The Harvester
Page 11
The Son was grateful to his friend
And was left alone within the sanctuary of his abode.
Silence fell upon the city as he summoned the guards
And led them to the location of the praying Son.
As the door opened,
He acted like he was protecting his master,
But his conceived plan was nothing of the sort.
Arrested for treason against the city,
The Son was shackled and imprisoned.
There would be no more repenting.
My souls would belong to me;
My sins would remain unhealed.
There would be no more salvation.
As the Son was bound and staked;
Left to die under the hot sun;
I knelt beneath him as his blood dripped.
I unfolded my hood, revealing my face.
He did not look to me with anger.
He did not look to me with judging eyes.
He merely looked to me as a man.
Why was he not angered?
Why was God’s vengeance not handed down?
I did not understand his resolve.
I did not understand why God would allow for this.
Searching the mind of the Son, I found the answer;
The one I had been in long search of.
The answer that would begin my fall from grace.
A vision I wished I had never seen;
One that would forever alter my path.
Deep in his mind I dwelled;
My soul entwined with his.
A sense of companionship;
A uniting of our symbolisms.
Visions of his birth as the savior.
His ministry, his sermons, his disciples;
All chosen by God himself.
His teachings to the peasants,
His healing of the wounded,
His practice of repenting
Were all visible within his mind.
He had foreseen all of his life before he was even born.
A purpose, a reasoning created by God.
He was gifted for the prosperity of mankind.
He had known my arrival at the manger,
My corruption in the city;
All foreseen by his young eyes.
He had predicted his arrest.
All allowed to occur
Under the guidance of the master plan.
He was born to die, but for what cause?
Why had our paths been instructed to cross?
He lowered his head,
Looking into my troubled mind.
His death was justified by my cause.
His aura dwelled within me,
My visions unified with his.
My confusion regarding him subsided,
My questions were all answered
Through the silence of his voice.
His purpose, his birth, his death;
All to cleanse the sins I unleashed.
The repenting process had begun.
With his death, his story and teachings
Would be heard by all.
God’s plan, to increase faith
Through the rise and fall of sin,
Through the evil of one
And the glory of the other.
My visions became blurred;
My mind circled an endless pit.
My arms became numb as I sat down for stability.
I could only look to the Son with more envy;
He had understood his task the whole time,
Whereas I did not.
The longer I remained before him,
The more resentful I became.
My role in God’s plan disgusted me.
My hand aided in my own undoing.
My scars, my torture, my pain;
All a part of the plan,
All cleansed amongst the living
Within the death of the chosen one.
Every drop of his blood that fell
Upon the hot sand was a cleansing of sins.
He was born from the sins of man;
He died for the sins of man.
I was only a pawn.
I was no different than the others.
For that, I became enraged.
I wanted the Son to live,
To not fulfill his destiny of death.
My words were pointless,
As God’s plan would always progress.
The guards who stood at a distance; all pawns.
The pleading peasants; all pawns.
The kings and shepherds; all pawns.
The traveling nomads; all pawns,
The faithful disciples; all pawns,
The worshipping congregation; all pawns.
My seven demons; all pawns.
My whole existence was a lie.
My confusion rose to heights unknown.
I became drunk with a thirst for blood.
Death was a lingering thought that I could relate to.
I turned to the city to appease my appetite.
The disciples all met a swift death,
What I received next would be a blessing.
From around the corner, he collided with me.
His tongue babbling, his pulse quickening.
Full of remorse for what he had done to his master,
He sweated profusely with resentment.
Upon bumping into one another,
His bag of coins spilled to the ground.
His fingers scraped the dirt to retrieve his payment.
He was in a panic.
My hand around his throat increased his dread.
Dragging him through the corridors,
He pleaded with me that he had nothing to do
With the death of the son,
But I knew otherwise.
As his neck stretched against the rope,
I did not see his soul.
As he swung lifeless in the air,
His soul did not come to me.
With my blade, I sliced open his chest.
He had already repented for his sins.
I was denied my corrupted disciple.
There was nothing more I needed from the city.
The mourning and worshipping of the Son
Only angered me more.
His tale and purpose was what I came for,
And the answer was what I left with.
