07-26-2014, 03:26 PM
I find myself alone within my Compound. Asmodeus has the Illuminatus in assembly, which normally would be held within the church, yet for some reason, he's gathered them outside. He's in an unusually jubilant mood today, undoubtedly his latest excursion with Caroline, has caused him a great deal of happiness.
The now empty Compound leaves me at ease. Its oddly quiet and sometimes, a guy just needs to be alone with his thoughts. After what has gone on in my life over the course of the last several months its obvious that its taken a toll on me in every way imaginable. Yet I carry on. I carry on because its what we, as humans, naturally do. We don't just bury our heads in the sand and give up.
Being arrested on what seemed like an endless laundry list of murder charges, I guess was a sort of wake up call for me. I've since stopped my killing. Why I thought killing families was the right thing to do escapes me even now. It did absolutely nothing to calm the hurt and the anger and the fury within me. I've lost my wife and my son is dead. There's nothing I can do now to change that.
I'm a psychopath at worst, a sociopath at best.
My conscience is limited. I do feel hurt and pain like any other, but I do not feel those same feeling for others. I do not regret what I did to those innocent families. I'm a tortured soul, no doubt. I took all the torture that I've been through and bestowed it upon the innocent. Though they're not that innocent in my own mind. In my mind, they had the happiness and the content life that I sought. They had their children and their wives or husbands in their lives.
My son is dead and I could not save him. My wife left me as a result. They lived the life I wanted. So I did what anyone like me and in my same position would do. They had what I wanted. If I couldn't have it, neither could they. It makes for a pretty unhealthy cocktail when a man capable of so much harm and the ability to get away with it, such as myself, decides to unleash hell on Earth.
It is only now that I find myself at the entrance to the church. What lies ahead of me is something I've not set my eyes on since his memorial. Ahead of me, within the altar of the Church of the Illuminatus. Is the large marble and granite tomb of Thaddeus Duke. My son.
I've not come in here since that day and to be quite honest, I'm not even sure we brought me here now. I think about backing away and walking out, but something within me wills me forward. Some unknown force propels me up the long aisle to the altar. I step up to the altar and walk the fifteen or twenty feet toward the wall. Along the wall is the final resting place of the first Saint of the Illuminatus.
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “I failed you, Thaddeus.”
THADDEUS: “No father, you didn't.”
I'm shocked at what I see and what I hear. My son, live and in the flesh.
THADDEUS: “I'm relieved you finally came.”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “How are you here!?”
THADDEUS: “I'm always here.”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “Are you...”
THADDEUS: “For all intents and purposes... yes... I suppose I'm nothing more than a spirit. Or a figment of your imagination.”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “But I can feel you.”
THADDEUS: “You feel what you want to feel. You hear what you want to hear.”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “So then you're not really here?”
Thaddeus stands, his hands in his pockets.
THADDEUS: “I'm here because you want me to be.”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “I wish I could turn back time...”
THADDEUS: “You could. You have that monkey paw.”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “Azrael's human now. He's lost his powers. With it, went the power of the paw.”
THADDEUS: “I suppose thats for the best.”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “I disagree.”
THADDEUS: “I assumed you would. Since I'm not really assuming and you're literally talking to yourself.”
Why does he keep saying that? I see him plain as day. Standing right in front of me.
THADDEUS: “I mean, look at what's happened. Your friend Azrael took you back in time to save my mother from a terrible fate. A result of that was causing a rift in time. A rift that swallowed me, your baby son into some other time dimension where I aged 15 years. Fast forward a few days, or weeks or months... Come to think of it, I'm not even sure how slow or fast time traveled in that dimension...”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “What's your point?”
THADDEUS: “My point is, you had so much fun playing that live action version of Game of Thrones and wanted me to become King. That leaves me to the point... I was killed and you lost my mother anyway.”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “I'll get her back.”
THADDEUS: “So the power of the paw only goes so far, father.”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “I'll get her back, son.”
THADDEUS: “What do I care? I'm dead.”
ENIGMA: “Who are you talking to?”
Thaddeus and I look toward the entrance to the church. My little brother stands there looking confused. I turn back to Thaddeus and he's no longer there.
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “How much did you see?”
ENIGMA: “Long enough to hear you say, 'I'll get her back, son.' Not to mention you answered yourself as if you weren't you.”
That doesn't sound right.
ENIGMA: “You said 'what do I care? I'm dead.'”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “I was just...”
ENIGMA: “I think its time we talked.”
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “About what?”
ENIGMA: “Thaddeus.”
