“Be strong, Martin. You will need all your strength.”
“I’m not sure if I can do it. I mean, I couldn’t even kill you. How can I torture people to death?” Tears welled up in Martin’s eyes. The tears weren’t for Rogan, but for himself and his family. He shook his head again, then buried his face in his hands.
Rogan took his hand from the knife’s handle and weakly placed it on Martin’s knee. “You’ll have to, Martin. For yourself. For your family.” Martin raised his face from his hands to look at the dying schoolteacher. “That’s what you need to keep in mind, that you’re doing it for them.” A coughing spasm caused Rogan to convulse. After a few seconds, he regained control and continued. “The first year is the worst.”
“But—”
“You’ll do fine,” Rogan reassured him. “You just need a better executioner name than Martin if you are to be . . . sinister.”
“What do you suggest?” Martin said, trying to remain as composed as possible. He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation.
“How about . . . Hircum? Hircum, the Executioner.”
“Hircum? I like it,” Martin said, forcing a smile. “What does it mean?”
“It means,” Rogan said with a strained breath, his final breath. “It means ‘the goat.’”
White Gloves
E. E. King
Editor: Intolerance is wrong in any age.
Brianna always wore white gloves, like an English lady or a white rabbit. I didn’t know why she wore them, not till later, not till too late.
With me it was my ears.
I was lucky I guess, everyone has to wear a hat or a hoodie outside so the sun won’t kill them, so I never thought about it. I never questioned and was never told. Of course Mother always covered my ears with makeup too, but I assumed that was just part of daily grooming, like combing your hair or brushing your teeth.
Mother said that once, long, long ago people played in the sun uncovered never giving it a thought.
But I don’t believe her. I bet it’s just a story, like bees and unicorns. Like fairy princes, like magic, birds and white rabbits. All those tales they tell you when you’re young—and those they don’t.
I don't remember not knowing Brianna. I don't remember her not being my friend. My first day away from home, my first day without my mother she was there. We were four years old. Mother had taken us to school, Brianna and me. I can see myself standing in the room, hoodie on, grasping tight to Brianna’s white gloved hands. I cried when Mommy left. Brianna squeezed my hand. I’m sure I wouldn’t have cried much. Just a sniffle and I’d have been fine. But then the teacher came. I don’t recall what she looked like. I only remember that she was so tall her white robe seemed like a mountain. She said I was filled with sin and set me on a tall stool facing the dark corner of the room for the rest of the day.
I never told my mother. I thought the teacher would kill me if I told. I thought she might kill Mother too. So I returned to school to learn what I was taught.
They taught us it was bad to lie. They taught us to believe in Jesus, butterflies, and snow. They trained us to trust that all these things we cannot see were true. I didn’t believe them, but Brianna, Brianna believed.
They said that once, long ago when the world was impure, God sent a cold whiteness to blanket it, covering the darkness, freezing away the badness. They said that the coldness, the snow, turned to water, so much water you could sink your whole body in it. So much water you could drown. They said the world was not always dry and brown. I didn’t believe them, I never did, but Brianna, Brianna believed.
You’d never imagine that someone so good and sweet could be so much fun. She’d never have gotten in trouble if not for me. But it didn’t matter in the end.
I remember when I was seven. I’d read about a time where grapes grew on vines right out of the ground. People stomped on them to get grape juice and make something called wine. I’m not sure what it was. It’s one of those things that’s in the bible as having been good, once upon a time, but now Father Leonean says that’s it’s bad. There was a picture in my book. A picture of men, their legs lavender with juice. They were smiling, mouths open and stained purple. It looked like fun.
“Let’s go pretend we’re stomping grapes,” I said to Brianna. We went outside on the dusty earth. I poured one half of my daily water ration on the ground to moisten it. It was wasteful. It was foolish. It was bad. Brianna’s eyes opened wide. But I jumped and stamped up and down on the earth and sang a stomping song. She started to giggle and we laughed and laughed and marched up and down, up and down, turning our shoes and stockings from white to brown.