I found sanctuary back within my realm.
I was lost.
My once great demented religion began to suffer.
The land and all of its inhabitants became his.
Acts of man were done so in his name.
Temptation became a rarity.
The sacrifice for mankind was a strong tale of honor,
Of which lessened my importance.
Society looked upon the sinners with eyes of judgment
And swift discipline based on laws.
Slowly, I was being washed from the walls of civilization
Through the religious practices
And the understanding
That I was the opposite path against the glory.
A sudden shift from my realm
Led the dead far from my clutches.
With an approaching death,
The preachers would visit the weak
And allow them to repent against their sins
Thus gaining them entry through the gates of Heaven.
I became mindless with my intentions.
I became pointless with my words.
My sins were useless to mankind.
I was useless.
I plummeted deep into a trench of depression.
The lack of guidance;
The lack of understanding;
The lack of hearing my prayers
Led to my fall from grace.
The mere thought of repenting against one’s sins
Deeply destroyed my inner most thoughts.
I could not overlook the cause;
I could not overlook
the Son
And the fact that all I had achieved
Was for the sake of him.
My anger became irrational,
My temper without a ceiling.
I was left alone to understand the path.
I was not meant to comprehend the role
In which I played.
I was not meant to reflect upon
All that I had done.
I was meant to merely progress along my path
Without crossroads, without concern.
Who was I to question God?
Who was I to challenge the plan?
Within my realm I resided,
Awaiting the arrival of my own fate,
As my welcome upon the land was surely ending.
God had left me.
He left to tend to his Son.
Once, I was his task;
I was the cherished one who needed guidance.
I was the Lamb, the prosperous one;
Tasked with the inevitable,
Trusted with man against my palm.
I wanted to slumber within the darkness of Hell,
Awakened only when my death should arrive.
Stirred only when I should be judged for my life.
Until then, I offered no good will toward man.
I had become numb to the civility of mankind.
I had seen a soul destroy another
With violence only man could do.
I had seen the same soul repent upon death’s edge.
Free from punishment, free from pain,
Granted access through the gates of the holy kingdom.
The ability to deny sinful actions that the mind
Would never forget or forgive the body for.
Sinners should be denied entry,
Sent to me for judgment.
My path should not be ignored
Based on false words of the tongue,
Through the frightened, babbling mouths
Of those near death.
There should be no remorse for sinners.
Their choices robbed them of that opportunity.
The way their ears perked upon hearing my whispers,
Stole their good and twisted it beyond repair.
A path never turns around;
It only progresses further away.
If the sinners were remorseful,
They would have not heard my call in the first place.
They would have not listened to my name.
They would have had eyes focused on God.
They would have had ears only for the strong.
Instead, they welcomed me into their hearts.
They guided me through their visions.
They chose my tale over his.
They believed my words against his.
They entrusted me and not him.
They followed me and watched as he walked away.
They were mine for the reaping, not for his salvation.
Within the religion of man,
My name became that of an embattled demon
Denied access to the glory land.
Once an angel of God,
Damned from his kingdom for tempting man with sin.
I became a hoofed man with a horned temple,
So disgusting that only the shadows
Would cast eyes upon me.
I became a symbol of evil,
A fallen spirit exiled by the hand of God.
My tale was unjust and wrongfully told.
I was no serpent within the garden.
I was no angel forsaken by God.
I was a servant to him, summoned to unleash sin.
I was damned through my own misconception.
My hatred for man only grew
With every sermon that falsely told my tale.
My true story hidden beneath the glory of the Son;
Denied by ears of the worshippers.
My words meant nothing in return.
I ponder the reaction of society if they knew my destiny.
That their God purposely bred sin to tempt their faith.
Only to allow to repent through the death of his Son.
Would they follow him? Would they worship him?
The death, the dismay, the chaos that occurred
While sin was unleashed.
It was of no wonder why the true words
Were unknown from the teachings of religion.
The amount of sinners unable to repent as their deaths
Had been prior to the religious awakening,
The sufferers were denied the gates of glory.
No retribution, no reclamation.
Their souls would be as scorned as I.
