Chronicles of Ara: Perdition

by Joel Eisenberg

  With permission, Dr. Katz asked a priest in the local church to attempt a cremation.

  “Billie,” said Dr. Katz, “we could use your help. Entirely off the record. I could trust a priestess, right?”

  “That would be priest to you. Tell our boy Levin in the meantime I’m still waiting for his call.” After minutes of explanation, “You don’t just try a cremation.”

  “Have I asked you for anything in twenty years? Anything at all?”

  “We can try a cremation.” She owed him, and to prevent that reminder she relented.

  “Check that. I’ll let them know.”

  The cremation didn’t work out, either, so they buried her and were sternly reminded to stay quiet about it all.

  Sidra was asked to sign papers effectively requiring her to keep her own mouth shut. She complied. “From the top,” a cop told her. “If Homeland Security could help it, there’d be a media blackout on this one. More trouble than it’s worth.” She was told that the discovery of the young woman would be officially spun as an accidental drowning and reported as such; the rest of her story would be suppressed to avert an organized hate spree. “Last thing we need in the tristate is to spread word that our Martians aren’t fond of towel-heads, either. Don’t you think?”

  Upon freeing the woman from the muck, she was taken away in an ambulance under the strict observance of a representative from the Jersey mayor’s office, who sat alongside her.

  The news of Sidra’s boyfriend, however, did go public with no spin, and the global media had a field day. As the local authorities took credit for saving his life (they did nothing), social media connected the suspected hate crime to a recent warning from the ex-fugitive X, whose influence within conspiracy circles was beginning to heighten:

  Those of you who regard our religious books as the literal word of a deity are doomed to demonize not only yourselves in the name of sin, but all of us. You must imprison your demons before they imprison you or they will personify, like the muse, and multiply.

  The only enemy is your own creativity.

  Ara, the muse, ensures that our creations become our downfall.

  September 11, 2001, was not a precedent. It was an anniversary, and we were not prepared as usual.

  The letter X carved into the back flesh of Sidra’s boyfriend enhanced the idea of more than a casual connection with the prodigy known by the same symbol and caused great concern that his excerpt was a veiled metaphor for the emergence of ISIS. Especially as the letter is considered close to the unholy Christian cross, and many who did not buy the boy’s brand of crazy opined that the perpetrator was sending a message. Some assumed the boy turned violent in pursuit of his mission and was himself responsible for the hate crime. Several sites that discounted the boy entirely hosted predictable threads debating the truth of Islam while non-radicalized Muslims expressed dismay and others ranted about the equivalent if not greater bloodletting of the Crusades. Nazis had their play too. They were not stopped in time while they were growing. And then the Jews, maybe becoming a little too aggressive with the Palestinians, and vice versa, all circling back to the myriad of good books that started it all . . . none of which had anything to do with anything, of course, other than a half-Muslim was found with an X carved into his back in New Jersey, and that caused all sorts of understandable grief.

  Until there is a defined starting point, Jung’s concept of a collective unconscious is in itself a myth. A reach. Let’s start over. If human imagination and human memory are one, as I had written previously, then wouldn’t it follow that our primal response when presented with archetypes is best explained by a shared beginning?

  Once that beginning is defined, you will understand that imagination and response to imagination is not individual and not supernatural in origin, and can indeed be defined by a common understanding of what it is to be human.

  Until then that concept doesn’t exist either.

  If there is any hope of moving forward we must come together. If there is any hope of coming together you must deny your theism once and for all . . . including the belief of non-belief if that applies.

  Our modern enemy eradicates history. Our modern enemy destroys art and monuments in the word of a prophet. Pacifist followers of the same system profess theirs is a religion of peace and they are slaughtered by kinsmen for their lack of subscription.

  But show me the absence of such conflict in other times and other cultures. Show me. The game’s afoot.

  This is not the way. Those who are threatened will say and do whatever they can to spread her agenda and convert you.

  The Truth tells us of a realm of gods and once there was a muse among them.

  There is only The Truth and The Truth has its own rules.

  No group stepped forward to assume credit for the crime. To the relief of some. The victim told authorities he had no memory of either an attack or any mark on his back.

  The incident was ruled a domestic criminal act. Retaliatory maybe, a protest perhaps, or none of the above. These answers would not come quickly to those in charge of such things, though one entity insisted it indeed knew the truth, an entity as yet identified:

  ENIGMA. “The Mark of X is a covenant,” the entity’s self-proclaimed spokesperson explained on a cable news show. As the voice and image was distorted, the speaker’s sex was impossible to ascertain. “As usual, you’re not getting the entire story. You’re only being told what those in charge want you to hear.”

  That line got some attention. No one save for those immediately involved in the cover-up, including Sidra, were supposed to know of the dead girl. Not even Denise.

  As for Sidra, she had discreetly taken a cell phone photo of the young woman and kept it in a safe place. Her boyfriend would recover, but she wanted none of the drama. She ended their relationship by messengering flowers and a note to the hospital.

  How very Denise of me, she thought.

  She mourned their split for a few days, convinced herself over a breakfast of dry granola and rum that breaking up with him was inevitable as they had been growing apart anyway, and elected to resume her day-to-day.

