The Mark of Cain
It's done, it's finally done. My first ever short short story.
The Mark Of Cain
I feel a rough hand shove my shoulder. I fall and the mulch between my fingers defies description. I look up to see eyes surely more hollow than my own. But still, I said naught. What was there left to say? Like a crab, I scuttle over to a corner not yet filled with the too gooey warmness that is living flesh. Far better, I think, the chilled coldness of those long dead. I shudder. Those thoughts are what brought me to this end.
The hollowness within me spreads. My ‘if only’ would haunt me, yet I am much like a spook myself. The others shuffle away from me. I am a miasma of vileness, even unto these sad creatures. Here I see before me one who might have been a man once, all shriveled and wild-eyed; the wretch seems less than a beast gone mad now. Deprivation has taken its toll. Surely, this is but a reflection of my soul.
With myself only as company days fly by. What horrors lay before my eyes, no one shall ever know. A creature I took to be female succumbed and gave up the ghost. Vile thing, though, that I had become, to see these creatures fall upon the corpse almost before the last death rattle…even I shied away from such a thing.
Days turned to weeks, turned to months, and still I lingered. My jailers gave me sustenance but little else. Strangely, my cellmates let me be. Their weird thoughts and motives remained a depthless mystery to me. But still they let me be. I wondered, and being a person hollow, this curiosity consumed me. At night the fellows about me seemed to vanish into thin air. For hours and lonely hours with nothing else to think upon, I was like a being consumed by the hottest of flames. Deciding that I had nothing forfeit by spending my last breaths upon this wretched plane upon this problem, I purposed to puzzle this one last mystery out.
Hear my narrative I must confess a thing. I was quite mad. Mad, I say, and a bit more than mad I was! How else could I have accomplished a deed more vile than my own and stayed to tell the tale? Fie and shame upon me that I did such a thing. For yet, I felt no shame at my action, only pity that the deed was not accomplished all the sooner.
I digress: My lack of purpose has choked out what little was left of my tattered soul. This problem, my last meager salvation, was all the joy or hope I would receive by mortal hands this side of the eternal veil. Therefore, I steeled myself to the task and vowed what tattered oaths I still possessed that I would complete it before deaths loving arms would clasp their lover’s cheek at me.
I watched, their movements as strange to me as if the stones themselves walked upon my battered vision. I compared them to beasts, uncaring of their fellows but as a ghastly potential meal. I had at first thought them as soulless as myself, uncaring of the woes of their fellows and numb to the misery around them, their only thoughts being no thought at all. I compared them to beasts, uncaring of their fellows but as a ghastly potential meal. Observation gave me a wholly new perspective.
Rather than the soulless monsters that I thought them to be, there seemed an odd kinship between them. Little balls of movement I took to be the forms of what were once children were completely ignored. This I thought passing strange in light of their earlier feedings.
As I continued to look on, it seemed as if I could begin to more than tell the genders apart. Women and children grouped together, the latter not particularly having a care for the small ragamuffins. More like apathy to chase them, it seemed to me. What I took to be the men grouped together also. Here I used the word grouped very loosely in their sense. For truth, it was more of a general area they happened to keep together.
Throughout all of my observations not once did I speak. As silent as a grave I was, for it was there only that I longed to go. It was uncanny, these creatures, the way they moved and scrabbled about. If they had speech one with another, I never heard, though their reluctance to come near me was puzzling. I wondered why they scrabbled and fought amongst themselves with such ferocity. Why, oh why did they leave me well be?
A puzzle within the mystery I had set out to solve.
As the days and hours rolled by and still I lingered, I also despaired of ever fixing the solution in my lagging mind. I watched and observed but still it eluded me. By pale lights, I observed these ragged figures more silent than the stars, pace and pace and pace. Yet they spoke not a word. How was I to sniff out the trail to the answers I sought? If I seemed fixated on answers and riddles, it’s only because I was. No hand save my own destroyed the life behind me, and I was glad. Or as glad as a monster such as myself could feel.
It seemed as if all time then was a fuzzy maggot crawling through my brain. Was this why those poor souls seemed to me as the living dead? Was I becoming such as they? Or was that a deed long accomplished? Was this why I was cast into this foul pit? Had my fellow men sensed I was as they? Perhaps I was more monster than man, so they sent me into the Minotaur’s maze. A Centaur sent to fight the bull until death released us both. At the last, since I had long ago deemed my existence of little worth for actively seeking to continue it, I decided I would confront the fear of these others, for truly they were just the same as myself. With apathy and dragging limbs, I heaved my weary shell to motion. Perhaps, sitting there silently as an age turned round upon the world wasn’t such a well-thought out plan. My battered body seemed to think this was the answer to my final problem. There seems to be a will outside of your own in control of your body at times. A consciousness that wills it to go on beyond the point you thought you could endure. So I moved, as an ancient pharaoh risen from his thousands year sleep.
