Sunday, July 10, 2011

The Specter and the Madman

The Specter moved down the city street as fast as he could. The early morning foot traffic made it difficult, as no one could see him. He did his best to weave through them, his legs growing heavier, weighed down by the fatigue of being up all night.

Erased from history, robbed of all but a precious few of his memories, and brought back in order to save the world to atone for his sins, the Specter was wearing himself down to the bone in order to make some kind of progress. Things were going slow, and he was running out of time. He was beginning to realize that there was a very good chance he might not be successful. The thought forced him to push on harder, his life becoming a cycle of minor success followed by crushing failure.

As he passed by a small bistro, he saw a familiar face sitting at one of the tables on the outside patio. It was a face he knew better than his own. It was the face that was burned into his mind. The face the Madman he saw every time he closed his eyes.

The Madman looked to be in his early forties, with a shaved head, and a well trimmed black goatee, which circled his ever present sinister smile. He wore a pair of small round lensed sunglasses which mostly obscured his eyes, but when they didn't you could almost reach out and touch the madness that swirled around in them.

He wore gray khaki pants, accompanied by a half unbuttoned blue Hawaiian shirt with a light green undershirt. Rounding out his ensemble was a brown faded duster draped over the chair he was sitting in.

He held a newspaper up, trying to obscure the fact that he was watching the Specter The Specter noticed though, and was a little surprised that the Madman could see him. He didn't think too much of it. He had recently discovered that when he meant genuine, imminent harm to someone, they were able to see him.

He most certainly meant harm to the man. This was the man who killed him.

"You!" The Specter shouted at the madman.

"Moi? You can't be serious." he said, in a fake french accent that was so bad it bordered on ridiculous. He feigned surprise, but then called back, "What's your problem?"

"My problem?" the Specter asked. "My problem is that you killed me!"

"I see two issues with your logic," the Madman said, peering around the tops of his sunglasses at the Specter, "Un, I do not remember killing you, and If I killed a person, I think I'd remember it, and deux, you do not look very dead to me."

As the Madman spoke, his ridiculous accent seemed to fade into a much more authentic one, and then back again. The Specter couldn't tell if he was French and trying to deliberately fake a bad accent, or if it was just terrible at faking a bad accent.

"It's a complicated situation," the Specter started, his anger getting the best of him.

"I know all about your situation, spirit. You are the one who was erased, brought back, and then charged with saving the world. I'm here because you need my help. Have a seat."

The Specter sat down, and the Madman called over a waiter to bring him two cups of coffee. The Specter looked dead into the Madman's eyes, his rage welling up inside him at this man, he could barely resist the urge to scream.

"Introduction," the Madman said, holding a hand out in an effort to subdue some of the Specter’s anger, "My name is Genevieve-Olivier Dufresne. You may call me Gen for short."

"I don't have a name," the Specter spit out, "They took that from me, along with everything else. All I have left are a few memories, mostly feelings from the day I passed. Other than that, I technically never existed. Thanks you to and God's bureaucracy, I have no family, and only one friend."

"Well, now you have two friends," Gen said, as he reached across the table, extending his arm for a handshake. The Specter did not return it. He sat at the table glowering at Gen until he sat back down.

They sat for awhile in silence, and the waiter, assuming Gen was alone, as he could not see the Specter, brought Gen two cups of coffee. Gen slid the other cup over to the Specter They waited for awhile longer in silence before Gen finally spoke.

"I am sorry you are in this situation," Gen finally said, his smile and phony accent disappearing as he apologized, "I know this must be difficult for you. I was unaware of the circumstances surrounding your rebirth."

There was a certain honesty to Gen's apology that caught the Specter off guard. He was beginning to find it hard to believe that this was the man who had shot him. The chaos in his eyes seemed benign. His smile, which in his memories seemed sinister, now had seemed more jovial. He wondered if it were possible for this man, who could easily be someone's crazy uncle, to transform into the twisted killer that had shot him.

He unfolded his arms as the anger ran out of him. As he did, Gen smiled once again.

"Gen," the Specter asked, "Are you guilty of my murder if was erased and never happened?"

