Letter 77: Short Story

[ZephyrAscii]

"Letter 77"

“I can’t! No, I won’t! How could you do this to me?! I did everything you said and this is what I get! No, no more!”

“The perfect downfall” at least that was the thought that caressed my mind as I stared at myself, broken, quivering, yelling to all the deafen stars that mocked my frustration in the abandoned alleyway.

How did this happen, where did it all begin, perhaps after Father had ascended into his rightful position above all else, maybe after Mother collapsed and fell, broken, devastated, and in the end, alone. Maybe it began with the ink laden letters I clutched in my fist. Or could it be my fault? Maybe I shouldn’t have been born to them. Is it possible I chose with whom to live? And if so, did I make the wrong choice?

I was born to a schizophrenic man, a bipolar woman, and little else. Father believed that God spoke to him, gave him directions on how to evade the atrocities of our world and protect himself from the inner evils of man. Mother, on the other hand, didn’t surrender quite as easily to the fluctuations of reasoning pressuring her mind.

Everyday was the same. I went to school, I obeyed them, and I listened to Father’s incessant droning. And through all this I continued to practice my hypocrisy, the illusion of a perfectly behaved little boy living in a perfect home with perfect parents, and I was ok with it. So long as I could feel, I could live through whatever else God sent my way.

Then it happened. Father’s father was murdered. Throat slit, wrapped in French linens and carefully tossed into the dumpster behind the local grocery store. It was said he awoke one night and caught a group of rebellious adolescents robbing him, and as expected, they acted. Three days later they were caught, arrested, tried and sentenced, but none of this mattered. Father had snapped. His diluted mind gave him commands from God and each one, he wrote down word for word on every scrap of paper he possessed. It was an ending for him. It was the ending of a lot of things.

No longer would I hear Father recite scripture to me. No longer was Mother stable enough to hold down any type of employment anywhere in this monotonous city. No longer could I foster any thought. No longer did I feel like I could maintain my façade of perfection.

October 27th was the turning point. Mother and I returned from my social-standard enabling school to an empty apartment, a preacher proclaiming words from a piece of paper on the radio and a letter from Father on the kitchen table demanding that Mother head out to the empty lot behind our complex to look for him. She started out, and as she did, I counted. I counted the number of seconds that passed in her absence… thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight…And then it came, the chilling reverberation of air, the kind that strangles every mourner during their moment of silence when the widow collapses in tears and anguish. The sounds of pain and agony, the sounds of sheer terror washed over my ears and penetrated my mind as thirty-nine seconds passed by.

The police report said that He committed suicide, strapped Himself to a support column with pages of scripture surrounding the floor around Him. A few gallons of gasoline and a simple misleading match was all it took. He was dead within minutes. When I think about what He would have said to me, all that I could conceive was Him saying: “I have to do this, for God says you must be delivered from evil by being refined by fire. One day you’ll understand and hopefully you’ll do the same as I.”

From then on, nothing would change. Mother sat in the tub, freezing water raised to her waist, muttering incomprehensible monosyllabic hums and inebriated in broken thought as I was left there, alone. I searched for any form of ambition in that mausoleum, but all that was left to be found was a notebook, a collection of letters addressed to me from Him from God.

That was the beginning, the beginning of everything, of everything I amount to now. All the trials, the tests I endured, all of them began with those seventy-seven letters. They were instructions on how to better myself. They were written to get me out of desolation. They were from God. They were all mine.

Afterwards, I took control of things. My first step was literally my first step, out of that house without anyone beside me. Why did I do it? Letter one: “Remove yourself from everything that burdens you. Abandon what is to prepare for what will be.” It was difficult I’ll admit. I can remember that mighty gale of stagnant air that enveloped me as I open the door, and then I left.  

[ZephyrAscii]

"Letter 77" cont.

I obeyed everything He said even after He died. Maybe I was the perfect son to the perfect father. Maybe I could surface from these ashes and soar like those mythical birds that use to fill the glisten in my eyes. Maybe I wouldn’t be empty any longer.

Each letter addressed a different issue I had to predicate myself against. Each task was conceived to make me stronger. But remaining regulated by the words on pieces of paper was difficult. Sin surrounded me, entangled me, ensnared me, but so long as I read those letters I could maintain myself. Self-control, Letter 13.