  Matthius didn’t know what to say to her under the circumstances, so Sidra justified ignoring him too when she saw him move in.

  Not speaking to my mother, broke up with my boyfriend, and our new tenant could fuck himself. He had his chance.

  What became most important to Sidra was the identity of the woman. And there her options were limited.

  She resumed her part-time job despite the cracks.

  So much for turning the page.

  UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, OXFORD

  OXFORD, ENGLAND, 1811

  Percy rolls onto his side.

  “Thirty minutes.” He looks to his ceiling. “How about I give you the time of day if you could speed up this clown show. Deal?” God doesn’t answer.

  Percy responds by slipping off his shoes and burying his face in his pillow. And the memories of what brought him here go on . . .

  ~~~

  Eton. The day after meeting the headmaster, during Percy’s last class before noon lunch.

  The male students are engaged in cricket for physical activity class. Percy’s tormentors watch from the sidelines as he protests to his teacher.

  “This is a waste of time,” says Percy. “I will not leave Eton with a useless degree in cricket.”

  “You will not leave Eton,” says his teacher. “I’ll see to it. Now get out there with the others. Eton students are social students.”

  Percy reluctantly takes to the field. On his way, he notices the four boys from the day before and overhears their leader.

  “Mad Shelley has returned, boys,” the leader says. “We’ll make him our slave yet.”

  They would wait until he was alone, until he could be cornered. But Percy wisely walked among his classmates on this day. His tormentors would have to wait a while longer.

  ~~~

  Percy sits up and swings his legs over the bed.


  “The last thing you want to do is fall asleep, old boy. You want to be present for your own execution . . . trust me.”

  Percy gathers his backpack, looks in the mirror—the hair is perfect—looks to the clock—twenty minutes—and leaves.

  I’ll walk slow, he thinks as he closes the door.

  Outside, he daydreams as he walks to his jury . . .

  ~~~

  As the days and months pass, Percy was routinely tortured. Still, he would not, ever, give in to the fagging; he would be nobody’s servant. He strongly resented his circumstance, and his attitude worsened.

  By his second year, he had developed a mischievous streak of his own, which led to a surprising proclivity—a gift—for science.

  Percy prided himself on his intelligence and logic. He believed that his sense of helplessness, his lack of control, could be reversed, but only if he applied himself. Science appealed to his rational mind; science promised to show him the way.

  And he was correct, as usual. Not always, but usually.

  His torturers would soon graduate and move on. Once they left, however, the older Percy used his grasp of science for his personal amusement. He adapted a friction machine to charge the door handle to his room, shocking anyone who used the knob to enter. Toward the end of his stay, he blew up a tree in South Meadow.

  Percy spent a good deal of time alone in his room during his last year. His experiences at Eton shaped him from boy to man, though he remained generally miserable. He did not develop any true friendships, not even a single kindred spirit.

  However, Percy did develop another preoccupation.

  Quietly, without pronouncement, Percy Bysshe Shelley holed up and began to write. At seventeen, and soon to matriculate to University College, Oxford, he completed his first work, a gothic novella, which he titled Zastrozzi, a Romance.

  Zastrozzi, a Romance, a tale of abduction and violent revenge that also openly promoted the author’s atheistic leanings, was published in London by John Robinson and George Wilkie during Percy’s first year at Oxford in 1810. The author’s name appeared anonymously as P.B.S. on the soiled-yellow cover just above a credited epigraph from John Milton’s Paradise Lost:

  —That their God

  May prove their foe, and with repenting hand

  Abolish his own works—This would surpass

  Common revenge.

  Among the early reviews were two Percy particularly treasured:

  “One wonders of a muse who could inspire such ungodliness as Zastrozzi, decadent claptrap by an anonymous writer of considerable talent and deplorable imagination.”

  And . . .

  “Zastrozzi is one of the most savage and improbable demons that ever issued from a diseased brain.”

  Percy smiled when he read the latter in The Critical Review, a conservative journal. Though the reception to Zastrozzi was generally positive, he was far more encouraged by the critical outlooks.

  'I’ve challenged perspectives. I’ve not been dismissed,' he thought. 'Not yet.'

  Resultantly, he would favor a career that he believed in time would vastly improve his social standing and cement his legacy. He would be a writer. For now, of the horrors of Eton he would continue to obsess and credit for the strength of his ideas.

  'Freethinkers create their influence.'

  “Demons?” he said to himself. “You have no idea.”

  ~~~

  Percy waits impatiently in the makeshift holding room waiting to be called.

  These are the walls, he thinks, take one last look. These are the walls from which the demons promised by Eton have arisen to take hold at Oxford . . . these are the walls from which I will finally win my freedom.

  There are no windows in this holding room, but he has a good feeling about the multiple metaphors.

  Within these walls I cemented my reputation as a nonconformist and a danger to other students. Within these walls a paid administration tried their utmost to quiet a man with progressive ideas. Within these walls—

  “Shelley.” The door is open. George Rowley, the dean of students. “Follow me.” Percy stays in his seat. George turns to face him. “Is there a problem?”

