If a writer of my meager stature gets to dedicate short works, this is for David and Luis.
My death hadn’t been anything worth discussion. It was tragic, as all passings are, and all too soon. There were people who cared about me, yes, and people who I cared about, but when I closed my eyes for the last time, there were no regrets, no loose ends worth taking the effort of tying up.
The worst part was that I existed afterwards. It wasn’t that I awoke, exactly. There was no dramatic scene, no wandering the void. I simply opened my eyes, and there was something before them. At least there wasn’t much for me to take in. A very ordinary-looking man, not beautiful nor ugly, sat behind a simple wooden table. An open seat, the same as his, was behind the other side. It was cocked to the side, as if inviting me to sit.
I sat, of course. What else was there to do? Now that I sat across from him, I could see he was dressed in a plain black t-shirt. I looked down and saw I was dressed simply too. He looked at me and spoke in a deep, slightly nasal voice, smiling. “Edgar.” He said. “It’s a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.”
I gave him a little nod, the utter strangeness of things beginning to set in. “Thank you. And your name?” He raised his eyebrows. “Most people assume, by this point. They have an expectation.” I shrugged. “No halo or horns. No flames or clouds.” He snorted. “Very well. You’re here to atone for your sins.” I didn’t want him to answer the question that popped into my head.
“Okay.” I just said, crossing my arms. “And how do I do that?” His eyes shone. “How do fish swim? The zoologist says that it knows to instinctively. The biologist says that its muscle cells contract in an undulating pattern. The physicist says that those muscles act as forces upon the spine, producing an angular moment that results in a roughly sinusoidal spinal motion. None are correct. The fish simply swims.”
“That’s not very helpful.”
“Be patient. Now, how would you teach a baby how to walk?”
“You don’t. You stand them up and let them figure it out.”
Ah. The man nodded. A cloak of dread settled upon my shoulders.
“Then what is a sin? From what I’ve heard, a sin can be anything! Not going to church, believing in another god, being gay- I’m not going to atone for normal things!”
He shook his head. “You will be atoning for normal things, or things that you considered normal. But not for some of those things, not directly. Sin is simple. Sin is taking an action, without love in your heart, to hurt your fellow man.”
I was quick to retort. “So if my friend is standing in front of a speeding car, I would sin by painfully pushing him out of the way?”
He laughed. “Of course not. Logical paradoxes of that sort hide the simple fact that you know sin when you do it.
I furrowed my brow. As if there wasn’t more nuance. “And what about the trolley problem? Does pulling the lever, or not doing so, constitute sinning?”
“Neither and both. It would be sinning to do one without thinking at all, to glibly make the choice of lives without consideration. But if one thinks about the conundrum, and wrestles with it, and makes either choice with love in their heart for the one person or the five, then there is no sin.”
I opened my mouth to retort, but I didn’t have anything to say. He waited a few seconds. “Are you ready to begin atoning?” I just nodded.
I tensed, expecting some sort of flashback or hologram. Instead, he pulled a sheet of paper from the side of the tabletop, which was too thin to have any sort of practical storage space. He placed it on the table, never once breaking eye contact with me. “You pushed Benjamin Ossie into a mud-puddle and mocked him, giving him the nickname ‘mud-face.’” He said plainly.
“And? I’m sorry.”
“You’re not.”
“Yes I am. Are you calling me a liar?” I retorted, with a little more force than necessary. It felt good, familiar. The man, frustratingly, didn’t react visibly.
“No. I’m saying that you’ve gotten so used to saying that you’re sorry when you’ve done wrong that you’ve forgotten what being sorry feels like.”
I refused to give up the offensive. “No I haven’t! And what’s more, that was years and years ago! I don’t remember any of that!”
“Yes you do.”
And the horrifying realization dawned upon me that I did. The events were there in sharp detail, information leaping to my mind barely called upon. They didn’t come against my will - they obeyed it entirely.
I stood over a prone boy, struggling as he oriented himself in the mud. His plaid shirt and corduroy pants were ruined, caked with the slimy stuff. It had rained ten minutes before recess. Instead of helping him up, or checking on him, I just laughed. “Mudface! Mudface!” I cried, in seemingly-gleeful frenzy, as the fat kid finally rolled over, spitting out filth and breathing heavily, his red cheeks concealed by the dirt.