Gen's smile expanded a bit, and he pursed his lips as he thought about the answer, "Maybe. I can't directly answer that one at this time."

"Alright then," the Specter continued, "are the Laws of God so warped that they can condemn a man to my fate even when he cannot remember what the offense is that he committed?

"The 'Laws of God?'" Gen's face contorted like a parent who just heard their two year old swear in a comedic fashion. His expression was somewhere between the brink of laughter and utter bewilderment, bordering on anger. "It really affects me, sometimes, how people, each one unique, with their own needs, can assume that one set of rules can be applied to every person. It's gone on for thousands of years, and yet still humanity seems to skirt around the simple truth. All situations are different, and the best resolution comes from not enclosed system of law, but instead an open mind.

"Here's an example," Gen said, producing a small rolled cigarette from one of his shirt pockets, and lighter from the other, in one fluid motion of his hands. "Something painfully generic," he said, as his constant smile curled slightly further upward. He put the cigarette into his mouth and lit it. There was a pause before he took a long, slow drag off of the cigarette.

Gen propped his elbow on the table, and held the cigarette up in two fingers of his hand as he continued. "A poor man works hard to provide for his family, but his business can barely keep a roof over his head. Having not been able to feed his family for three days, he asks a wealthy, well fed man for some food, which the man has in abundance. The well fed man refuses, hearing none of the poor man's pleas. The poor man, knowing this man has much more food than he needs, decides to steal a plate of meat to ensure his family doesn't starve.

"Now I ask you, Monsieur ghost," He said, the cigarette smoke obscuring most of his face aside from his mad eyes and even madder smile, "in God's eyes, who is more wrong? Clearly the poor man stole, but he did a so called 'bad' thing for a noble reason. Does that make it more acceptable? If so, what about the well fed man? Was he not entitled to keep his own plate of meat, which he earned, or is he somehow obligated to give his extra food to someone else who needed it more? If so, what happens if he suspects he is being taken advantage of? At what point can he stop giving away food?"

The Specter sat, hunched forward, with his forearm laid across the table in front of him, to keep himself propped up. The story was convoluted, and at this point he had more pressing matters on his mind than what someone else was hypothetically eating or not eating and how right or wrong they may be by doing so. He was much more concerned with the individual sitting across from him.

Up until a few minutes ago, this man, Gen, had been the dark cloud casting a shadow upon his life. That twisted smile and those mad eyes always peering out above his sunglasses had haunted almost every last one of the Specter’s dreams for the past ten years. Technically, this was the man responsible for setting in motion the events that put him in this position. All of his memories, and his very existence, erased by the actions of this man.

While the Specter was beginning to accept that Gen might not be the antagonist he thought he was, he was still very wary of the him. He kept his eyes locked onto Gen's, and did his best to remain as stoic as possible. He was tired, but he was determined not to show any weakness.

"It would appear," the Specter said, taking a sip of his now cold coffee, and wincing at its bitterness, "that there would have to be more details to this story than you are letting on, making things even more complex." The Specter waved away the thought of going deeper into the story with his hand. "I understand the point you are trying to make though. It does leave me with a few questions though. If God has no absolute laws, then why are all sorts of holy books filled with them? Are they all fabrications? If they are, and the absolute rules are unacceptable, why does God not just come down and tell us? Just exactly what is God trying to accomplish?"

Gen turned his head slightly to the left, and opened his left eye wide, while squinting with the right. What would have been a perplexed look on anyone else seemed to the Specter to be him making two sets of observations at once. One eye open to see everything, and the other squinting to examine only the smallest detail. He dropped his cigarette into his coffee cup, and it produced a slight hiss as it went out.

All expression left Gen's face for a moment, and he leaned back, obscuring his eyes with his sunglasses. He raised his finger and held it there, as if asking for the Specter to wait for his answer. For a few minutes, they both sat in expressionless silence. Gen then moved his raised finger and briefly pointed it at the Specter When he spoke, his French accent was gone, and his voice sounded different. He spoke Arithmetically, mispronouncing some of his words, and putting inflections on the wrong syllables of others.