We got in a lot of trouble. But it was worth it.
“I’m sure Brianna would never have thought of doing such a thing,” Mother said as she washed my clothes.
“It’s hard to believe she . . .” Mother sighed.
“She what?” I asked. But Mother just shook her head and kept on washing.
It wasn’t until the day of reckoning they told us anything worth knowing, the day we turned eight.
I woke up happy. Every birthday I got a small cake just for me. Funny, I don’t remember the original cake. Did Mother make me one on my first birthday, or did she wait till I was two or three, old enough to savor the taste of sweetness?
“Happy Birthday, Cedron,” Mother said. She led me to the table and there right in front of me was the cake. It was round as a baseball, but flat. Tiny white and red icing roses rimmed the edges. Roses, Mother had told me, had once grown in the earth, just like grapes. But nothing grew in the earth and the ground is way too hard for anything as delicate as a leaf to cut through.
Probably it was just another fairy story, like snow, like bees, like Jesus. I liked to imagine it though, tiny leaves, like small green hands folded in prayer poking through the soil.
I looked up at Mother; she smiled at me, but the edges of her mouth quivered.
“How come I get it now?” I asked. Usually I didn’t get the cake till right before bedtime.
“Because today you are eight,” she said. “Today we go to the reckoning. Today you become grown-up. Today you will be freed from sin and impurity.”
“Is that a good thing?” I asked.
She nodded, biting her mouth so hard I saw a drop of blood, redder than the icing roses, bead on her lower lip.
I knew I was sinful. I had spilled my water on the earth. I had dirtied myself and Brianna. Once I had scratched myself between my legs and it felt good. My older sister had seen it and laughed. I had done it again and Mother pulled my hand away and said don’t touch yourself there. So I guessed that was a sin too.
I’d wrap fairy tales in the covers of history books, so I wouldn’t get caught reading them. I’d thrown away my lunch, never thinking of the hungry. I was full of sin. I knew that. I’d be glad to be freed from sin.
“How am I impure?” I asked. I wasn’t sure what impure meant, but it didn’t sound good.
Mother sighed. “They will tell you today at the ceremony,” she said.
She made me take a bath and scrubbed me so roughly I thought my skin might come off. It hurt, but I didn’t complain much, not even when she got soap in my eyes. She wanted me pure and spotless at the ceremony. She wanted to be proud.
She dressed me in a dress we’d bought the week before. It was the most beautiful dress I’d ever seen. White as a bride, with lace and pleats. I didn’t like dresses usually. But this one make me feel like a fairy princess. Mom brushed my hair long and blond down my back.
Then she covered me in a white hooded cape.
“You forgot to make up my ears,” I said.
“You don’t need it today,” she said.
She dressed in her best dark blue dress, the one with a white lace collar, the one that she wore to church every Sunday.
We walked to the zip-pull and got on. It was always crowded, but today it was double crowded. All the eight-year-olds were there with their mothers, all
dressed in white as clean and spotless as soap could make them.
We went to Temple Hall. It was a big round bowl, with rows and rows of seats surrounding a central stage. It rose in a dome above us, dwarfing us. It was an old, old building. So ancient it was made of wood, but polished till it shone golden brown. In the center of the dome a small hole, covered with protective plastic, opened light to the sky. I felt small. I was small, small, and full of sin.
The Temple was crowded with kids waiting to be purged, waiting to be freed from impurity—whatever that was, waiting to grow-up.
When we were all seated and quiet, a platform rose out of the floor. Father Leonean was standing on it, arms raised up toward heaven in a V. He wore a robe of white flowing cloth belted with a white satin cord thick as two fingers. I felt a shiver run up my spine. He was looking up to the sky as if he could see God, as if he could touch Jesus.
Then he lowered his eyes and sighed. It was a deep low sound like wind blowing dust down an empty street. He raised his eyes, looking slowly and sharply around, as if he could see each one of us, see into our souls, see all our badness.