Yet there was no laughter in my heart. No happiness. Just a dense, incomprehensible thing that had been placed there recently and was now exerting itself onto my immature will. It bubbled up through my skin and bones, boiling my flesh hotter and hotter, demanding action. I didn’t even feel satisfied - just hungrier for more.
The man was smiling. I barely heard myself say, “What is this-” but managed to stop myself. I steadied myself on the table, and he waited for me to get my bearings. I knew that feeling, but I never remembered feeling it so primally, uncontrollably. It was overpowering, in the memory. Irresistible. The man spoke.
“What did you feel, when you did it?”
“I don’t know. Something dense and immovable, red and hot. Steaming me from the inside out.”
“And if you had to put a word to it?”
It came without thinking. “Hatred.”
“An adult’s emotion. How did you learn to hate at such a young age?”
I thought back, and another string of memories came to me. It felt like rusty wire being pulled up my gullet, but I wanted it to come, for some reason.
My parents had moved to a town I had never heard of, in the Philadelphia suburbs, promising up and down that it would be an exciting new adventure. When I walked into the classroom to introduce myself, I saw a sea of smiling faces, new friends. Ms. Goodwin invited me to the front of the room, to speak to the class.
“Hi.” I said, with a little wave. “I’m E-e-e”- Ms. Goodwin patted me on the shoulder. I took a deep breath. “My name is E-e-e-e.” I cut myself off this time. For some reason, it didn’t want to come out. I looked up at Ms. Goodwin, who gave me a little smile. I did what my mom told me to. I took a deeeeeeep breath and counted to ten.
When I opened my eyes, though, I didn’t see many new friends. Less smiles. A type of impatience I didn’t have the right experience to understand, at that point. I took a big, deeeeep breath. “Hi, I’m super excited to meet all of you new friends, my-” I didn’t get to finish. A fat kid with wild hair cut me off. “E-E! Your name is E-E! That’s what you keep saying!” A small wave of chuckles rippled through the sitting students. I looked up to Ms. Goodwin, but she was chuckling, too.
The fat kid was moving his head back and forth like a lawn sprinkler, an open-mouthed joy frozen in his face. Ms. Goodwin wasn’t stopping him. Why wasn’t anyone stopping him? I looked up at her again, and she was looking down at me, now, with pity and something else, her lip arched. “He was just kidding. You have to get over it.” She said. Another wave of laughs.
I looked out and saw vultures and hyenas. Mom told me about them. They ate animals that ate what other animals had hunted. Scaredy cats, but they were picking me clean. My chest was burning. Why didn’t Ms. Goodwin fight them off? Why did she help them? She was supposed to do something, but she just looked down at me, on me.
The man wasn’t smiling this time, his head bowed slightly, respectfully. He waited for me to speak. I took a second to collect myself, leaning back in my chair, which supported my body, even as I subjected it to unreasonable geometry. “Can you see it?” I asked.
“I know about your past, Edgar, enough to know what you remembered. And it is just memories, in vivid detail.”
And yet… “I never remember - remembered my memories like this.”
“In your mortal life, you don’t. Memories are either inert, dulled by that which kept you moving forward, or faded by memory. These are no longer considerations.”
I sighed. “So I sinned because I hated, and I know how I learned to hate. It felt bad, yes, and I’m still sorry.”
He shook his head. “You’re sorrier, but you haven’t atoned.”
I wracked my brain. I wasn’t going to fight this process, but… it was impenetrable to me. I thought of the scant things I had read on the subject.
“Okay. So what happened to him? To Benjamin, because of it?”
“It doesn’t matter. The sin is in your heart, not in what you inflict on the world.”
I bit my lip. He spoke again.
“Now, you have all that you need. Reflect on this. Atone. I’ll answer any questions you ask.”
I planted my elbows on the table, resting my chin in a cradle formed of my palms, and thought about what I had done. It disquieted me, that dark stone in my soul. Like something else had taken over. Was that it?
“I’m sorry for letting Satan take over.” I said experimentally.
“You have nobody to blame but yourself.” He replied.
