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Chapter 24
You want to know pain? Suffering true and cruel. Take a man, break him of his heart. Tear from him his reason and then drag his tattered being against the rubbish filled gravel and waste. Make him doubt his goodness, make him cry that he cannot understand. Make him hate the world, make him hate injustice. Then castrate him. Tell him it doesn’t matter what he feels, tell him that no matter what he might do it is pointless. Then watch him suffer with a smile. Watch him fight tears because he is a man, in fact do not watch. Ignore him. Ignore his suffering like the death of a minor character in your story. Someone who doesn’t fucking matter. Roll him up in his insignificance in a world where he is the great evil. Deny him any respite, deny him any hope. Turn him into the darkness alone and then find yourself righteous in your admonishment of him because faltering in pain, reeling in misery he snarls, bites and snaps in rage.
Spare your victim the duration of torment, end his suffering quickly and mercifully because no more piteous wretch can be found than the hopeless silent man. Double yourself dry heaving the vacuous bile of your digestive tract over the remains of animated flesh, lost of all humanity. Stripped of dignity, honour and reason to be virtuous. Depraved madness, slavering, dripping with all that hell can muster into an individual. But beyond that, the devil pities even this lamentable soul. The devil gives quarter. What mercy remains in the darkness of death? What did this man so filled with pride hold back, what evils did he cage? Do you know, the monsters that exist within his mind? You do not care, you cannot think of what the world faces in the destruction of hope. For in one of these men, lies a gate; beyond that gate lies something too terrible to be unleashed. A horror seeking, preying and hunting its way into reality. An endless creature suppressed only by the hope of such an individual.
And what if that man was real, and what if this creature was held only by his will? And systematically you picked the cage of that torment, releasing step by step, undoing brick by brick welcoming such fiends and monsters as would devour all goodness in the world and move without conscience onto the next. The soulless eyes of an insect, the single-minded hunger of survival and consumption. That which Pandora held and in time was locked from its corporeal form by generation after generation of saviours. Each fighting their own miseries to keep from the world these evils that would plague humanity endlessly.
And what if he found a way to give it shape, and what if the intention came upon him to level this world with his wrath. That he could do so silently, in the mind. Slowly spreading its influence beyond its cage within him. Insipidly poisoning others with its evil and indoctrinating them with suffering eternal. Horrors that pursue through the light, through the darkness. The only respite you would find is in the real. For when it corrupts your mind and you are weak it will claim you, it will come in your dreams to take your sanity. Take your hope and devour slowly the reason and reality you once clung to?
Would you blame him? Would you say he was no hero, that he was weak and should have endured more? That heroes must endure endlessly their suffering so that the world may continue unknowing of the violent sadness of things which feed on sorrow and offer comfort in darkness. Waiting for the moment to come when to be devoured most cruelly and painfully becomes preferable to living. The darkness takes shape and waits, it can wait forever because it only requires but one moment of weakness, one hopeless night to claim what it wants.
This is the battle of a hero, this is the battle in which Galileo finds himself, a hero torn of all reason to fight desperately holding back a tide of torment from the world in silence. In isolation. And quietly, whisperingly, he accepts this as his fate. That even in his most hopeless, down-trodden misery he must endure. Not because he has the want or desire but because to do otherwise is to give in to the darkness. To be that which is without hope. A hero only because he lives without dying.
(The private journal of Galileo)
Cynthia came to see me the next morning, she told me that Galileo had been let go from Paradoxia Games. They’d finally had enough of him changing his mind and wasting time. In hindsight we knew he was always close to losing his job. People had already called him a one-shot wonder. But that only made things worse. Cynthia made her apologies for not coming the night we worked on the idea to replace that thing, but what she told me next reduced me to tears of sorrow and fear.
I had always thought it strange that Galileo had used all of our names as character names, that he had included his wife in the game. That everything had been so close to reality except one thing, the daughter. She always seemed an ethereal character, for a long time I thought she was just a prop to add more affect to Galileo’s story. He’d never mentioned a daughter. Cynthia sat me down. Galileo did have a daughter; her name was Hope. I asked why he never mentioned her, already knowing in some way the tragedy that would be the reply.
He was driving her shopping when someone slammed into the passenger door. Hope died with her eyes open on his lap. Galileo sat weeping. Whenever anyone tried to remove him from the car he would viciously attack them. He could not look away from her eyes. Eventually they sedated him and took him to the hospital. He woke up and Sophie was there distraught in tears. He consoled her, told her not to worry, he was okay. They go home, she thought it was odd. He asked who the girl in the picture was. Sophie broke down. Psychologists said he had suffered severe trauma and his memories of his daughter were repressed. They asked Sophie if they should treat him, she said no. This was her sacrifice. She let him forget the moment his love died and suffered the burden herself. What good would it do to make him suffer her loss again and again when it was not his fault. When he asked about the child’s room she reminded him they were planning to have a baby, and he made a joke about her being so certain it would be a girl. She stayed on birth control all this time and convinced him that they couldn’t have children, but she never wanted to change the room in hope. He accepted this, and they moved on with their lives.
“It was his daughter Alan, the thing that She showed Angus Dock. I had to go and ask Sophie for a picture because I’d never actually seen Hope.” Cynthia drew a picture from her handbag. Smiling like his usual self was a younger Galileo and wrapped around his next was a beautiful blonde-haired blue-eyed girl. Her toothless smile beaming. “Those blue eyes, they were so real. I couldn’t stop looking into them and I felt my heart beginning to break. I didn’t know who she was then, she didn’t even seem sad. She looked just as happy as she does in that picture but something I can’t explain, it made looking at her so painful. Like I was feeling the deepest despair.”
I looked up. “So, you’re saying Galileo did put it in the game?”