I guess he's right. As he comes closer I take a seat in the front pew. He sits a few feet away beside me.
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “So then... Here we are.”
ENIGMA: "Yes, here we are."
"Sebastian for as long as I have known you, you were in charge, of mind and body. I no longer feel that is accurate."
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "Why do you say that?"
ENIGMA: "I just heard you having a full blown conversation with yourself in which you played the part of both you and your dead son."
"I fear that the events of his death have done more damage to your psyche than you care to admit."
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "While I admit that for a time his death rocked me to my very foundation, I have since dealt with it."
ENIGMA: "Clearly."
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "What do you mean by that?"
Obviously this conversation is not going so well.
ENIGMA: "I mean that while you may believe that I however believe something different."
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "What is it that you believe little brother?"
ENIGMA: "When Thaddeus died you came back here wearing the mask of his killer. When you were not sitting in the basement of The Compound you were out murdering children."
"Far be it for me to be a morale authority here..."
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "And yet that is exactly what you are doing."
ENIGMA: "Perhaps. But you see Sebastian, the difference between what I was doing and what you were doing is the difference between an actual wrestler and Peter Gilmour. Catch my drift?"
Certain things just rub me the wrong way. Saying phrases like 'catch my drift' is most certainly one of them.
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "In so much as you are trying to justify what you do while condemning what I did."
ENIGMA: "You killed children, innocent children. I never killed an innocent Sebastian, not once."
"How can you sit there and act as though what you did was justifiable simply because you were in pain."
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "You don't know what it feels like to lose a son, how it rips you apart inside. What's more is, it wasn't you that was a half second too late to stop it. It wasn't your hands that my sons head was cradled in as he breathed his final breath.
"Don't you ever sit there and think that you are Brother Superior, because as much as I have not lived your life, Eric, you've not lived mine! I do not judge you for your actions, do not judge mine!”
Clearly, we've reached or are reaching an impasse. Clearly.
ENIGMA: "You are absolutely right, I do not. And so your answer to that pain was to inflict it upon others, people who did not wrong you in anyway. Is that what you are trying to say?"
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "What do you want me to say little brother? That I am an awful human being? That perhaps I should be your next victim? Would that make this all better? Would that please you?
“I'd dare you to try, Eric. Because better men than you have tried, and...”
I look around for effect.
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “I don't see any of them standing here.”
ENIGMA: "On the contrary. I need you."
Of course, Enigma, my little brother, is always one with the cooler head. He avoids the possible clashing of ego’s.
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "Why?"
"Why do you need someone whose actions disgust you so?"
ENIGMA: "Because I know that you are still capable of great things. You can't take back what you have done, nor do you seem to have any notion that you should but going forward you and I, we can do many great things."
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "Such as?"
ENIGMA: "In time Sebastian. We will discuss it in time. But for now I want you to tell me exactly how you are feeling at this very moment."
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "What is it you want me to say!?”
I begin to lose my cool again. This time I jump to my feet and begin to pace.
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “Do you want me to state the obvious!? Do you want me to stand here and say that I miss him? Every damn day I miss him, Eric. You forget that when he left here he was an infant. It was me! It was my fault he came back a couple months later, 15 years old and wise beyond his years, stone cold dead!"
ENIGMA: "I know you miss him. You should. And you will but in time that hole will grow smaller. It will never disappear, not entirely but you will be able to get past this. We will get past this."
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "That's where you're wrong, Eric. That hole isn't getting smaller. It's growing. The only thing that helps it, are the tears of the innocent! The screams of the innocent! The cries and the completely pointless screams for help is what fills that gaping hole in what is left of my still beating heart! So I beg you, Eric. You tell me what makes you so sure that I'll get past this?”
ENIGMA: "While it is true I do not know the pain of losing a son, I lost a sister, a sister who was every bit an extension of myself. That pain I thought would never go away and to a degree it has not. It has taken years but I am finally able to think of my sister and not cry. Yes I still miss her, I always will but that is the past. Our charge is to look to the future. Will you do that with me?"
SEBASTIAN DUKE: "Of course."
I guess thats the end of the conversation. Eric stands up and walks out of the church. After he's gone, I turn my head to look back at my sons tomb and I start for the exit. As I reach the door, I hear Thaddeus' voice again.
THADDEUS: “Father?”
I stop and turn toward the voice. Thaddeus is not present.
SEBASTIAN DUKE: “Yes son?”
THADDEUS: “Our work isn't yet finished.”
I give a slight wink and a sadistic smile...[/i]
Fade to Darkness.