Nobody to blame but myself - yet I felt so restless, in that moment. Inaction was simply not an option, but it didn’t ask for less when I fed it, only more. Always more. Sin leading to sin, leading to sin. And that cold, hard glare…
It struck me like a lightningbolt. For a moment, I saw it with heartbreaking clarity. A chain unbroken, fracturing humanity as it spread and split and spread. The father berates the son, who berates his child. The heartbroken poet becomes the contemptuous, blank-eyed critic. The tragedy of hatred was not that it was inhuman, but because it was very human. Each link could have chosen to snuff their branch out, put a little end to the plague of generations, yet instead passed it on for nothing in return but more hatred. And I had done it with glee.
That was sin, and in this place, there were no barriers to stop me from the totality of my realization, no barriers of ignorance to erect. I slumped in my chair. Regret, nothing but regret, not for what I held in my heart, for that was no choice of mine, but for what I had done. Regret so vast that I did not hold it, but that it held me.
The man was quietly brimming with joy, even as I stewed in the worst misery I had known, drowning in more intense emotion than I had known alive. The regret did not pass or diminish, I only came to live with it, after some time. I do not know how long it took. Yet, when I lifted my eyes from their puddles on the table, my gaze was more resolute than it had been before.
“You have atoned.” He said. “For a sin.”
It was easier, after the first one, to see the heart of the sin I had committed, but that didn’t make it less painful. Each was a new pain, related but distinct to the ones I had experienced before. I was beginning to suspect I knew where I was, between the two places I could be. What felt like eternal punishment for my sins, of which there were too many to count. It was only too fortunate, for one of us, that we had eternity to go through them all. It struck me as no small irony that this was the exact opposite of what I had wanted.
It wasn’t courage nor will that built up as, bit by bit, I relived the moments of my life, seeing cause and effect, with me willingly in between. Whatever it was, it compelled me to ask the man some questions.
I laid my hands upon my thighs, tapping out a pattern with my right hand, as I looked at him. I had looked at his face so long that, were I still mortal, I suspect it would’ve stopped registering. As things were, I noticed each detail, each time.
“You said these sins are in my heart, in the intent to commit harm. Why must they result in real harm to others? Why would a good God create a world where sin led to suffering?”
He smiled and tapped his chin. “Do you think you would have atoned for your first sin, if you could have told me that there was no real harm done, that it was cathartic and not evil?"
I tilted my head. “I suppose not. But then why could a good God not lie to me, and not reveal that to me?”
“Those that go to heaven are united with God. The lie would have to be revealed, somewhere along the way. That would be betrayal and hypocrisy. These are human failings. God is not incapable of them, but why would He do them? He doesn’t need to, to save the souls that are to be saved.”
I was growing increasingly fearful but I wasn’t such a person, not with what I was going through. “Thank you for explaining. I’m ready to continue atoning.” The man nodded and placed the sheet of paper that had previously been on the table back where it came from, producing yet another and placing it down. I had glanced down at them, but they seemed to be empty, just white sheets. “Your friend Ivan’s twenty-first birthday. You convinced your mutual friends, quietly, to go clubbing instead of celebrating with him.” Ashamed, I closed my eyes and remembered.
We were on our second bar of the night, and Ivan had sent one last text to the group for the night, but the memory of the backlog was clear as well.
IVAN: remember, 7 at my place! looking forward to seeing all of you!
ANNIE: See you there!
IVAN: where you guys at?
EDGAR: sorry were running a little late
IVAN: ok!
You remember Annie having protested, saying that she felt bad, but you insisted. Clubbing was going to be so much more fun than sitting around playing dumb card games. Besides, Ivan had no idea how to host.
IVAN: still coming?
IVAN: hello?
IVAN: im sorry if i did something rude
You kicked Ivan from the group chat and slipped your phone back in your pocket. Even as you participated in the activities of the night, your thoughts stayed on your now ex-friend. You didn’t feel rage. No, you felt a sad solidarity with him, even though you were the cause of his woe. A miserable little crone of satisfaction, crowing.
I was hanging my head, but I knew by now that I had to open my eyes. “This one was different.” I commented. The man nodded. “If you had to put a word to it, what would it be? Words, at first.”
I took a second to think. “An old, bitter lady, proclaiming her victory over her naive victim.”
“And what is she saying?”
The words leapt out of me. “You should’ve known better.”
He smiled, resting his chin on his knuckles. “The word, now.”
“Loneliness.”
“But you had been lonely before. What makes this one special?”
“You already know.”
“I do, but you don’t remember it yet.”
I knew this one would be painful, but I did.
