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« on: October 18, 2020, 06:22:48 AM »
Day 9
Bricks
They brought the bricks, one by one to the edge of the ravine. They had been hermits for many years, but they were hungry, so they'd rob the next spice caravan that came through.
"Brother Michael, isn't it better to starve than to commit such a crime?" One hermit said. His once youthful glowing face was an approximation of a skeleton, his eyes and jaws sunken, his gut bloated from malnutrition. He was so weak he'd only been able to bring the bricks one by one.
Brother Michael grunted, "Then starve, just like our dearly departed Brother Lewis. Me? I intend on understanding the mysteries of the spiritual realm on a full stomach."
The spice caravans were barely guarded. The fat merchants always assumed that nobody lived in this part of the desert, and were cheap enough to avoid the extra cost of a guard for the journey of several leagues. If the bricks hit their target - and they would, there were about a thousand of them, gathered from an abandoned castle - then if not for fatal injury they'd be seriously stunned. Other acolytes would then set upon them with knives sharpened out of animal bones.
The caravan came into view,
"When we do this sin, we will pray for forgiveness. Not after."
The hermits beside him swallowed, or at least tried to. The oasis they'd been subsisting on had dried up a day ago. And no amount of prayer had given them any other ideas than robbery and murder.
The caravan came into view...
Brother Michael inhaled, held the brick up. It was framed in the sun, and he looked like a veriteable prophet coming down from a hill with sun on his back.
---
Later, in his temple of white marble stone and flowing fountains, some ten years older, Elder Michael pored over his script, rewriting The Holy Book by hand for the seventh time in his life time as a sign of his penance. Age had caught up with him, and he had rosy cheeks and a bit of a belly. Long gone were the days of fasting, being an Elder and leader of his denomination.
"And man... Fights against his body, day and night, just as The Spirit fights The Evil one, from the beginning of time... to the end."
He sat there in his chair, silent, solemn. He did his duties, silent and solemn, but in his head he could still hear the screams, still see the blood.
(The first brick they'd thrown had struck a child, the son of the merchant, excited to be leading the horses. He could still see the brains, dusted up in the sand. The boy had shivered for a whole minute before dying. )
And he wrote more in the book. And he imagined he was smearing it full of blood and dust, and he felt hell calling his name.
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