Had I tried, my timing could not have been better, for just around the shadows’ edge they were sitting contentedly. Surely, I thought, these were not my creatures! Bestial, snarling soulless creatures from the eternal pit, ready to rend and devour anything in their path. A horror among nightmares they had seemed, but now? Now, placid as lambs they sat. They sat peacefully next to one another. A calm lake could hardly have given one’s soul the peace imparted by the sight before my eyes. Is this where they spirited off to in the night, this peaceful retreat? A small movement barely seen causes me to turn my head: a child. I see a child upon a mother’s lap. And here, a father warmly wraps his arm round his wife’s shoulders. Yet another child is sheltered in his lap.
What madness is this? Ragged and desolate, they should have been as miserable and full of despair as I. Just as I was about to storm in among them as a raging bull myself, a gleaming figure appeared. Such did the sight catch my eye that my rage was gone in a moment, to lie dormant for all time. Or so I hoped.
Who was this radiant figure? My earlier resolve to find out why these fellows (for now I saw them as such, fellow human beings and not foul horrors) avoided me so was completely over shadowed by the . Without realizing fully what I intended, my legs propelled me forward. As I reached the outskirts of the gathered crowd, a strange thing happened that brought me to myself again: They shrank away in fear of me. Those nearer scrambled back, snatching children away as if to protect them from a leper’s touch.
For the first time since coming upon this strange gathering, I had misgivings. Why did they gather so? Why would they act the beast if they were not? Confused, I pressed on. The small hope kindled in me at the sight of the shining man seemed to wither and die. Like ashes blowing in the wind, it left me. I was one of the damned. There could be no hope for such as I. Only the shadow of life I cling to before I pass this meaningless thing for the other side of the tomb.
I drew closer and an odd thing assailed my ears: Voices. I heard the blessed voices of people once more. Even in fear and revulsion, no children’s choir ever rang sweet and true in the audience’s ears as those voices did in mine this night. In wonder I looked around for the owners of such bittersweet melodies. Again I thought of my poor mute creatures only snarling and spitting at one another. Why the farce, the deception? As the confusion seized me almost to the point of immobility, a toddler, no older than maybe 2 years of age, waddled up to me, eluding the frantic grasps of what I assumed to be his parents.
His little blue, innocent eyes looked up to me as the smallest whisper escaped his infantile lips:
“A defh.”
Quick hands enfolded the tiny form and took it from my path. What did the child mean, “A death?” I find it not within myself to care. The only thing that matters is reaching the Shining Man and then…I didn’t know, but what is left of my life has come to this one act.
I staggered onward; as the Red Sea parted before Moses, so they fled from my touch. I cared not, only that it sped my way to him. Time seemed to warp, moments felt like whole lives lived between each step. I was Icarus, flying on waxen wings; Arthur, pulling the legendary sword. I was Napoleon leaving my soldiers on the path of death. I was every person who ever drew breath upon this world. A match girl, a sinner, a bus driver, a pilot, a seaman, a carpenter, a vagabond, a Bedouin, a priest, a nun, a mother, a child, and even myself all over again. I lived again the day my life was forfeit.
I cared not. That weary day I chased my life’s final path. That the confusion was finally gone was my only concern. Finally was my mind free from doubt. I reached him. He sight was so terrible that my eyes watered as if two great fountains rained upon the earth. Who could this be? My tongue, despite my flooding eyes, was dry unto dust. It moved and harkened to my thought, but not one of those thoughts would it express for me. What divine presence was this that I was struck dumb as a worm? My legs gave up their struggle with gravity and I fell. Barely had I moved from the accursed corner that was my life in this pit and yet, on hands and knees I panted like the weariest runner after a long race. Fatigue was a constant companion all my life, and no strangers were we. But this all-encompassing weariness was a beast, devouring the warmth of my heart. I looked up for one last moment, my eyes pleaded the question my tongue could no longer voice and he answered:
“You are more than one damned, you are a life with no real end. By your choice you have joined these here. None but you submitted their souls to this wretched abode. None but you, O mortal man. They have been thrust here but to slumber. Seeds of life and hope can be nurtured back to true life for them. Perhaps, one day, for you too. But until that day, this pit life, this death of life, is your payment for your folly.”
And he wept. He wept even for me. And I remembered it all. And we wept for my own madness. The foolishness of Cain was mine. Except…except it was my brother I killed not. For it was my own death that marked me apart from these others. As I and he wept, a puddle formed. In a strange light I finally saw myself as I was, and also as I could be. And that the mark of Cain was my fate.
Thank you, thank you. See how short I cut it to and be proud folks. That's the shortest story I have ever written in my entire life.
