The Black Scab

Chapter 2

under-dog:

“I have absolute faith in the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, there is one last item for you to bear witness to; all that is my strength is also His strength and it is unwavering! He drew a sheet of paper from the breast of the pocket of his snowy suit. “This is paper, yet like all paper – and indeed, like all of life – it is not what something is, it is what is buried within in those matters! I stand before you tonight as a man with a dream, and to prove the sincerity of my “convictions” I have taken the step to sell my soul to Lucifer, to Satan himself. The crowd seemed to take a collective step back from the stage that he could not avoid noticing. "Oh, fear not! The terms of the agreement between Satan and me are clear! I shall give him my life and my soul only if my Lord does not come to me! I do not doubt that our Father shall arrive; but if he does not, then I shall bequeath these vials of DNA that I have spent my life attaining to the Prince of Darkness.

“9:00:00. He paced relentlessly across the floor of his office, passing over the plush rugs then onto the polished wooden floorboards, then back again. Hands clasped tightly behind his back, head downwards and staring at his feet whilst not seeing them at all. The grin fixed on his face was ominous; it was not a grin of pleasure, but rather that which would grace the face of a determined boxer, bloodied and bruised, when he knew that the fight had already been won. His thoughts were bouncing madly around his mind, ramming into each other and all clamoring to be the first to burst through to the forefront. “You do all the work for me – the gluttonous, greed-filled, sexually deviant desires and lusts that roll in and out of stores labeled as art; the macabre messages in songs from the lips of sinfully beautiful creatures, surely enough to destroy the angelic innocence of even the most virginal mind!” You introduce blasphemy per-natal. Or was this your first or third husband? Did your lust for power draw any influence from me? Six million bodies covered in flies, used to create sympathy across a land that boasted of racial supremacy all the while, bodies were ripped apart in the name of science. Was this influenced by me? The creation of a chemical so hot that it melted the skin of its victims together, the skin dissolving to liquid and then reforming as a twisted art, a macabre vision of death, still breathing all the same, through radiated skin so raw!” What of the beheaded ones in your crusades, where you hid your fetish for murder under the guise of righteousness? Bodies impaled upon spears, insides dripping out of them… And honestly, the very best thing is that I get to sit back and observe your work. Imagine, for just one second, erasing the world of the stain of man-made sins. Music gone. Television gone. The media is gone. Then tell me, what have you done that is whole and pure? The truth is that you have done all my work for me, and you continue to do so. Did your lust for power draw any influence from me? Six million bodies covered in flies, used to create sympathy across land that boasted of racial supremacy as all the while, bodies were ripped apart in the name of science. Was this influenced by me? The creation of a chemical so hot that it melted the skin of its victims together, the skin dissolving to liquid and then reforming as a twisted art, a macabre vision of death, still breathing all the same, through radiated skin so raw!” “What of the beheaded ones in your crusades, where you hid your fetish for murder under the guise of righteousness? Bodies impaled upon spears, insides dripping out of them… And honestly, the very best thing is that I get to sit back and observe your work.” Imagine, for just one second, erasing the world of the stain of man-made sins. Music gone. Television gone. The media is gone. Then tell me, what have you done that is whole and pure? The truth is that you have done all my work for me, and you continue to do so every day; waking up in your designer clothes, your iPod blasting out your music to wake you from dreams of promiscuity as you plan to fill your day with thoughts that even I cringe at it!” Ask all the serial killers that you can think of off the top of your head. Ask the leaders of the most feared of regimes ask Saddam, ask Hitler, ask Mussolini. You know of them, of course, you do, because the media glorifies their sins with lavish, million-dollar budget films where you revel in delight like a young girl with an ice cream cone, desensitizing your children without thoughts of the fear of fire and brimstone. So slick are the likes of Jimmy Swaggart, Ozzy Osbourne, Larry King, and Larry Flint. How do you not see your arrogance as the flamethrowing Lords of Sin?! And oh, how I chortle at your asinine refusal to see yourself in truth as you squander your meager earnings parading through the doors of the church as if the true Church existed any longer! It is mere satellite feeds of super preachers” backed by rock music screaming out empty words of Jesus.”