Eventually I memorized them. Each sentence I absorbed I could feel the power of God surround me. I felt invincible knowing I was going to be delivered; I was going to live to die holy. Once again, I could feel it, that sense of perfectionism. Once again I was happy, perhaps for the first time I was happy. I was complete as I finished each task, even though I knew I was isolated from humanity. I lived on the streets but I thrived in grace.

Days passed and became weeks. Weeks became months, and eventually it had been over a year since I walked away from my past. The final two, the last letters I had to fulfill in order to conquer this world. The last trials I had to complete before I could say that I survived in brokenness and arose to greatness.

Letter 76: “Recognize the evils that surround you. Identify their source and proclaim to your fellow beings this abomination. Convince those around you to follow in your footsteps, as you have followed in mine.” Atrocities surrounded me in abundance in this city of sin; I had no problem distinguishing one. But identifying with the anathema worshipping atheists, the second most difficult trial I had undertaken. It broke every standard I set to separate myself from darkness, but now I was commanded to lunge myself head-first into this evil. How did I stand, how was I able to persevere through connecting with those whom I rejected? Only God could say, but somehow it had been done. Letter seventy-seven was all that was left.

I could not believe how far I had come. From the pathetic little boy living a constructed image of perfection, to the being of actual perfection in an empty city. Nothing burdened me, not the disappointments I overheard or the things I lacked. I was finally able to accept everything as it was and as it was meant to be, or so I thought.

The article was all I read that day, December 23rd. The man before me must have left it on that bench as he waited for the routine rotation of his buses. I felt good that day. I can remember thinking about all the failures that must have been listed within that paper’s confinements. And as they say “Curiosity killed the cat.” No cats died that day, but twenty-three people did.

The article was about Mother and how she ended. After I had left, she snapped even further. She was damaged beyond repair. Nobody could help her. She stole her father’s automatic weapon, a Mac 10 I believe Grandfather told me one day far, far away. She concealed it in a bag and blithely waltzed into that hospital lobby. As she stood there, in the center of all the commotion, I could only imagine how disturbing the bleached white walls must have been to her. With that last longing smile on her soft pastel face, she lifted that barrel, shed one last tear for her shattered life, and clenched the trigger. Fifty rounds in mere seconds, twenty-three people fell; blood flooded the corridors and stained the Venetian portraits hugging those disgusting sterile walls that surrounded her, and there she remained, standing, alone. Three minutes forty-five seconds passed, the SWAT cars arrived, the chief’s amplified voice demanded she release her weapon and walk outside that devastating photograph of time, but she just stood there, paralyzed in emptiness, that’s when the crushing sound of ignited gunpowder filled the air. Metal fell upon her like rain, smoke filled the building, and she was finally saved from her own hollowness.

The paper titled that scene “The St. Charity Massacre.” Such irony bludgeoned my mind as my eyes remained glued to the photograph of Her laying there. I could swear she was smiling. Perhaps for the first time since she lost everything, since she lost herself. All I thought to myself was how I couldn’t care less. Honestly, I doubt I could have cared any more either.

That night I read the final letter, feeling empty once again.

Letter 77: “I congratulate you on how far you have come. You have endured seventy-six trials, and you have accomplished each with such mastery only the Gods could possess. You are my son, and you are God’s son. Trial seventy-seven is like none other you have undertaken to date, for within this trial, your destiny remains. You have obeyed everything I have said, but today I must obey what you decide. If you are to follow in my legacy and ascend as I have, you must destroy everything you posses just as I have done. You must refine yourself as I have refined myself, through fire. You must leave everything behind and leave everything that remains in order to be united with your father and your father’s Father. Or you shall remain within this era of destruction and dismay. Remain surrounded by corruption and discord, but ascend above those around you. You have acquired all that you require to become all powerful amongst your fellow man. Success is what awaits you within this life, or peace is what awaits you within another life. I leave you here to decide for yourself what you shall become. Letter 77: The Ending”

This is about where I came in. This is where I kneel, disgusted with Father, grasping his final letter with a single match taped to its back. How could I decide? I have never made a decision for myself; I have always obeyed what I was told. Never once did I comprehend free-will, never once have I needed to decide for myself. I was truly alone. No one knew I existed, no one cared that I was sobbing in an empty alleyway. I was isolated, singled out in a freezing backstreet with nothing but a menacing match in my right hand and Letter 77 in my left.