(It took alot longer to write than anything else to boot. *rolls eyes* Darn teachers)
*This post is also public, just in case anyone was wondering. :P
The Mark Of Cain
I feel a rough hand shove my shoulder. I fall and the mulch between my fingers defies description. I look up to see eyes surely more hollow than my own. But still, I said naught. What was there left to say? Like a crab, I scuttle over to a corner not yet filled with the too gooey warmness that is living flesh. Far better, I think, the chilled coldness of those long dead. I shudder. Those thoughts are what brought me to this end.
The hollowness within me spreads. My ‘if only’ would haunt me, yet I am much like a spook myself. The others shuffle away from me. I am a miasma of vileness, even unto these sad creatures. Here I see before me one who might have been a man once, all shriveled and wild-eyed; the wretch seems less than a beast gone mad now. Deprivation has taken its toll. Surely, this is but a reflection of my soul.
With myself only as company days fly by. What horrors lay before my eyes, no one shall ever know. A creature I took to be female succumbed and gave up the ghost. Vile thing, though, that I had become, to see these creatures fall upon the corpse almost before the last death rattle…even I shied away from such a thing.
Days turned to weeks, turned to months, and still I lingered. My jailers gave me sustenance but little else. Strangely, my cellmates let me be. Their weird thoughts and motives remained a depthless mystery to me. But still they let me be. I wondered, and being a person hollow, this curiosity consumed me. At night the fellows about me seemed to vanish into thin air. For hours and lonely hours with nothing else to think upon, I was like a being consumed by the hottest of flames. Deciding that I had nothing forfeit by spending my last breaths upon this wretched plane upon this problem, I purposed to puzzle this one last mystery out.
Hear my narrative I must confess a thing. I was quite mad. Mad, I say, and a bit more than mad I was! How else could I have accomplished a deed more vile than my own and stayed to tell the tale? Fie and shame upon me that I did such a thing. For yet, I felt no shame at my action, only pity that the deed was not accomplished all the sooner.
I digress: My lack of purpose has choked out what little was left of my tattered soul. This problem, my last meager salvation, was all the joy or hope I would receive by mortal hands this side of the eternal veil. Therefore, I steeled myself to the task and vowed what tattered oaths I still possessed that I would complete it before deaths loving arms would clasp their lover’s cheek at me.
I watched, their movements as strange to me as if the stones themselves walked upon my battered vision. I compared them to beasts, uncaring of their fellows but as a ghastly potential meal. I had at first thought them as soulless as myself, uncaring of the woes of their fellows and numb to the misery around them, their only thoughts being no thought at all. I compared them to beasts, uncaring of their fellows but as a ghastly potential meal. Observation gave me a wholly new perspective.
Rather than the soulless monsters that I thought them to be, there seemed an odd kinship between them. Little balls of movement I took to be the forms of what were once children were completely ignored. This I thought passing strange in light of their earlier feedings.
As I continued to look on, it seemed as if I could begin to more than tell the genders apart. Women and children grouped together, the latter not particularly having a care for the small ragamuffins. More like apathy to chase them, it seemed to me. What I took to be the men grouped together also. Here I used the word grouped very loosely in their sense. For truth, it was more of a general area they happened to keep together.
Throughout all of my observations not once did I speak. As silent as a grave I was, for it was there only that I longed to go. It was uncanny, these creatures, the way they moved and scrabbled about. If they had speech one with another, I never heard, though their reluctance to come near me was puzzling. I wondered why they scrabbled and fought amongst themselves with such ferocity. Why, oh why did they leave me well be?
A puzzle within the mystery I had set out to solve.
As the days and hours rolled by and still I lingered, I also despaired of ever fixing the solution in my lagging mind. I watched and observed but still it eluded me. By pale lights, I observed these ragged figures more silent than the stars, pace and pace and pace. Yet they spoke not a word. How was I to sniff out the trail to the answers I sought? If I seemed fixated on answers and riddles, it’s only because I was. No hand save my own destroyed the life behind me, and I was glad. Or as glad as a monster such as myself could feel.
It seemed as if all time then was a fuzzy maggot crawling through my brain. Was this why those poor souls seemed to me as the living dead? Was I becoming such as they? Or was that a deed long accomplished? Was this why I was cast into this foul pit? Had my fellow men sensed I was as they? Perhaps I was more monster than man, so they sent me into the Minotaur’s maze. A Centaur sent to fight the bull until death released us both. At the last, since I had long ago deemed my existence of little worth for actively seeking to continue it, I decided I would confront the fear of these others, for truly they were just the same as myself. With apathy and dragging limbs, I heaved my weary shell to motion. Perhaps, sitting there silently as an age turned round upon the world wasn’t such a well-thought out plan. My battered body seemed to think this was the answer to my final problem. There seems to be a will outside of your own in control of your body at times. A consciousness that wills it to go on beyond the point you thought you could endure. So I moved, as an ancient pharaoh risen from his thousands year sleep.
