Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

19.2. The Corpse-Maker: A Short Story

Chapter One:   I am a Carnivore of the Human Soul.    

       Dying for her was the last thing that would have ever crossed my mind, but under the circumstances, there was no alternative. She lay there covered in a pool of blood. I did not murder her, but  my actions might as well have.  I knew what was happening but did nothing to stop it.  I could not persuade her otherwise  In her dying breath, her eyes stared coldly into mine, wondering, questioning. Her eye, that terrible staring eye, like I shall see in my dreams forever, haunting, blaming, and filling me with untold guilt. How could I have been so callous, so naive, so insensitive? The money was there on the floor beside her, ready to be transferred into a different acount, an account arranged especially for just the two of us, our future, our happiness. Now there is nothing. How can I bring her back ? Like Victor Frankenstein, I must devise a means of regeneration. Science  enables me to clone animals and humans.  Genetic engineering can produce the desired offspring. With its desired appearance. Only the appearance counts. Why give my life for one who is no longer dead? How can I replicate her appearance? Only living flesh can be used, grafted from a living being. No deterioration must occur. I must first know how many humans it will require to  cover an entire corpse, a living corpse, if you please. Ripping the flesh off a person is a most gruesome undertaking, but her life, compared to those ignoramuses one sees every day on the streets, in the bars, and in the clubs, is of greatest importance to me.  If DaVinci could rob the grave of fresh corpses, why couldn't I? Yet, without her my life ceases to imagine or desire the dreams that we had shared. How can one thoughtless deed render an entire life meaningless? Drugs can sedate her and staples placed in inconspicuous locations can secure the flesh of both subjects initially. The many voices in my head demanded action loudly and clearly. Evil assumes many guises. I could not  ignore their sirens song. The hour had come. The readiness was all. This is not a farfetched notion, not in the twenty-first century. Physicians rob bodies of living organs all the time, particularly in the Middle East. Doctors use skin grafts from the legs of a person to cover burn wounds on another part of the body.  At first, I thought that  I could not watch my crime re-enacted like Claudius or suffer the humiliation of an unknown deed like Oedipus, or  that I lacked the courage of an Dantes or Carton. I felt more  like a crippled sojourner, a lost wanderer in the shadows of the Underworld as a conscious yet insentient being in the Land of the Shades which the Jews call Sheol and the Greeks Hades, where  Faust and Odysseus visited and Vulcan reigned. My mind was awhirl like a subject in a surreal landscape like Dali's or Goya's .  Despite my seeming impotence, I  still sensed an inner strength, an inner calling from the remote past, voices, urges, supplications  that rendered me powerless  to withstand. From the ancient shadows of antiquity I had been in some way chosen to fulfill a mission hence unknown to human apprehension, empowered by a forces sustained by the lost hopes and dreams of the dead. How could this be? Plato heard voices, and so did Socrates and Saint Joan, but why me? The dark hand of the unliving loosed his  sinister desires in my mind, filling me with  both a sense dread and a mortal awareness of what I could accomplish under his tutelage. Have I a choice? In my dreams strange figures dance and fly about like Wagner's valkyries, foreshadowing  either my eminence or demise, filling me with  terror. I have heard it said that those who determine the desires of men re-configure the essence of their souls. Could it be possible that just the very opposite was occurring in my mind and spirit, that I am no longer able to direct my own destiny but that of the deceased? Freud said that vestiges of the past manifest themselves in the faith and customs of the present, only in disguised forms, concealed by what he called the censor. Jung argues that these primordial remnants from recurrent patterns  appear symbolically from man's prehistoric times.  The study of genetics predetermines habits and behavior based upon our living past, but what about the the sins of the dead? Do the dead still live, and demand revenge? Judaism teaches that within each man there is an evil impulse, which if encouraged, seeks to fulfill the desires of the flesh. What about those living in torment in that realm of shadows? Can they also exert such an influence upon the living? Such a terror would, for me, exceed any known or imagined horror! Like a ghostly hand rising from the grave compelling one to not only follow its wishes, but far worse, filling the mind with the accumulated cries of demented sufferers, all voicing their separate taunts at once. What remedy could mitigate so many  sinister appeals at one time? No human has ever conceived such torment. Schizophrenics possess multiple personalities but never to such an extent as this. What will I do to preserve my sanity? Even the dead, we are told, suffer only for their own crimes, not  for those of others. It would be like Dante's vision of hell's inhabitants whose collective voices echo in one individual psyche! Even Goya failed to envision such anguish. I know that certain diseases disguise themselves by assuming the symptoms of other illnesses, then shift from one apparent malady to another, making it virtually impossible for the physician to arrive at an accurate and timely diagnosis. In the same manner, these painful voices shift in intensity so that my mental agony  never subsides. It is said that Medusa was a beautiful maiden queen with golden hair who unfortunately fell in love with Poseidon and was transformed into a hideous creature capable of turning men to stone. Can such a transformation occur in my life as well? Will my personality change from Jekyll to Hyde, or my soul grow as dark as Dorian Gray's?  I am a carnivore of the human soul, and only God can save me! As Rilke said, "The only journey is the one within." May heaven help me!