“It Looks Back into You.”

Short Story

Nations ritualize acceptance.

It is a ritual that you follow till the last act of closure until one is free. The first thing to know is that a ritual begins someplace and moves between the stations like a clock. It is always dawn on the time which truly matters. It is the ritual, and all other times must be clean and shelved. Thus, one spends out of bed and praises the holy ritual to be clean and bright. The rinsing water and scrubbing brush make a dance with the soap that has the first step in setting the time of waking. One can hold the bar and know it is of the same essence as the first words in Genesis. “Let there be light.” And there was.

Then once dressed in jeans and a broad-cotton shirt with socks that match and the shoes picked for the time one moves to the desk at the first hour. The clothes smell of smoky wood and turn into the wood cart all the harvest. It is the time of atonement when that which must be done shall be written out in detail so that others will purge the stain from the ground. Each item must be accounted for and cataloged. Each item must be noted where it shall be dropped. Each item shall be disposed of appropriately. Because appropriate is the highest form of obeisance. This is a word that is sacred and used only for such times as the ritual. Then one bends down to the earth and thanks the Crystal leaves that cover the ground so rapaciously.

Then comes the second hour, the hour of gathering up the tools for the work that has to be done. Each item rests in its place as if garnered there for the time of sacred gathering. He smiles. Even as one sows so shall he reap. Take within the shaft that guides to perfection. Take within the revolution, that goes round and round. Take within the stock that holds the intrinsic order. Take these and go hence to your duty. A glance at the mirror casts the beard and the hollow woven eyes that what must be done has been done before. Over and over again to the cross of the cleaving penetangle.

Then comes the third hour, the hour of searching. For the white flesh which pleases the ritual. The white flash which will soon be read in all its glory. Each sheave is pristine in its glory. The close that each sheet war is incidental to the ravenous skin beneath. And with each atonement that he delivers the yellow sweat and blood cascade asunder making an abstract expression in their wake, poll lock into a greyed rainbow, a rock welled up to violence - Rothko in white. He smiles because his ritual will lead to others and those others will look in awe and terror of the design which is made by his whole body and the tools which he has been anointed with. In his inner, he sees the person who will absorb the pretty patterns that are laid out on the wood-colored floor against the plaster-covered ceiling and a circle of red on the wall.

The fourth hour is much the same, taking a place of merry gathering and turning it into two a place of morning with a few squeezes of the hand and a single prayer-like finger guided by the unerring eye from above. He joys in the fact that there is chaos out of the order of eating. Jump to the ceiling and the counter. Stretch to embrace the hard linoleum floor. Grasp onto any shards of cloth to attempt to hide oneself. This is how refugees anoint their funeral pyre: with blood and spitting of the air that they breathe. Serially in Mass.

Then the fifth hour is the time of rest. A when the sun comes to stand still/ When others attempt to find the man who is engaged in the ritual. Searching. Pleading. Discovering. And passing. Because each ritual anoints the next ones in the same pattern as before. The white becomes red and becomes white again. He rests. Because he is old. Because he is weary. Because he has two more things to do before the eternal rest that he so craves.

The masses are ruled by ritual.

Next step is a turning back, on all of the sacrifices he has delivered. The man thinks that this is good. But what way “good” embraces the carnage that has been left behind along the open road going into the hills is a mystery. The mystery of this ritual in the country that proclaims it. But in the desert, in the school, in the shopping center, which is now the church of consumption, the ritual smiles a cackling grin and cannot help but laugh. As to the Father, as to the Sun, as to the Holy Ghost. Each point is consecrated.

No Revolutions Allowed. To aver any blackness. In a circle to cluster bomb “The Enemy.” With horns, with ears, and a goatee of throat.

Then the man in his blue gets up with the shaft and has but one more ritual to perform. He is tired, of the physical kind and emotionally drained, but he knows the costs. And he accepted those costs as the price of redemption. Because in the pillage he would be free, free of the voices, free of the judgments, free of the consternation that looms over his head. And this freedom is worth any price that must be paid for it even at the cost of his own life. Any price to be paid in this rural paradise that he once made home.

He drives again the truck that has served him well through the stations. It is night and the beams show the tangled streams of the weeds that grow along the road. He thinks that they guide him to the last station of his cross. He sees the driveway to a place that he knows all too well, he is blessed that he knows the ground by memory. He stops the truck. Stops the engine. He stops the lights.

He gets out of the truck. He takes the shaft. He kneels on the ground. To nation, to the rifle, to the army.

The masses are culled by ritual.

And he shoots one last bullet through the throat. Making one last sacrifice to completion. He looks back into the abyss and the abyss looks back at him.  The monster recognizes its child. One last shell expended.

Gone and passed - the atonement made to sacrifice.

To the Father, to the Son, to the Holy Ghost. Amen.