out the absurdity of the situation in front of me.
“Shut up!” This was definitely not part of the plan—it absolutely had not occurred to us that this could have been one of the reactions. A groveling show of regret and remorse for the cameras, sure, and that would have been easy enough to deal with. As it was, the words that were now spilling forth from this man’s mouth had an almost hypnotic effect, and as the words increased in intensity, I worried that the torrent of madness spewing forth was starting to encroach upon my own sanity.
“Please, sir, I’m begging you! Tell me why! Why have I killed so many people?”
He was completely oblivious to me now. Babbling. How the mighty had fallen.
“Look, old man, I can’t help you. Won’t you please just be quiet?” I’m ashamed to say that by now my own voice sounded as pitiful as his.
“Why did I kill everyone?”
“Shut up.”
“But why?”
And that was that. I just couldn’t take it anymore.
I drew my blade across his throat. Fresh blood splattered and turned the mosque wall into a Jackson Pollock painting. Before he had time to choke on his own blood I quickly hamstrung him so that I could force his once-imposing body to the ground and thrust my blade into his heart. As I did so, blood bubbled from his mouth and his eyes flared open.
The former brigadier general, the man who had called himself defense minister for the interim government, was dead.
The great commander of the estimated thirty-five thousand armed insurgents who terrorized the countryside was dead.
I felt as if reality had snapped back and hit me in the face. I realized for the first time that the piano melody that had been filling the room had long since faded without a trace.
Moonlight Sonata had finished without my noticing. I shook my head to clear my thoughts before looking around. It was as if I’d been in some sort of magical alternate dimension and forgotten to breathe while I was there. I gulped again for air.
Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-tat.
The night that had briefly been caressed by the Moonlight Sonata had returned to echoing the sound of people killing each other.
“What on earth happened here, sir?”
I turned around to see Alex’s troubled expression. All I could do by way of response was sigh. I didn’t even want to start thinking about how to explain the old man’s extraordinary behavior.
“Are you all right, sir?” Alex asked again. Ever the professional, even as he spoke to me he was checking the corpse of the ex-brigadier general that lay on the floor. He was using the recording capabilities of the nanolayer implants in his eyes to confirm and record the old man’s death from as many angles as possible.
“Yeah. It looks like Target B isn’t coming here tonight, though.”
“Oh. Unlike Intelligence to get that wrong,” Alex said calmly, going about his work.
I could hear more gunfire in the distance.
The atrocities in this area aren’t quite over yet , I thought to myself.
1
Hell is here , Alex had said.
You can’t escape from hell. Because hell’s right here, inside your mind, and you carry it around with you.
Two years had passed since the night I killed the former brigadier general, but to be honest I seemed to be doing a good enough job of evading my own personal hell. I did occasionally return to the land of the dead in my dreams, but that was too peaceful a place to really be called hell.
I never knew what Alex’s personal hell looked like to him. He never did tell me, and now it was too late. As I looked on at his coffin being carried out of the church I wondered whether he had finally made it to that heaven he’d talked about. After all, Catholics had moved on from their unforgiving dogma of the past, hadn’t they? The pearly gates were open to all these days.
Even to those who chose to die.
That’s how it was possible for Alex to have a Catholic funeral service even though he had taken his own life. In medieval Europe,
“Shut up!” This was definitely not part of the plan—it absolutely had not occurred to us that this could have been one of the reactions. A groveling show of regret and remorse for the cameras, sure, and that would have been easy enough to deal with. As it was, the words that were now spilling forth from this man’s mouth had an almost hypnotic effect, and as the words increased in intensity, I worried that the torrent of madness spewing forth was starting to encroach upon my own sanity.
“Please, sir, I’m begging you! Tell me why! Why have I killed so many people?”
He was completely oblivious to me now. Babbling. How the mighty had fallen.
“Look, old man, I can’t help you. Won’t you please just be quiet?” I’m ashamed to say that by now my own voice sounded as pitiful as his.
“Why did I kill everyone?”
“Shut up.”
“But why?”
And that was that. I just couldn’t take it anymore.
I drew my blade across his throat. Fresh blood splattered and turned the mosque wall into a Jackson Pollock painting. Before he had time to choke on his own blood I quickly hamstrung him so that I could force his once-imposing body to the ground and thrust my blade into his heart. As I did so, blood bubbled from his mouth and his eyes flared open.
The former brigadier general, the man who had called himself defense minister for the interim government, was dead.
The great commander of the estimated thirty-five thousand armed insurgents who terrorized the countryside was dead.
I felt as if reality had snapped back and hit me in the face. I realized for the first time that the piano melody that had been filling the room had long since faded without a trace.
Moonlight Sonata had finished without my noticing. I shook my head to clear my thoughts before looking around. It was as if I’d been in some sort of magical alternate dimension and forgotten to breathe while I was there. I gulped again for air.
Rat-a-tat-tat. Rat-tat.
The night that had briefly been caressed by the Moonlight Sonata had returned to echoing the sound of people killing each other.
“What on earth happened here, sir?”
I turned around to see Alex’s troubled expression. All I could do by way of response was sigh. I didn’t even want to start thinking about how to explain the old man’s extraordinary behavior.
“Are you all right, sir?” Alex asked again. Ever the professional, even as he spoke to me he was checking the corpse of the ex-brigadier general that lay on the floor. He was using the recording capabilities of the nanolayer implants in his eyes to confirm and record the old man’s death from as many angles as possible.
“Yeah. It looks like Target B isn’t coming here tonight, though.”
“Oh. Unlike Intelligence to get that wrong,” Alex said calmly, going about his work.
I could hear more gunfire in the distance.
The atrocities in this area aren’t quite over yet , I thought to myself.
1
Hell is here , Alex had said.
You can’t escape from hell. Because hell’s right here, inside your mind, and you carry it around with you.
Two years had passed since the night I killed the former brigadier general, but to be honest I seemed to be doing a good enough job of evading my own personal hell. I did occasionally return to the land of the dead in my dreams, but that was too peaceful a place to really be called hell.
I never knew what Alex’s personal hell looked like to him. He never did tell me, and now it was too late. As I looked on at his coffin being carried out of the church I wondered whether he had finally made it to that heaven he’d talked about. After all, Catholics had moved on from their unforgiving dogma of the past, hadn’t they? The pearly gates were open to all these days.
Even to those who chose to die.
That’s how it was possible for Alex to have a Catholic funeral service even though he had taken his own life. In medieval Europe,
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