I sat upon a pew at the back of the church. I had been going for a few weeks now, but I didn’t quite know how things went. I had recently been looking for purpose, and had decided to try this. I felt like I didn’t belong, though, even as I added my unsure voice to the hymns. It felt like I stole each communion wafer I ate. Regardless, I kept going.
This was going to be my last time, though, unless something changed. I had promised that to myself. Here I was, in the temple of the Lord, doing what was asked of me. If he was not to intercede on my behalf here, then he never would. All I wanted was a sign, that he would ease the solitude of my heart. I listened to the priest. I sang. I prayed.
Nothing came, but nothing can’t come. All that comes is that desperate waiting, as you calculate how much more time there is in the service for things to change. Just a sign. A wink, a nod. The service ended. I got up and walked to talk to the priest, but he was talking with some other people, and then he had to go prepare for another service at another church. He took the crucifix away. I sat at the front pew, staring at one of the figures depicted in the colorful tiles. His innocent, sad smile, searching for meaning.
The church slowly emptied out, leaving me to my thoughts. I stood up, slowly, and walked to the back of the church. The moment drew song out of me. Slowly I sang, gazing at the robe-clad figure, walking forward. Stanza after stanza, sung in what I desperately hoped was the audience of God. An offering of my heart.
Then I stepped into the sanctuary at the front of the church, walking up to the figure. I saw how he was made up of artfully cut tiles, his facial features an artist’s illusion. I gazed into his eyes, then stepped away. I lay down on the floor, my hands extending out, my legs straight and together. I knew a terrible truth.
Nothing. It was all for nothing. I was praying in an empty building that was sometimes used as a church. I, or this building, had been abandoned. Perhaps it left with the priest. Alone, on that cold stone floor, in the empty church, I curled up and wept for what never was.
I was angry, tears running over hot, flushed cheeks, as I looked at the man across from me. He looked old, in that beaten-down way. “I could see it on your face.” He said, slowly. “It brings me no joy, either.” It was surprising, that the devil didn’t enjoy misery. I croaked out, “Why?”
He rubbed his chin. “A church is a holy place, yes. So is a hospital, or a meadow. All places are holy, blessed by God. Prayer means the same thing no matter where you do it. Churches are special because they help people continue being good, and they are places where good is done. Any such place is special.”
“That doesn’t explain why there was nothing.” I bit my lip, tasting salty tears that were now hitting my lap, and repeated myself. “Nothing. This is His fault. How can He expect me to be good, when he created circumstances that led to me sinning? To me being here!”
To the old man’s credit, he listened patiently and replied carefully. “He put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, knowing that there was a tree, and a snake. He made Earth, with its limited resources, and you, with desires that would outstrip them a hundredfold. Men are expected to make things on Earth as they are in heaven, yet he could’ve made it much closer in the first place. Why?” He knew the answer. It was clear.
“There must be evil, or the chance for evil, for there to be good. But why? The Ten Commandments are framed as what thou shalt not do. But we could just as easily not do them if the world was idyllic, and if killing never meant living another day for a desperate man.”
“Close. Good is doing right by your fellow man when it is hard, not when the alternative is evil. It is equivalently that which brings men closer to God. If it was easy and effortless to do good things, they would not be good things. Just as sin is in the heart, so is good. It is fighting through the ache when you give so much that you will have trouble buying gifts on Christmas. It is biting your anger back and helping someone who annoys you when she needs it. It hurts to be good. The choice to do it anyway is holy.”
I mulled that over a little bit, leaning back in my chair, before wiping my tears away and clearing my throat for effect. I couldn’t keep a warble out of my voice, though.
“But then, why nothing, when I begged Him?”
He didn’t flinch. “I’m sorry. But you will understand.”
When I had suffered enough? But that was besides the point, and we both knew it. There was a sin to be atoned for, a great, prickly one. I closed my eyes and immersed myself in the evil of what I had done.
It was cruelty, selfish cruelty. I inducted Ivan into the solitude I had felt, that day, and that which had never left me. Where rage had been for nothing, this was not for nothing. It was demolishing a house to get a loaf of bread, because it was not your house, but it would be your loaf of bread. The solitude I had inflicted was the greatest selfishness, islands of it reaching out from the afflicted, clawing, grasping, because forcing others to feel it was by shavings better than suffering it alone, nobly. I had traded a kingdom for a horse.