  And then Percy stands. “Just feeling a bit full of myself is all. Please. After you.”

  ~~~

  “Are you familiar with this work?” George asks, as he holds up a copy of The Necessity of Atheism. To his left and right on a raised platform sit other Oxford fellows, studying the young man who sits off platform, below the tribunal.

  “I wrote it. Most of it.”

  “Are you aware,” the dean continues, “of the seriousness of this matter?”

  Percy looks first to the dean, then to his associates. He’s tired; he feels as though he’s waited a lifetime to get here, and his patience is wearing thin. “Gentlemen,” he says, “I am well aware of the consternation I have caused. As I do accept the seriousness of my dilemma, as you say, otherwise the heretic would not be presently seated. I would likely be spending my time reading.”

  “Dilemma?” asks the dean. “Curious you would use the word dilemma. So you acknowledge, in the presence of your Oxford fellows and God Almighty, your faulty judgment?”

  “God Almighty? Where? I don’t see any God Al—”

  “You are not prepared then to repudiate your authorship of this obscenity?”

  “That would be dishonest. Much like our monarchy, that farce. Besides, Thomas Jefferson Hogg and I worked far too diligently to—”

  “I have it on authority that your admirer, Mr. Hogg, is ready to repudiate his authorship if you agree to—why are you laughing?”

  Percy wipes tears. “Mr. Hogg will repudiate his coauthorship of this material at my behest and my behest only. He considers this as I, an affair of party, petty and politically motivated and all that sort of thing. Anathema to free thought.”

  “We are going to read some sections of the work in question. Please respond with a yay if you stand by the words, or a nay if—”

  “We’re wasting our time. I stand by all—”

  “Mr. Dorchester, read the first passage, why don’t you.”

  Percy snickers. “Does everything have to be so formal?”

  The man to George’s left, Mr. Dorchester, reads: “Hence it is evident that, having no proofs from either of the three sources of conviction—senses, reason, testimony—the mind cannot believe the existence of a creative God: it is also evident that, as belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality is attachable to disbelief; and that they only are reprehensible who neglect to remove the false medium through which their mind views any subject of discussion. Every reflecting mind must acknowledge that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity.”

  “Yay,” Percy sighs.

  “Second passage. Mr. Dorchester, please.”

  “If ignorance of nature gave birth to gods, knowledge of nature is made for their destruction. In proportion as man taught himself, his strength and his resources augmented with his knowledge; science, the arts, industry, furnished him assistance; experience reassured him or procured for him means of resistance to the efforts of many causes which ceased to alarm as soon as they became understood. In a word, his terrors dissipated in the same proportion as his mind became enlightened. The educated man ceases to be superstitious.”

  “Yay, with a considerably heavier sigh I may add.”

  George points to Dorchester, circling his index finger as if to wrap up the proceedings.

  “If God is infinitely good, what reason should we have to fear him? If he is infinitely wise, why should we have doubts concerning our future? If he knows all, why warn him of our needs and fatigue him with our prayers? If he is everywhere, why erect temples to him? If he is just, why fear that he will punish the creatures that he has filled with weaknesses? If grace does everything for them, what reason would he have for recompensing them? If he is all-powerful, how offend him, how resist him? If he is reasonable, how can he be angry at the blind,
to whom he has given the liberty of being unreasonable? If he is immovable, by what right do we pretend to make him change his decrees? If he is inconceivable, why occupy ourselves with him? And then, in caps, IF HE HAS SPOKEN, WHY IS THE UNIVERSE NOT CONVINCED?”

  “Mr. Shelley,” George states, “all quite damning, I must say.”

  “Quite—uh, yay.”

  “Mr. Shelley,” George continues, “you do stand to receive quite the inheritance from your grandfather.”

  “Well, I have siblings, but I am the first in line. Respectfully—no, cancel that from the record, threats only go so far—”

  “As to your father? Surely he will not be happy to—”

  “I do not expect my father to partake in my boyish enthusiasm.”

  “Enough.”

  “I agree, sir.”

  “What is your final word on the matter?”

  “I consider it a badge of honor that Hogg and I have impacted you, all of you, to the extent that we may be expelled by Oxford. Of all places.”

  “As to Hogg?”

  “You have no influence on Mr. Hogg regarding this agency whatsoever.”

  The dean turns to angry murmurs from his fellows. “Mr. Shelley, I will ask you once more and once more only. You are prepared to—”

  Percy stands. “Mr. Rowley, with whatever respect I can muster, you, all of you, are wasting your time here today.” Dean Rowley stands in return, incensed. “May I be dismissed?”

  ~~~

  As he is escorted from his now former institution, Percy quietly wonders if the administration had bothered to read his latest work . . . though it is now too late to ask. His second gothic fiction has been available for several months, the short novel St. Irvyne; or The Rosicrucian, about a wanderer who encounters an alchemist desiring to share the secret of immortality. The secret will be shared, however, only if the wanderer renounces his faith.

  As he set to pen the work, Percy recalled the opening of the 1638 epic poem of Scottish writer and historian Henry Adamson’s, The Muses’ Threnodie, and referred to it again prior to completion: