IV - Contemplation

Part 1

The trials were not numerated as I had excepted they would be. The entity, now sharing a part of me, did not whisper how many trials I must undergo before the transformation was complete. I half expected it to be three or perhaps five. A simple list of trials as if I was running down the steps of a recipe. It seemed it would not be that simple. The whispers instructed me that it would take as many trials as necessary to break the old me and forge the new. It was a matter of my willpower.

                How long then would it take to unravel my old self? How long would it take to make the shy boy in the corner emerge as a man? How long would it take to succeed?

                I could not know in the beginning but I set out the first morning of my pact with a new found fervor for existence that I didn’t realize had been gone. So many days before that first one I recalled a sense of longing. A nagging purposelessness that permeated my soul. Each day held no deep meaning or worth beyond the material. 

                Like I have stated before I wanted for nothing, and felt no misfortune in my life. But perhaps that was my problem. I had no conflict, no stirring up of emotions, and still yet no goal to work towards. No real life’s pursuit beyond acquiring more material wealth. That existence would not have substantiated me for long as it would seem. Looking back I see that if I had not made the pact and found a new purpose, a deeper purpose, I would have unwittingly succumbed to instinct and ravaged either myself or someone in a senseless way. I would have fallen unknowingly into the abyss. But as it stands I march forward into the silvery twilight with chest out and chin held high waiting to reap my rewards.

                With a new found fire of purpose in my bosom I went about my daily routine with a bit of cheer. Or at least that’s how I was described by my housemate.

                “You have a certain pep in your step today Reggie. You must have had a rejuvenating sleep? Or perhaps some other circumstance has lifted your spirits?” Geoffrey affirmed as we shared the kitchen to make breakfast. It was a Saturday and neither of us had anywhere to be so moving was slow around the room. I looked up at him and smiled, raising an eyebrow.

                “Lifted my spirits? Did they seem low before?” I asked.

                “Well, I did not want to pry into your personal life. I know how you are about your privacy. But I did feel that something seemed a little unsettling with you. As if you were holding some burden you could not escape. I wished to ask you about it, to give you council or even perhaps a helping hand. But today it seems as if no wrong has ever beset you. Or at least that is the air you are giving off. I’m happy to see a new glow in you.”

                “I suppose things of late have been getting me down.” I said, trying to think why now of all times had I been able to make the pact.

                “It is good to see you in higher spirits. May this new trend stay.” Geoffrey raised his mug in a toast to my renewed good health and I shared the moment with him raising my own. He left me be and returned to his room. I moved into the den to contemplate two things. First, how best to complete the first trial and second, to understand what road lead me to where I was. I did not dislike the fact that I had made the pact, in fact I was surprised I hadn’t made it sooner. But I needed to know what lead me to this point. An itching curiosity to know the causes of effects persuaded me to take a moment to reflect.

                Finding my way to the den in the old house I sat in my arm chair. With its torn leather and aged look I felt safe in its grasp. The warm coffee filled my body with a sense of calm and I let out a great sigh as I settled in to contemplate. My eyes wandered the old room. The house, passed down from my family line, had been built sixty years before and still held something of that old time. I was certain it also shared the ghosts of old relatives, some of whom must have been the shadowy figures in my dream and in my room the first night I met the shadow devil.

                Books surrounded me, many of which I’d never touch or even wish to investigate. Old worn pictures of landscapes and faces adorned the walls but I let my attention be drawn to a chalice situated in a glass armoire. Two tracks of thought were running parallel as my eyes locked onto the golden cup. One train showed myself using the cup to catch the blood of a slit throat. The owner of the throat was not known to me yet but I could feel the warmth of the liquid warming the metal as I held it steadfast. The other train retraced my life over the past weeks, then months, then the past years trying to find a thread to connect me to this current moment.

                I found that the second train stopped on a day late in autumn, just before the first snowfalls when I was a boy of only 9. I saw a man across the road from the shop my mother had taken me to. I stayed outside while she ran in. The man, of middle age yet very bedraggled and worn, waved to me with a ragged toothless grin. I did not return his gesture but simply stared as he beckoned to me. I shook my head no and his grin faded. He took a step forward and was immediately struck by a railcar. The shock I felt through my body was immediate and intense as I saw his body broken underneath the metal wheels. The blood spraying over the road filled my sight, the screech of the brakes eclipsed all other sounds. At the same moment my mother returned and threw her hands over my eyes and told me it was alright. That was the first time I had witnessed death.

                Since then I felt something deep inside me shift. Some innocence of my youth betrayed on that day. Learning of death had set a seed somewhere in my subconscious that would grow and blossom until the night I made the pact. A dark seed with dark roots that would grow and pierce every inch of my soul. I would welcome this growth. I would nurture this growth. I would let it consume me. To the point that death would not shake me, it would not scare me, it would not dissuade me from action.

                Over the years, as the train showed me, I realized there were two sides to my thinking. One side, the side I would show to the world, would shame those who blasphemed (I was raised catholic and would carry that damnation of child abuse with me forever), blush at the mention of sex, and be shocked at the mention of death or criminal murder.

                The other side, the side overgrown by the dark growth, would laugh alongside the blasphemers, burst at the seams at the idea of easy women, and laugh at the mentions of the dead or the dying. Or even the yearning to try it myself. To dabble at murder.

                I wondered if many others had serious thoughts about homicide. Not just the fleeting emotional state some individuals enter during times of severe stress but a cold calculated homicidal volition. I was not uninformed of the serial murders of the world. And I didn’t plan to be one myself, unless that was a trial I’d need to complete. For now though I simply let the two trains converge into one thought.

                Who would be the victim to fill my chalice?

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