Had I tried, my timing could not have been better, for just around the shadows’ edge they were sitting contentedly. Surely, I thought, these were not my creatures! Bestial, snarling soulless creatures from the eternal pit, ready to rend and devour anything in their path. A horror among nightmares they had seemed, but now? Now, placid as lambs they sat. They sat peacefully next to one another. A calm lake could hardly have given one’s soul the peace imparted by the sight before my eyes. Is this where they spirited off to in the night, this peaceful retreat? A small movement barely seen causes me to turn my head: a child. I see a child upon a mother’s lap. And here, a father warmly wraps his arm round his wife’s shoulders. Yet another child is sheltered in his lap.
What madness is this? Ragged and desolate, they should have been as miserable and full of despair as I. Just as I was about to storm in among them as a raging bull myself, a gleaming figure appeared. Such did the sight catch my eye that my rage was gone in a moment, to lie dormant for all time. Or so I hoped.
Who was this radiant figure? My earlier resolve to find out why these fellows (for now I saw them as such, fellow human beings and not foul horrors) avoided me so was completely over shadowed by the . Without realizing fully what I intended, my legs propelled me forward. As I reached the outskirts of the gathered crowd, a strange thing happened that brought me to myself again: They shrank away in fear of me. Those nearer scrambled back, snatching children away as if to protect them from a leper’s touch.
For the first time since coming upon this strange gathering, I had misgivings. Why did they gather so? Why would they act the beast if they were not? Confused, I pressed on. The small hope kindled in me at the sight of the shining man seemed to wither and die. Like ashes blowing in the wind, it left me. I was one of the damned. There could be no hope for such as I. Only the shadow of life I cling to before I pass this meaningless thing for the other side of the tomb.
I drew closer and an odd thing assailed my ears: Voices. I heard the blessed voices of people once more. Even in fear and revulsion, no children’s choir ever rang sweet and true in the audience’s ears as those voices did in mine this night. In wonder I looked around for the owners of such bittersweet melodies. Again I thought of my poor mute creatures only snarling and spitting at one another. Why the farce, the deception? As the confusion seized me almost to the point of immobility, a toddler, no older than maybe 2 years of age, waddled up to me, eluding the frantic grasps of what I assumed to be his parents.
His little blue, innocent eyes looked up to me as the smallest whisper escaped his infantile lips:
“A defh.”
Quick hands enfolded the tiny form and took it from my path. What did the child mean, “A death?” I find it not within myself to care. The only thing that matters is reaching the Shining Man and then…I didn’t know, but what is left of my life has come to this one act.
I staggered onward; as the Red Sea parted before Moses, so they fled from my touch. I cared not, only that it sped my way to him. Time seemed to warp, moments felt like whole lives lived between each step. I was Icarus, flying on waxen wings; Arthur, pulling the legendary sword. I was Napoleon leaving my soldiers on the path of death. I was every person who ever drew breath upon this world. A match girl, a sinner, a bus driver, a pilot, a seaman, a carpenter, a vagabond, a Bedouin, a priest, a nun, a mother, a child, and even myself all over again. I lived again the day my life was forfeit.
I cared not. That weary day I chased my life’s final path. That the confusion was finally gone was my only concern. Finally was my mind free from doubt. I reached him. He sight was so terrible that my eyes watered as if two great fountains rained upon the earth. Who could this be? My tongue, despite my flooding eyes, was dry unto dust. It moved and harkened to my thought, but not one of those thoughts would it express for me. What divine presence was this that I was struck dumb as a worm? My legs gave up their struggle with gravity and I fell. Barely had I moved from the accursed corner that was my life in this pit and yet, on hands and knees I panted like the weariest runner after a long race. Fatigue was a constant companion all my life, and no strangers were we. But this all-encompassing weariness was a beast, devouring the warmth of my heart. I looked up for one last moment, my eyes pleaded the question my tongue could no longer voice and he answered:
“You are more than one damned, you are a life with no real end. By your choice you have joined these here. None but you submitted their souls to this wretched abode. None but you, O mortal man. They have been thrust here but to slumber. Seeds of life and hope can be nurtured back to true life for them. Perhaps, one day, for you too. But until that day, this pit life, this death of life, is your payment for your folly.”
And he wept. He wept even for me. And I remembered it all. And we wept for my own madness. The foolishness of Cain was mine. Except…except it was my brother I killed not. For it was my own death that marked me apart from these others. As I and he wept, a puddle formed. In a strange light I finally saw myself as I was, and also as I could be. And that the mark of Cain was my fate.
Thank you, thank you. See how short I cut it to and be proud folks. That's the shortest story I have ever written in my entire life.
(It took alot longer to write than anything else to boot. *rolls eyes* Darn teachers)
*This post is also public, just in case anyone was wondering. :P