“How arrogant! You raise your hands in the air at the weekly fashion show, knowing what it is that you have done just moments before; your overpriced car manufactured by a country that forces its children into euthanasia to control its overpopulation crisis, for a start! How grand you are as a mighty statue of Christ. Shall I continue to vomit up the atrocities that you have contributed to for over two thousand years, rolling over onto your side and sleeping like a lamb of innocence as you begat your s*******r of children?” “I sit, I watch, I revel, and I smile because the best part of it all is that freedom of will is the best creation of all! I have never had to lift even a finger to craft your masterpiece on the canvas of this small blue and green paradise that was created just for you; and you, you never batted an eyelash! You wanted to sell me your soul when I already owned it in the first place with the power to do even more of my work with the promise of wealth, fame, and eternal health. You silly child! Everybody dies, and please remember this; I offered this Earth to Jesus, and he refused it! I could see the disastrous mistake that you were, are, and will always be, so scornful of with your lavish request; your sad, pitiful request, and you let me continue to sit in the flames! Your diseased, parasitic abomination continues to build silence to the meek. They will, after all, be the ones who will inherit this wasted landscape that you have regurgitated upon, smiling as you disguise your ridiculous global warming escapades quite brilliant, by the way, I applaud you! The tears that you cried, the lost sensations in your stomach...oh, at one point in time I felt sorry for you! I, too, had also been the outcast. I am and forever will be the original black sheep of the flock. I was the one cited and presented in the line-up of the most unholy of angels – spat on, admonished, and rebuked. 9:00:01.

“At this time, we have no comment on Murphy," the Chief barked, his professional face slipping briefly as his fists clenched tightly on top of the podium. "And just to recap - is it fair to say we might be dealing with some sort of Satanic or black magic ritual due to the carved numbers on the infants?" Before the Chief could answer, another reporter blurted a question out, "So a volunteer is dead, babies are carved up and all you can say is "signs of foul play"? Wouldn"t you call mutilating newborn babies and a dead worker a bit more severe than foul play?" "You know what?!” the Chief snapped; his patience strained beyond its limits. “You wouldn"t have any f*****g idea either! We are busting our balls on this, and we will get down to the bottom of it! Honestly, just as you should be we are f*****g confused and scared shitless. This is like nothing any of us have ever seen. No more damned questions!" Angry red spots burning on his face, he crammed the press statement back into the file folder and snatched both that “and the notebook up from the podium before striding away from the dais to leave the room. As he pushed his way through the mass of bodies, a black and white photo slipped from the folder to the floor. He didn"t notice, and exited the room, allowing the door to slam shut in his wake. The grumbling reporters went back to their seats to gather their possessions before noticing the small photograph that had fluttered to the floor in the middle of the aisle. The press swarmed around the picture like it was a winning lottery ticket, but then as one they paled and backed away. Nobody could have imagined this. The photo was of the crime scene. It was so intensely evil that it seemed alive; tiny infants were surrounding the corpse. A circle of blood pooled at their heels – other than that, they looked to be asleep, in stark contrast to the grotesquely contorted deceased woman. Her face was covered in protruding veins, her eyes rolled back and the tongue so large the jaw bones had separated and broken. “Nobody took the picture, for they did not need to; it was burned in their psyche forever. Tears fell from even the eyes of the most hardened reporters, and more than one ran away from the crowd to vomit.

“Be that as it may,” she finally continued, “I am not here to give my personal opinions. I feel compelled to remind each one of you exactly why it is that we are seated here today. We are here to delve into the clear sea of justice. Opinions are of no use to the court; only the truth is. The case we set out to explore is one of hopelessness and greed, of those all-too familiar banes of humanity. “The plaintiffs seek reimbursement on the grounds that the defendant is guilty of breach of contract resulting in crimes against humanity and extortion. This accusation is not a new claim in this or any other court. However, the circumstances and the details of this particular case are unique. “I have allowed the media to record and broadcast this hearing to avoid any public outcry, but with that, I must give a solemn and sincere warning: Be very careful. I am giving media access, and I have chosen to do so. If at any point the persons in this room disrupt the testimony, then I will revoke the privilege of filming as well as banning every individual not directly involved with the case. You are here by my mercy. Remember that." As she finished the statement, she struck the gavel twice upon the wooden tabletop, and the bailiff barked smartly that the court was now in session. The lead prosecutor stole a sideways glance at the unmoving form of Guilherme Branca, and then rose from his chair to begin his opening statement with a curt bow to the judge. “Thank you, your honor,” he began. “Since the man began walking this earth, he has tried his best to live as happily and safely as he could. Every society on earth has a set of very distinct rules to live by, whether it is a tribe buried in the Amazonian rainforest, or a heaving metropolis in Germany. These are rules most commonly referred to as "right" or "wrong". “The most obvious manifestation of mankind"s desire for rules is the advent of organized religion. Though religions vary in their finer points, they all share a similarity of the contrast between the good deity and the bad deity; the most well-known being "God", the good, and "Satan", the bad." He looked directly at Lucifer as he made this statement. Lucifer returned his stare with an amused smile curving back his thin lips. A flicker of nervousness passed across his face; the prosecutor continued. "It is taught that God is love and Satan is the trickster, the being that will lie, cheat and steal to get whatever it may be that he desires from you. For most people, the lessons taught about "God" and "Satan" fade into a fairytale as they grow older, much like the fear of the monster in the closet and the dream of Prince Charming saving them from the dragon"s tower. However, that is not a true reality. God and Satan are very much real and very powerful indeed.