She shook her head. “I’m saying that she doesn’t have the assets, that Galileo doesn’t remember her existing and yet. Look. What’s the very first thing” she stopped, as her voice trailed into a weeping. It was infectious, I felt the weight of tears form under my eyes. She struggled to continue. “The first feeling of the day should be hope. Every day should start with it and, if possible, everyday should end with it”
I couldn’t hold it back, my own body heaved into despair.
Spare your victim the duration of torment, end his suffering quickly and mercifully because no more piteous wretch can be found than the hopeless silent man. Double yourself dry heaving the vacuous bile of your digestive tract over the remains of animated flesh, lost of all humanity. Stripped of dignity, honour and reason to be virtuous. Depraved madness, slavering, dripping with all that hell can muster into an individual. But beyond that, the devil pities even this lamentable soul. The devil gives quarter. What mercy remains in the darkness of death? What did this man so filled with pride hold back, what evils did he cage? Do you know, the monsters that exist within his mind? You do not care, you cannot think of what the world faces in the destruction of hope. For in one of these men, lies a gate; beyond that gate lies something too terrible to be unleashed. A horror seeking, preying and hunting its way into reality. An endless creature suppressed only by the hope of such an individual.
And what if that man was real, and what if this creature was held only by his will? And systematically you picked the cage of that torment, releasing step by step, undoing brick by brick welcoming such fiends and monsters as would devour all goodness in the world and move without conscience onto the next. The soulless eyes of an insect, the single-minded hunger of survival and consumption. That which Pandora held and in time was locked from its corporeal form by generation after generation of saviours. Each fighting their own miseries to keep from the world these evils that would plague humanity endlessly.
And what if he found a way to give it shape, and what if the intention came upon him to level this world with his wrath. That he could do so silently, in the mind. Slowly spreading its influence beyond its cage within him. Insipidly poisoning others with its evil and indoctrinating them with suffering eternal. Horrors that pursue through the light, through the darkness. The only respite you would find is in the real. For when it corrupts your mind and you are weak it will claim you, it will come in your dreams to take your sanity. Take your hope and devour slowly the reason and reality you once clung to?
Would you blame him? Would you say he was no hero, that he was weak and should have endured more? That heroes must endure endlessly their suffering so that the world may continue unknowing of the violent sadness of things which feed on sorrow and offer comfort in darkness. Waiting for the moment to come when to be devoured most cruelly and painfully becomes preferable to living. The darkness takes shape and waits, it can wait forever because it only requires but one moment of weakness, one hopeless night to claim what it wants.
This is the battle of a hero, this is the battle in which Galileo finds himself, a hero torn of all reason to fight desperately holding back a tide of torment from the world in silence. In isolation. And quietly, whisperingly, he accepts this as his fate. That even in his most hopeless, down-trodden misery he must endure. Not because he has the want or desire but because to do otherwise is to give in to the darkness. To be that which is without hope. A hero only because he lives without dying.
(The private journal of Galileo)
Cynthia came to see me the next morning, she told me that Galileo had been let go from Paradoxia Games. They’d finally had enough of him changing his mind and wasting time. In hindsight we knew he was always close to losing his job. People had already called him a one-shot wonder. But that only made things worse. Cynthia made her apologies for not coming the night we worked on the idea to replace that thing, but what she told me next reduced me to tears of sorrow and fear.
I had always thought it strange that Galileo had used all of our names as character names, that he had included his wife in the game. That everything had been so close to reality except one thing, the daughter. She always seemed an ethereal character, for a long time I thought she was just a prop to add more affect to Galileo’s story. He’d never mentioned a daughter. Cynthia sat me down. Galileo did have a daughter; her name was Hope. I asked why he never mentioned her, already knowing in some way the tragedy that would be the reply.
He was driving her shopping when someone slammed into the passenger door. Hope died with her eyes open on his lap. Galileo sat weeping. Whenever anyone tried to remove him from the car he would viciously attack them. He could not look away from her eyes. Eventually they sedated him and took him to the hospital. He woke up and Sophie was there distraught in tears. He consoled her, told her not to worry, he was okay. They go home, she thought it was odd. He asked who the girl in the picture was. Sophie broke down. Psychologists said he had suffered severe trauma and his memories of his daughter were repressed. They asked Sophie if they should treat him, she said no. This was her sacrifice. She let him forget the moment his love died and suffered the burden herself. What good would it do to make him suffer her loss again and again when it was not his fault. When he asked about the child’s room she reminded him they were planning to have a baby, and he made a joke about her being so certain it would be a girl. She stayed on birth control all this time and convinced him that they couldn’t have children, but she never wanted to change the room in hope. He accepted this, and they moved on with their lives.
“It was his daughter Alan, the thing that She showed Angus Dock. I had to go and ask Sophie for a picture because I’d never actually seen Hope.” Cynthia drew a picture from her handbag. Smiling like his usual self was a younger Galileo and wrapped around his next was a beautiful blonde-haired blue-eyed girl. Her toothless smile beaming. “Those blue eyes, they were so real. I couldn’t stop looking into them and I felt my heart beginning to break. I didn’t know who she was then, she didn’t even seem sad. She looked just as happy as she does in that picture but something I can’t explain, it made looking at her so painful. Like I was feeling the deepest despair.”
I looked up. “So, you’re saying Galileo did put it in the game?”
She shook her head. “I’m saying that she doesn’t have the assets, that Galileo doesn’t remember her existing and yet. Look. What’s the very first thing” she stopped, as her voice trailed into a weeping. It was infectious, I felt the weight of tears form under my eyes. She struggled to continue. “The first feeling of the day should be hope. Every day should start with it and, if possible, everyday should end with it”
I couldn’t hold it back, my own body heaved into despair.