True disciples discarded
Surviving on vengeance and retaliation.
I will not bow down and deny my own existence.
I will not allow my tale to go untold.
I will not shelter my emotions
As I am portrayed as a crimson goat.
The tale of the Lamb did not end with his captured death.
The plan was for him to die for the sins of mankind
And to allow each person to renew faith.
He was to rise again for the salvation of man.
A bright religion spread across the land.
The new religion spoke of a righteous path,
One free from the temptations of sin.
God became more difficult to behold
As the release of sin forced many to stray,
But the act of repenting allowed for their return.
Churches were constructed
In every village and city to show faith.
The worthy grew during the enlightening era.
Sinners were frowned upon
As if they had a contagious plague.
My name was shunned by most ears.
The mere mention of it
Was punishable through damnation.
The dead were celebrated and mourned,
But praised as they would sit next to the Lord.
Their bodies buried in nature’s ground.
The process irritated me.
After the glorious religion was upheld,
My realm no longer received the roaming dead.
Although I did despise the wandering dead,
My realm would not function the same without them.
My filtration fields had nothing to filter.
My river had nothing to feast upon.
Hell began to starve.
To allow the survival of my kingdom,
I added idealism to the process of the new dead.
Upon burial, my Reapers visited every grave,
Every tomb, and every coffin
And stripped the corpse of their flesh,
Leaving behind only bones.
The skeletal remains became a symbol of death for religion
And translated as the flesh and soul were one.
Unfortunately that was untrue.
Their soul may have gone to Heaven,
But their flesh was to be devoured by my river.
I was forced to steal the dead back for my own.
All of my once provided resources were gone.
My kingdom was suffering,
Being choked from existence.
The only travelers within my realm
Were those who fell victim to sin
And refused to repent before God.
Within the once great city of Hell, I resided.
Seeking salvation I entered my underground sanctuary.
The moistened, dark atmosphere pleased me
And took me back to my origin within the city.
Cowering within my own self-pity
Was not where I desired to find myself again.
I recalled the anger of God when I stole his city.
The mountains cracked and the seas split.
A complete disfiguration of the land.
His trees were uprooted; his animals were kil
led.
All of his creations bled that day.
To conjure that much anger through such little effort
Made me ponder how much God could be angered
And how much pain would be inflicted.
The city was isolated between the seas and mountains.
Nature was the only victim.
Could God be angered enough to expand his tremors;
To deepen his trenches?
I could not simply steal another city;
I required the humans for my task.
A downfall of mankind in the eyes of God.
A fall from grace, an overshadowing of faith;
A denial of the Son.
To have his own Son die for the sins of mankind
And have the humans continuing sinning?
The idealism would disgust God
Who would have no choice, but to show his anger
Through violent storms and shattering earthquakes.
I would have battles in the name of religion;
Death in the name of the Son.
The earth would deteriorate
Underneath the hands of the mortals,
So much so that God would have to intervene.
Lands would be left scarce and wasted.
The hand of man would scar the planet.
Populations would be bred through sin
Like an encroaching infestation.
Anger was what I demanded from God.
The same anger I had felt through his servants.
The same anger I had felt through my sins.
The same anger I had felt
Through my understanding of his Son.
The worshippers of the Son
Were busily transcribing the tale of the new religion.
Hidden well from the eyes of civilization, they wrote.
Hidden well from the stars in the sky, they wrote.
Much like at the manger,
I was not welcomed upon the same terrain.
They were well guarded with God’s servants,
But that did not alter my desire to see for myself.
A book, a tale, a story for the prosperity of religion.
The words were to be holy
And uninfected by any whispers of sin.
Scrolls were being written upon
Within various locations on the land.
They had gone to great lengths to conceal its origin,
But that did not reduce my curiosity.
Within the eastern lands, I came upon a cave
Marked only by torches and secured with two guards.
My feet shifted through the sands,
My cloak trailing through an increasing wind.
My scythe glistening from the moon.
The darkness hid me well
Until I entered the circle of torches.
The guards gripped their swords,
Holding them steady towards me.
A brief look into their eyes
Told me that they were servants of God
Burdened to protect the book
And those who transcribed the pages.