“Brethren,” he said. “Sons of Adam and daughters of Eve, you have come for the cleansing.” He had a deep rich voice and even though he spoke softly, it filled the Temple with a growling rumble like earthbound thunder.
“You have reached the age of reason. You can now take responsibility for the sins of the fathers and the iniquities of the mothers that run in your blood. All of you have been defiled. The evil runs in your blood, the defilement dwells in your genes, the desecration is in your very marrow.”
I looked around the circle for Brianna. Way on the far side I saw her, curly reddish hair beneath her veil. I wanted to wave, but Mother had her hand on mine, pressing it tight to the seat. Her hand was fleshy and moist against the cool, hard wood.
“In times past sins could be concealed,” Father Leonean continued. “Hidden in the blood. But we born after the Boundless War, we descendants of the purge of 4015, we have been blessed with the truth of pigment, with true vision.
“The sciences of early times were made of sin. They saw no difference between black and white, between good and evil. But now all the disciplines of man serve God. Our scientists have unmixed the racial impurities that once were hidden in our genes. They have made visible the difference between black and brown and white. No longer can the sons and daughters of Cain conceal themselves beneath a cloak of whiteness. Our eyes are open.”
I didn’t know what Father Leonean meant about brown, black or white. Once in bible class they taught us that long ago, in the time of bees, and grapes, and snow, and unicorns, and plants that reached through soft earth like hands in prayer, there had been people dark of soul and skin. But now, in the times of righteousness, they were all returned to the devil whence they came as soon as they were born.
I asked Mother what that meant and she had bit her lip and ran from the room. I never asked again.
“The curse of Cain is now visible to all—the blackness is no longer hidden in the heart,” Father Leonean continued. “Some say we should send all those tainted by the brush of Cain to hell at birth. But we, we of a merciful God, let those who have been brushed with sin survive. Instead we purify them—cutting the darkness from their soul—cutting the blackness from their skin.”
Father Leonean glared down at us, as if he could see each sin and flaw. He didn’t look merciful to me, but I am full of sin.
“Abigale Adams, come receive your cleansing,” he called.
Abby was so tiny, she was invisible until she stumbled out from behind the pew.
She tottered on uncertain feet, as though she’d been propelled forward by the hand of God, or maybe just her mother.
She walked up the steps to Father Leonean’s pulpit. From the below the floor, in front of his dais, rose another platform. On it was a rough stone slab. It was gray. Small flecks of mica glittered in the light, like living dust motes. I’d been taught about mica, fool’s gold, in bible class. How something could look valuable on the outside but was not. Beside the slab was a granite basin. It was filled with something white and gritty, something like sugar or salt.
“Reveal your impurity, child,” Father Leonean said.
Abby slowly, slowly bent down. She crouched on one knee like the picture of Joseph praying for guidance, or like Prince Charming proposing.
She unbuckled the shiny white patent leather shoe on her right foot and slowly peeled off the white sock. Her little toe was dark, a warm golden brown, like the wood of the church, like the color of my ears.
Her mother must have schooled her, must have told her what to do, because she lifted her foot and placed it on the stone.
Father Leonean raised his right arm swift and sharp. A silver axe blade caught the light and he swung it down rapid and hard. Abby’s foot spurted blood, splattering the stone. Father Leonean turned swiftly out of the line of the eruption. He remained clean. Abby’s shoulders shook but she made not a sound.
I understood everything. It was one of those moments, when all those little questions you didn’t even realize you’d had, all those trivial things you hadn’t even known you’d noticed, became clear. The time Mother said I’d had two older sisters and then run into her bedroom. The reason she never said a word when she put makeup on my ears.
I only hoped I’d be so brave when my time came. I tried to cover my ears, but Mother was holding tight to my hands.
Father Leonean grabbed Abby’s foot and thrust it into the basin. Then she screamed, a thin high wail that hurt my head.
“Now you are pure. Now you are all white. By the grace of the Lord, blessed be He and cursed be the darkness. Go forth and bear spotless children. Go forth and multiply and sin no more.”