"Explain the actions of God to man. Ha ha," he laughed, but there was no humor in his voice. "Such a thing is like trying to explain color to the blind, or sound to the deaf. I can no more explain why God does what God does any more that you can explain to me how a rose smells."

Gen's presentation made it clear that even though he appeared to be a man, whatever he was, he most certainly was not human. The chaos that he had seen swirling about this being's eyes wasn't madness, it was simply something that was beyond his ken. It was awe inspiring and frightening at the same time. The Specter nodded, and smiled, ever so slightly. Gen smiled back and shrugged. He returned to his pseudo-French accent when he spoke, but this time it sounded authentic and did not vary.

"I can however, explain some of where humanity has acquired 'God's Law.' Here's a question for you: Does it strike you as odd that God would have created so much passion and life ensconced in the grip of the act lovemaking, and then tell people they couldn't do it, that it was surrounded in sin and not life?"

The Specter quirked up an eyebrow before answering, "Didn't you just say you can't explain God? Sounds about par for the course to me."

Gen shook his head, "God is complex. The surface of His (or Her, or even Its if you prefer) being has more depth than a thousand oceans, but God has a constant. God makes sense. That level of idiocy I just described? That's not God's work. That's the kind of inane bullshit that only humanity has the ability to come up with. It's actually quite fascinating from an outsider's perspective.

"But I do digress. Many years ago there was a man who was about to be overcome by his own lust. Good old kind-hearted concerned God goes to him, and says, 'Hey, be careful not let your loins get the best of you.' The man, who has just had his mind blown by speaking with God, goes and tells his brothers and sisters about the experience. They immediately interpret this simple word of God as 'lust is a bad thing.' This in turn makes sex a bad thing, but a necessary evil. Soon looking at a woman the wrong way has become a sin, and because man has a horrible time accepting that the fault may be his own coupled with a wonderful need to oppress things, the woman who walks in an alluring way is the one at fault, and deemed less of a person."

"So," the Specter asked, sitting up in his chair, "If there are no ironclad rules, does that mean that there is no judgment when we pass?"

Gen took off his sunglasses and set them on the table, and then clasped his hands, leaning forward on the table.

"There is judgment. Not just when you pass, but always, before and after, but God is oft-forgiving, and most merciful. He made you, and He knows you, better than you know yourself. He sees your difficulties, and all of the intricacies, chemical imbalances, hopes, dreams, fears, and faults, and takes it into consideration. It's a dynamic process," Gen explained, wiggling his fingers, "While there is no one set of rules, there is one blanket rule that covers most situations. It's the one that appears time and time again across most religious texts that isn't marred by the eccentricities of man. Probably the best paraphrase of it would be something along the lines of, 'Don't be an ass.'"

The Specter laughed, and Gen chuckled shortly after. It felt good to laugh. He wondered how long it had been since he'd genuinely been amused to the point of laughter. He couldn't remember. He suspected he might never have. For a moment the yoke around his neck that bore the weight of the world was lifted and he felt alive again. Gen reached across the table and grabbed his shoulders.

"Look," he said, looking into the Specter’s eyes "I realize you have very little. You work tirelessly to save a world that you can never again have a place in, but you have to live. See a sunrise, walk through a rainstorm, kiss a pretty girl. That's what it's all about. Life shouldn't ever be an onus, it should be an adventure. If the world can't afford you that, then the world doesn't deserve to be saved."

Gen stood up and threw a few dollars on the table to cover the two coffees. He looked up at the cloudless sky, and his expression grew grim.

"The storm is coming soon," he said, walking away from his chair and out of the bistro patio. He stopped for a moment, and then looked back down at the Specter, "if you don't have anyone or anything to hold on to, it will wash you away. Don't be afraid to ask God for help if you need it."

"Oh, yeah," the Specter replied, smiling as his cynicism got the best of him, "God's been a great help so far. At the rate He's going, if I ask for any more, he may trip me and kick me while I'm down."

"Food for thought," Gen called out, as he vanished into the crowd, "When was the last time you actually asked God for help?"

The Specter couldn't remember that either. He took another sip of his cold bitter coffee, and winced again.

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