chapter twenty four

Chapter Twenty Four

            "If you're frightened of dying and then you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away.  If you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the Earth." – lyrics from “Rabbit in Your Headlights, by U.N.K.L.E. 

           

            Days turned into what seemed like weeks.  Occasionally Maxwell would fall into some form of delerium induced slumber.  It wasn't so much sleep as it was his mind shutting off from complete overload.  The brief respite would then turn back into nightmare.  Sounds of laughter continued to haunt his fraying sanity.

            'These pills are what's making me crazy,' he thought to himself.  He rolled a couple of the pills around in his hand in a way that made them appear to be saying something.  Hallucinations of pink and purple and green pills shouting at him, "It ain't us sonny boy, we ain't the ones going crazy, it's definitely you that's the one going crazy!"

            "Why can't I just die?  Where are you God?  Where's your son right now?"  He prayed and tried to give up his fear, "Why is this happening to me?"  He could feel his mouth forming these sentences but couldn't tell for sure if any sounds were actually coming out. 

            Maxwell closed his eyes.  He fell into another faux sleep and after a couple of seconds, ... he was quickly back awake. 

           

            He rubbed his eyes.  He was still inside the belly of the beast.  Any 'sense' that anything made was beyond all conceivable logic.  His brain felt like it was being ground and squeezed and then picked into tiny pieces by a giant machine-like beast of some sort.  He stumbled into the bathroom in an attempt to splash cold water onto his face, but it didn't come out when he turned the knob; rather, something red and metallic yet still fluid-like flowed forth.  It looked like prana, the stuff Tom would smoke from his pipe.  

            The bizarre stuff slowly filled the sink, transforming rapidly into a large red diamond-like shape into that of a heart.  'This can't possibly be real; I can't believe it's real even though it appears to be completely real.'  His mind rushed in an attempt to find some form of answer to the nonsensical logic before him, grasping at any notion that might restore the world back into some conceivable type of sanity. 

            He glanced perplexingly at the diamond for several seconds.  What in the name of God is this thing?'  He lifted it out of the sink with his bare hands.  The smooth, finely cut surface was warm as it began to flicker.  The heat intensified, but still Maxwell held onto it.  Smoke began to waft through the air. 

            'Is it coming from the diamond?,' he found the smell absolutely putrid yet completely intoxicating at the same time.  It began to glow vibrantly as Maxwell recognized that the rock itself was no longer smoking, it was his own fleshy tissue that was aflame.  His left hand was searing, freshly branded from the diamond that was ever growing hotter and hotter. 

            'Ahgh, ahh ahaahhh!,' he rolled it onto his other hand and yet still, he held onto it.  His left hand had a deep, red, second degree burn impressed upon itself from the jewel, a giant welt that rather resembled the stigmata of Jesus Christ.  

            When he could no longer hold onto the diamond in the other hand, he dropped it to the floor.  The fresh burns in both his hands now matched each other.  The pain was almost impossible yet very very real and calming all at the same time.

            An impossibly deep neon red was blazing upon the floor.  Flames began to dance around it's perimeter in radiating outward circles.  The fire spread soon to engulf the entire room.

            "Thank you Jesus, I'll burn in this fire and finally achieve true relief."

            The flames engulfed him.  'This is what it's like to die,' he thought, 'this is how it feels to have nothing left inside of you.'  He watched as the skin that covered his body began to melt away, sloughing off like the skin of a cicada.

            Blink, blink.

            There was a snake upon the floor amongst the flames.  It slithered toward him and stared into his eyes, fanning its neck and flicking its tongue.  The snake had the appearance of a cobra.  Wings began to protrude from its scaly flesh, its tongue darting in and out in a true reptilian style.  Maxwell could no longer describe the fear, the pain, and the absolute horror of this ordeal.

            The snake-bird serpent-creature shifted form in front of his barely believing eyes.  The beast serpent morphed into the form of a robot- mosquito-man.  Maxwell watched as all the students from his classroom were being fed upon by this machine-like insect-beast-monstrosity.  It gorged upon their very souls, claiming their thoughts as well as their creativity, rendering them forever dull, ignorant, and incapable. 

            'No!,' Maxwell tried to cry, but his mouth wouldn't move and his words wouldn't form.

            The robot-mosquito-man picked up the diamond, holding it in front of his perfected chrome body.  The glow was now so intense that it created a ripple inside the 'essence' of space-time, something akin to a shock wave shooting out from a black-hole.  The reverberation of the crunching contraction propelled outward from itself the raw existence of a fruit, ... a fruit in the form of an apple, ... an apple that he somehow understood as forbidden.

            He remembered something about a Bible study he'd gone to when the topic of discussion had been the Tree of Knowledge.  He remembered one of the older participants saying how the Tree of Knowledge was symbolic and the story of creation was a myth.  He recalled the man saying how Christianity had arisen from Judaism and contained many pagan characteristics, many of which had existed for thousands of years before the time of Christ. 
           The Tree of Knowledge produced a form of ultimate cognitive truth of which transcended the differentiation between that which is right and that which is wrong.  The apple represents the 'discerning intelligence' possible in humankind.  

            The separation from the Father then presented the need to differentiate between that which is right from that which is wrong.  We take our own path inside this duality and thus create our own heaven and our own hell within the essence of our own ideological being. 

            'Okay, this is it, there's no more time at this point, ... there's no time at all in fact,' and in that very moment, he knew in his heart what he must do. 

             He could feel the presence of Tom.  He could feel Father Wimbly, Dr. Schmidt, and his mother as well.  He could feel Jimmy, he could feel Premi, he could feel Jenna and they were all right there with him in that moment, all watching him, concerned for him, as if they were watching a football game where their team was down and driving the field in the last half of the fourth quarter.  Maxwell knew that nothing mattered more in his entire life than the very moment before him.

            He grasped the apple from out of the robot's possession and pulled it into his arms.  Then, looking directly into the center of the beast's demonic red eyes, Maxwell gave the mosquito-serpent the most devilish of grins as he immediately sank his teeth into an impossibly large bite.  From the very core of the apple's essence he might be able to give witness to the beast.

            A surge of impossibly charged energy flashed completely throughout his being.  His skin began to rip apart.  A cross of flaming white light, whiter than what has ever been possible came directly out of the sky to land forever hard upon his back.  It was so unendingly heavy that he was immediately forced upon the ground.  Any attempt to move was utterly impossible, and suddenly, ... he began to laugh.

            ... deep within himself, to the source of the very beginning of laughter inside the consciousness of his own being, ... it all revealed itself to him, ... it made him smile.