American Alchemy

First I would like to say that I detest long openings and feel that if your story can't speak for yourself then you probably should have written a better story... Regardless, I would like to point out that NONE of these characters directly reflect my viewpoints, and this is not a part in the world of Nevermore, where 99% of all of my writing takes place. It is a contemporary horror story. The purpose of this story was to tell a dark and tragic tale and to insight political discussion from several very controversial angles. Again, the views of the characters in this story in no way directly or indirectly represent my own, they are simply how the characters thought and felt as they developed through my writing process.
Dream big. Read often.
M.D. McCrary

    "Selfie at Salem." A smiling girl said holding her phone up to the sky and snapping a picture of herself at one the Salem Stockades. "Ahhh I'm not a witch!" The girl giggled. "Please don't burn me no!"
She pretended to burn as her boyfriend danced around her screaming. "Burn the witch! Burn her!"
    Tobias, as he now demanded he be called, the founder of this shadowy coven, knew full well what it would take to bring about the change he so greatly thirsted for. Like a holocaust victim fresh from imprisonment, this was all he'd longed for in his miserable life. He could feel the eyes of his twelve disciples, watching him. They always watched him. He was their hero, he was their leader, he was everything that they needed and so much more. He who had brought the coven together, he who had gifted them sacred knowledge from ages passed, he who would stand in sole opposition to the gross way the people of the world lived.
    "They mock those who were burned alive." Tobi whispered to himself as he watched crowds of busy people weave in and out of him and his followers as though they were stone pillars stuck into the ground. "They stare at their phones as though somewhere deep inside the network of the internet they are somehow going to find some undiscovered meaning to life when in reality it eclipsed their sight of the things that once were all we knew. The blasphemy, the despicable compulsion, the wasteful peddlers filth. No more shall this world of filth exist."
    "Watch as they all march themselves from box to box, paying homeage to the social media gods as they emulate their pathetic behaviors. All they are are mass consuming sheep. Mass consuming sheep that have forced us down for the the final time. This is my time. This is my age. All who cannot bask in its glow shall be cooked beneath the heat of its intensity."
    Every bit as much as their actions disgusted Tobias, was every bit as much as he needed the people's approval. He needed their hearts, he needed their minds, he needed their ears. He needed to capture their imaginations and dance with the ideas in their heads until his thoughts became their own. That was Tobias's way and that was how he would plant the seed of revolution.
    The clock struck midnight at the heart of the Salem on October 31st 2016. Already he could feel the cold air blowing between the gray steel of the buildings built on top of once proud houses. Lights made by man shined brighter than stars in the sky, cursing the more perfect world above.
    "Men, women, and children!" Tobi said stepping forward like a showman as all of his disciples locked arms to stop the crowd from ignorantly walking through them. All of the thirteen gathered in black cloaks and kept their hoods pulled far over their heads, concealing their faces. "What you are about to here is proof of the greatest travesty committed by humankind."
    A crowd began to gather. "Once upon a dark time in our history," Tobias continued, "Great powers were known to us. Powers handed down from stone tablets in Egypt all the way until the rise of Christianity in the world. King Solomon, Leonardo Da Vinci, Sir Isaac Newton, and so many other knew of these powers. Powers that helped the almighty and the wicked alike in the pursuit of all that the heart shall ever know, desire."
    Tobias hated having to speak in such basic english that everyone could understand him. Big words often made him feel powerful in his command of speech. But he knew that for his message to get across then it would have to be understood by the common man and the gods alike, and that meant dumbing down everything he said.
"The nature of the world does not discriminate." Tobias shouted. "All mortals are created equal and have the same value. None shall deny that!"
    "I know. I know. I know. I know. I know." The other people dressed in cloaks began to sing as they tilted back their heads up to the twinkling sky.
    "A power that belongs to nature has been ripped from the hands of common people and repressed." Tobi continued as his disciples sang in a haunting unison. "And do you know why they did this? So that they could keep people like all of you from ever knowing the true greatest that you all can obtain."
    "I know. I know. I know. I know. I know."
    "When we were children." Tobi said. "We all used to believe that their was a great wonder in this world. But as life trudged on from dismal day to dismal day. We lost sight of the truth that we once held dear. Is there any in the crowd who can deny that in our world something is fucked up? Something rotten to the core that compels humankind toward heinous acts. Acts that don't sit well in the human body or the soul alike. We see so called powerful people step on the common man everyday but we are told we are powerless to stop them. But I am here to say that everything you have been told has been a carefully sculpted lie."
    More and more people were gathering closer and closer. Some just wanted to see what everyone was looking at, but scattered through the masses starved for influence, the seeds of change were being sowed in the blooming garden of Tobias's influence.
    "All humans can be is true to our spirit. To our hearts, or\ to the vibes that we pick up on." Tobias said. "All any animal can be is true to its instinct and we have long since dulled our senses to the point of complete failure. We've worked jobs, we've worked our fingers to the bone, yet still we starve. Power belongs to the will of the people and to the will of the people alone. The time for change is now! The time stop oppression is now! The time to rise and chase your dreams is now! The time for wonder and progress is right now!"
    "I know. I know. I know. I know. I know." The disciples uttered as members of the crowd began to join in while others turned away in disgust.
    "Good riddance!" Tobias shouted at the members of the crowd. "But to those of you who stay, take a good look at those walking away. Those are the kinds of people who oppressed our ancestors. They feared what we were capable of, and they should have because we were stronger than them and we are stronger than them today. We felt deeper than them and gave up for more than they ever could. Your instincts are calling to you and you dare turn away from them. Follow me my brothers and sisters. Follow me as we decipher what it truly means to exist in darkness as we search the eternal and unending light that life has to offer. We have been beaten and stepped on for the last time. They wanted a reason to oppress us, well we will give them one. We will give them all of the pent up power of a thousand scorned generations!"
    "All of you have been force fed a great and unending lie. We are told that achievement is only meant to be had. There are no villains, there are no heroes. There are just ends and the justified sins committed by strong willed people to bring the ends into existence. We were taught that in life their is always going to be someone greater than you. I am here to tell you that all it is wrong. No human of any kind is greater or lesser than any other. We are not Kings. We are not Lords, or politicians, or corporate devils. We are humans with dreams gazing deep into a reality that we are given the thoughts and tools to change. But only if we work together. And only through hard work, sacrifice, and passion can this happen."
    "I'm sick of worms like you vowing change?" A homeless drunk said pushing through the crowd. "How are you going to help? With donations? By taking from the people and breaking it down? I served in Afghanistan and look what my sacrifice has gotten me. I have been wasted and used by men who you say are no better than me. I agree with you on one thing, the world is fucked. But there is no stopping it you miserable twat. Get out of my way"
    "You couldn't be more wrong friend." Tobias said gesturing to his disciples to fall silent as he made a slow walk through the parted crowd to the homeless man still clutching his precious bottle beneath his filthy beard.
    "There was a time when all we believed humankind could achieve was survival." Tobias said. "Tell me old man. What does the heart crave for that life has taken from you?"
    "What does my heart crave?" The homeless man said. "My heart craves food. My heart craves wealth and survival and..."
    "And more beer." Tobias said tapping the man's bottle and sending the crowd erupting in laughter. "I can see things great and small with my eye. But anything the heart wants the heart should have. Step forward, mister Parker."
    "How did..."
    "If you start asking questions now than they will never stop." Tobias said with a pleasant smile. "Just as desires never stop. You see, as I have previously said we are not beings meant to live with limitations. We are not beings meant to ever know satisfaction. We crave it. We hunger for it. And it is these things that drive our existence forward. If not for these craving why not even get out of bed? Because we crave food. We crave survival. We crave happiness and health and wealth. Well all of those things are within our grasp if only we stand on our tippy toes and just reach for it like a child reaches for the cookie jar on the highest shelf."
    "How can I have it then? By listening to you? Jus' whats your angle here?" Mister Parker said spitting out a rotten tooth from the ground. "My social security was highway robbery. The entire country I served left me. You gonna pay my bills? You gonna do all that for me with your smart assed mouth and shallow promises."
    "No promise I make is shallow." Tobias said. "But it is a well established fact that for something to be gained something must be lost, that's alchemy. Though we may never know the value of some of the sacrifice, in order to keep the faith we must be sure that for everything we gained something was taken away. Take this tooth for example." Tobi said pulling the molar from the homeless man's mouth and holding it up the crowd. "It is rotten, like the old world that we have come to know."
    "I know. I know. I know. I know. I know." The disciples began to utter once again.
    "But if we just..." Tobias closed his fist. "Reshape the world to reflect the feelings of human nature." As he opened his fist and a full plated dinner appeared out of a shadowy smoke. Lush and complete still steaming from its gorgeous freshness. "Then we can get what we need."
    "What the hell?" The old man said as Tobias spun around showing off his creation to an amazed crowd.
    "What you've just seen is not a trick. But it most certainly is magic. Ancient and wondrous as it ever has been. But repressed and forgotten in the ever flowing sands of time. But it is magic after all, so why stop with any limit." Tobias said turning to the crowd. "The heart craves wealth. But what is wealth? Is it paper money?"
    Tobias took a long steel blade from his pocket and drove into the palm of his left hand. A bright crimson liquid flowed from his vein and down his arm before finally dropping to the ground. Black clouds rolled in from above as more and more people gathered around.
    Then, it happened. Just as the people had expected, money, real money, gently drifted down from the sky. "What we have only has the value that we place on it. Something could just be nothing. Just as easily as something could be something like, oh I don't know gold." Tobias snapped his bloody finger and the paper money morphed into gold coins that fell to ground with an excellent crash.
    "But that's not all a man wanted." Tobias said happily. "What's all of this splendor without a good ale to wash it down hmm?" A bolt of lightning struck down from above and cooked Tobias in his sopping wet robes where he stood. The screaming crowd still rushing for the seemingly endless money watched as his body smoldered on the gold covered ground.
    "LET THERE BE BEER!" Tobias shouted raising his smoldering arm, all beaten and bruised from head to toe. Golden liquid showered down from above as everyone who could tilted back their heads and opened up their throats to the sweet beer as it rained down around them.
    All over chaos had overtaken the city. Drunk and disorderly people dancing atop piles of gold screaming up to the heavens before they fell into each other laughing and fucking into the end of days with excitement.
    "This is our day!" Tobias told himself. "This is the day that magic was restored to this world and the true pursuit of human happiness was allowed to finally taken shape. The power you have seen is in all of you. It relies on the will and the belief of all of you. March with me lost souls as we purge what is wrong from this world and restore all that is fantastic and right. We shall not be stopped! We shall not be forgotten! And we shall not be oppressed!"
    Then Tobi saw a familiar face staring at him from the distance. He knew what this meant and he knew this was coming, but never in his wildest dreams did he think it would happen so soon. More importantly, he never thought that it would have been her. But Tobias knew who she was no longer mattered, for he saw all people as equal and the same.
   
    "We can have anything we want!" Tobias shouted at the top of his lungs excitedly twirling the hungry knife in his hand. "And we can do anything that we want."
    "I know. I know. I know. I know." His disciples chanted as Tobi grabbed the homeless man he'd helped moments before and held the blade to his throat.
    "All that we are." Tobias cried up to the black sky. "Is all that we ever will become we shall pay for. At times, debts and losses are not clear. But in the end, all ends justify all means!"
     "Get off of me!" The homeless man said as the crowd all watched like helpless sheep as cold beer fell around them. "I have done you no wrong. I beg of you!"
    "Gods hear no beggars. They only have time for those who pay their debts." Tobias said as he raked the cold steel opening the man's throat as he dropped his body to the ground. Several people in the crowd tried rushing passed the disciples to save the man as his life spilled out onto the cobblestones. "The only mortals they care for are those who will sacrifice everything."
    Tobias walked in a circle, staring deep into the eyes of the horrified masses. "We shall not be silenced! We shall not be moved! We shall do all in our mortal power to restore the true powers of the world!"
    Kneeling down to the watered down pool of blood the homeless man laid in, Tobias set the blood ablaze with the snap of his fingers. A towering inferno of black fire with wisps of screaming faces dancing inside ran through the crowd. All of the people backed away in horror as Tobi pointed his finger, covered in dancing runic tattoos, at a church sitting atop a hill.
    Seconds later, the church was engulfed in a plume of inky black fire. Long ghostly hands reached out and drug screaming men, women, and children to burn. Feeding the flames as they swallowed up more and more of the city of Salem.
    "At this church," Tobi said. "Dreamers, and witches were burned for pursuing power that belonged to them by right of desire and conquest. They were burned, burned to charred crisps like business and greed have done to our forests. They're lungs filled with black smoke like our air has become. Their blood flown through the streets polluting the water we drank from. The cleansing of earth is now! The fires of the abyss burn black as pitch! The heroes and false idols shall fall before the untouchable might of progress!"
    The crowd was now vanishing left and right as they fled like ants from a child's magnifying glass, ducking in between buildings only to find themselves trapped by the unstoppable might of greater powers. Taller and taller the flames grew, and clearer and clearer you could see the faces of horrible creatures inside the fire with jaws that opened as wide as a crocodile's, snapping as the flames hissed like serpents.
    All that still stood was Tobias and his twelve disciples still chanting in horrible unison. "I know. I know. I know. I know. I know." Over and over. "I know. I know. I know. I know. I know." Haunting the souls of everyone around them as they watched the people all around be ripped back into unending black fire.
    The homeless man's body was no more. Sometime in the midst of the chaos the lifeless corpse had rotted from existence and Tobias now stood in the ruins watching his precious life's work come into reality.
    "Salem remembers!" Tobias cried. "All things come at a sacrifice. The painter sacrifices the normal life of the civilian, the leader sacrifices the love in his heart, the wizard sacrifices all pleasures a world could ever know. All progress must be fought with perseverance and all sacrifice must be paid or forever stagnant we shall remain."
    Looking carefully around as the last of the civilians vanished into the night, some still screaming of their losses. But Tobias didn't care about that, he'd already gotten everything the people could bring him. The sacrifice now, belonged to him and him alone. A debt long standing had finally been paid. Balance was now restored.
    His eyes locked on a girl in a long black dress, wearing a witches hat with a veil that covered her face in the endless rain of beer.
    "Come sweet sister." Tobias said wagging his tattooed hand as runes raced up and down his skin. "For the shadows only dance for mine and yours."
    The lady in black raised her hand, and six more figures appeared from thin air, positioned carefully around the disciples, like some sort of ancient ritual with thirteen pillars surrounded by seven others, all black as midnight with Tobias at the center. Tobias watched as the witches chanted words in the dead latin tongue, feeding off of the pent up will hatred that hung in the night air.
    "I know. I know. I kn... ACK!" The twelve disciples all winced as they raised up from the ground clawing at their necks as the air was squeezed from his lungs and their necks snapped like stale crackers. The witches held them in their air, hanging them by invisible ropes, dangling down from the stars above.
    Hands of black fire stretched out from the burning buildings and ripped the glistening white souls from the bodies of the disciples, leaving only bare white bone twitching as they hung in motionless in air before turning to dust moments later. Tobias licked his lips with the anguished satisfaction only a mad man could possess.
    "Fools." Tobias said with a sinister chuckle as he felt the power of the witches telekinetic magic raised him up and thrashed his body back and forth like a rag doll. "Only those who sacrifice can ever hope to achieve anything. And I have given all away." He laughed. "If only they had the stomach to sacrifice my blood."
    Everything went black as Tobi slammed into the cobblestone ground.