I came out of my reverie with my nails digging troughs into my thighs through my pants, which were soaked with tears. My jaw hurt from being clenched. No, it never got any easier. Not down here.
It was impossible to say how much time had passed. It was impossible to say if atoning for one sin took longer than all the rest combined. Time ceased to mean much, when most of the methods that I had marked the passage of time by stopped mattering. There was no fatigue, no hunger, no need to sleep nor drink, though I suspected I could, if there was something to drink, or sleep on. I remembered everything perfectly, if I wanted to. If there was aging, I suspect I would’ve noticed it by now. No, the only measure of time that still applied was the objective one, and I had grown increasingly suspicious that it didn’t matter any way.
It was surprising, then, that after he pulled out one more white sheet of paper and laid it on the table. “This is your last sin.” The man said. I sat up a little straighter and looked him in the eye. “After I atone for this one, this is over?” He actually chuckled a little. It was the first time I had seen him do more than smile. “Yes and no. This will end. What comes after is for eternity. That doesn’t mean this will be easy, though.”
The opposite, it was left unsaid. I already suspected what it was, though. This was my last sin. And there was one sin that, as I had learned to live with the others, stood out more and more. The greatest one I had committed. He smiled and nodded towards me. No beating around the bush. He didn’t. I spoke with clarity, from my chest.
“I killed myself.”
He nodded, and stayed quiet. I knew enough to do this one myself. I relaxed and closed my eyes.
A cornered dog fights back, but what if there is nothing to fight back against? What if the foe is the world, the corner, and the dog itself? The animal spirit turns on the self last of all, when there is nothing else to bite. I stood upon the lonesome rooftop, bitter wind cutting at me and my sparse garments. I was cold, but I didn’t feel cold. A whorling, spiking, jostling, sloshing chaos filled me to my fingertips and ears, radiating from my heart. The detritus of a life that had been thirty years too long. I would quell it, now.
It came all too naturally. I simply walked a path that extended two feet past the end of the concrete rooftop, staring straight ahead, and felt a complete lack of surprise as it failed to materialize under my feet two feet from its end. I tumbled twice, end over end, before I became oriented downward, missling towards the pavement. The sheet windows passed me like the compartments of a train, and I peered at the upside-down passengers. Busy, alive. There were plenty. I would not be needed.
The chaos inside me convulsed, louder and louder, as the wind became a tortured scream in my ears. I felt it beating against my skin, desperate to escape its prison. I looked up, and saw a woman, walking her dog. A golden retriever, tugging at the leash in exuberance. Then I closed my eyes, and the chaos was quiet.
I opened my eyes. “And what about the chaos that was inside me? Where does it come from?” The old man just smiled. I knew the answer, of course, as I had all along. I had already lived all of it. A million torments, taken on and inflicted. The toll it took was immense. But it was not too much.
This was the ultimate selfishness, stealing from the self for respite’s sake. I stole the second greatest gift I had been given away from its rightful owner. And now that I understood what it was, it was so, so beautiful.
The tears flowed freely, and I didn’t stop them. They were joy. In this timeless oasis, I had learned what value beyond words there was in time. I could see the man standing before me, through the tears. The table was gone, and kneeled before him, prostrating myself.
“Rise, my child.” He said, and I rose.
“Thank you.” I said. I could have said it a million times, and it wouldn’t have been enough.
“Come, child.” He said, wrapping me in an embrace. I wrapped my arms around him tightly.
“And this is…?” I could hardly conceive of the word, after all I had done.
He stayed quiet. He didn’t need to say it.
“Heaven.” I said, whispering it to myself. This, here. The overwhelming joy that surged through me. “You gave me another chance.”
“Of course I did.” God said. “In my kingdom, nothing else would make sense.”
“And the empty church?”
“I give my children the gift of their own destiny. If they wish to find my counsel, they will find it written inside their heart, if they are willing to look. If their own choices lead them atray, that is no matter. It is beyond the reach of man to stray so far from my light that I could not find it within myself to forgive them, again and again. All they must do is ask.”
It was all right. It all mattered, all the good and evil I had done, and I could scarcely comprehend the grace in that. And it would all be made okay, in the end.
In the beginning, God gives Man the gift of choice, to do good and evil. In the end, God gives him the gift of absolution and eternity.