted upon the weak and powerless. In time, I found my place again before the radiance of the palace.

A single mind crushing shout tore through that eternal abyss, silencing every pang, every trouble, returning all things into a single neutrality of nothingness. About me, glowed only that eternal radiance and a single path of darkness leading straight ahead to a doorway. I passed through, a tangled mess of weakness and pain.

He sat upon the greatest throne ever raised: Whose seat was cushioned by the beating of the hearts of every fool who ever fought for glory or fame; whose arms ran rings around rods of flame; whose legs stood as solid timeless pedestals, impervious to any force of man.
He took not the form of any single man, but as the form of many countless men. I sensed within the room, the summation of all evil. And I sensed within myself precisely what it was that He wanted. He raised a table out of the ground which spanned nearly a hundred feet, upon it all the delicacies the most refined palate could ever desire and even some of the more unrefined. I dared not look at it all, for I knew what submission here would mean. I crawled desperately away, but found myself always returning to that point. I knew that I had no control in this place and what little fight I raised was merely to postpone the inevitable. I collapsed, exhausted. His will would manage the affairs from here. I sat at the head of a table, my mouth open and out of the air, food landed into my mouth. At first, it was a sample of fluff, nothingness, which did little to satisfy my hunger but which immediately liberated me for a mere shadow of a second into a state of absolute ecstasy and delight, food unlike anything I had ever eaten, or ever imagined food could possibly taste like, but this would last only for so long as I could record a memory of it, before the state of the food quickly deteriorated. I would spend what felt like an eternity tortured by that distant memory while I consumed the most retched wastes and after products of human civilization. Every mouthful so vastly more revolting than the previous that if at any moment he had been merciful, I would have sworn my absoulte obedience to his hatred. It appeared as though it would not end, I would never run out of breath nor would my hunger ever subside. But it did, and in an instant I found myself before Him again.

I wondered whether I had satisfied him, whether I had met his standards. I now knew that He Lived, and I knelt before Him, my submission as inevitable as death.