Brianna was next. She climbed surely up the steps, never hesitating. She was always that way, always obedient and trusting.
“Reveal your impurity, child,” Father Leonean said. From behind her back she showed her hands. One by one she pulled each finger from her gloves. She held out her hands. She placed them on the slab. Hands brown and smooth.
Father Leonean’s axe flashed swift and sure through the air, so swift it made a swishing sound. Blood spurted from Brianna’s wrists.
Her hands fell from the slab and tumbled down the steps, fingers twitching. Father Leonean thrust her wrists in the salt, but it was just for show, just part of the cleansing. Nothing could stanch the flow of her blood that ran from her arms like the River Jordan.
I’ve never seen a river, never would, they are dry now. Dry. Gone like unicorns and bees and plants reaching upward in prayer. I thought I saw the shape of a unicorn in the lake of blood that Brianna lay in. I think I heard her mother sobbing. I didn’t hear as my name was called. I must have walked up to the stone slab though.
I remember the flash of the axe through the air. That swishing sound. The last sound I heard.
Mother assures me the sounds will return. She writes it on the white board she keeps by my bed. She writes that I am lucky to only have had the mark of Cain on my ears. Ears are easy to live without. She never writes that some are even luckier, but I know it is true. Those really fortunate have their pigment hidden inside of their mouths or perhaps even deeper. And of course the truly blessed are not marked at all. I wonder though if everyone is tainted. If even doves are stained somewhere inside, somewhere deep, somewhere where no one, not even they can see.
And I wonder about all those sent away when they are born, my older sister that I will never see, like bees and unicorns. I hope that she is happy in the darkness.
The Cracked Earth
Adam Breckenridge
Editor: Salvation and damnation are two sides of the same coin.
One without the other is meaningless.
Rain was a forgotten concept. Water had flown from the cracks long ago and life here was too close to death to remember things having ever been otherwise. Even most of what breathed had succumbed to blackness.
Trees were charred to the wood, the leaves gone, their roots dry. Haggard crows bounced around, seeking any flesh that may have been overlooked on the few scattered bones that lay about.
The sole figure who walked in this petrified landscape wore robes, hat and a beard that were all as dark as ignorance. Humanity, before he had wiped them off the face of the earth, had called him Black. He continued to know himself by that name. He liked the way his tongue rolled slowly across the roof of his mouth when he spoke the word—as slow and deliberate as he was.
He approached a crow that was scraggly and awkward with hunger. It studied him carefully but didn’t shy away. He picked it up and twisted its neck, then ground the carcass between his fingers until nothing but ashen bones remained.
On the side of a hill he encountered a tree, small and stubborn, that still had a couple of leaves hanging on.
“Well, that’s no good at all,” he whispered and placed his gnarled hands on the trunk. The leaves withered to dust and the roots shriveled until the tree fell over.
Black continued through the land removing any signs of life. He crushed bugs underfoot and watched their innards sizzle away on the scorching ground. He ripped up tufts of grass that had not quite dried out completely and ground them to dust. He ruptured microbes he found living on the underbellies of rocks. As time passed the scarcity of life made his duty nearly impossible. For nights and days he would sniff the air for patches of bacteria, seek out those few scraps of mold that still clung on. It got to where he could no longer recall seeing any living thing larger than a dust mote. In time it seemed nothing at all still lived wherever he walked. So when he saw an object moving slowly across the dirt far on the horizon one evening, he assumed it to be one of the few tumbleweeds the wind still tossed about: that is, until it materialized into the shape of a man.
Black strolled toward the figure, his onyx eyes glimmering. The man was filthy from crawling. The few rags he wore proved useless against the pitiless sun with his blistered skin clinging to his ribs. Yet the survivor continued to dig one long-nailed hand after the other into the cracked earth, pulling himself slowly to Black’s boots. Black eyed the dying man and listened as he croaked nonsense from his bloodied, crumpled lips. Eventually the sorry sight managed the word, “Water.”
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