The Fall Guy Must Die
In the seventh month we needed a name so we could pray his death to purge our world of pain and with his passing put the burden of our sorrow down. Our cancerous anger had swollen. He had detonated our goodness with makeshift explosives and left families to lift their valued bones from the rubble.
A name must be strong enough to loathe yet weak enough to overpower when the time is right. We would need to kill him one day. Some said we should name him Jeremiah or Joseph but that family tree toppled too close to home. Better a foreign shore.
A large book of deed and name written thousands of years before freed the decisionists of their duty to decide. They instead conducted a poll in the seventh month to ask the nation to choose from the book a name for the man we must hate and the nation answered Naboth. Easy to remember and a sound to drop simple from our lips.
In the eighth month we needed to fabricate a face to inspire our love of retribution. A face must be familiar enough to connect it to evil and distinct enough to avoid confusion and foul enough to provoke recognition into abhorrence. We needed a face to spread across the land. We placed dark eyes and determined mouth and leathery skin on a bearded man and announced that this is the face to hate. This face shall bone splinter our ideals into those we leave on the plate to pick our teeth and those we scrape into the sink.
In the ninth month Naboth emerged from the womb formed as we had wrought and he quick learned to spread chaos. Though we roared profane at his horror, we secret satisfied our sacred lust. For he gave us something to denounce. And declaim that there but for Naboth go our victories in life, and in the end his death shall set us free.
A name and face must creep clamber from cavern to cavern and when appear, appear only in silhouette to keep malevolence inscrutable and its threat murky lest too many submerged questions come up for air. The named face like a phantom must incite dread but like a peripheral apparition must be seen only sideways. To this we aspired.
In the tenth and eleventh months Naboth killed men and women and babies and goats. His bombs splattered innocence on maps. He proclaimed his acts revenge for crimes we had from heaven dropped on his children and we forged our replies in fiction and blood. A mirror is never wrong we said and what we saw for ourselves and what we saw for Naboth were perfect reflections of reality in a still summer pond. His expression blackened the sky. Ours did not.
In the second age, Naboth grew more devouring, his acts more audacious. Blood erupted from our ruptured tongues in our passionate rush to shout the words of hatred. We demanded our failings be cured with his death for he blighted every person with blameless flaws and we could not reach our potential. We could not cure ourselves until he was gone.
But as we struggled to keep our balance in a tilted world, our memory of distant terror began to slow fade. Our worries were closer to home. Naboth continued his campaign of carnage, yet like a fierce dog who cannot jump the junkyard fence, our fear of him dwindled.
A name must be strong enough loathe yet weak enough to overpower when the time is right. And for Naboth we had chosen wisely. And the time was right. We entered his house, took his now useless life, and fed the remains to the sea.
Newly reminded of his horror we danced and threw cocktails down our throats. The streets ignited in joy. Our lives would no longer be severed from success. But the wheel turned once or twice and in the seventh month we needed another name. And so we darkened our eyes with ash and searched our sacred book again. Just one more time. Then we would certain celebrate a final boot print on the endless path of our denial.
Well there you have it my good readers
Another happy tale from Dynamic Creed. Full of sunshine and apple pie that falls from the sky or was that last never week? At any rate, my tilted memory aside, many thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.
By the way, although this piece is recent, it did spring from an earlier short piece that had entered my book of thoughts about 10 years ago. Seek and you shall find.
Please drop a comment at the tone if you’re so inclined. Always great to hear from you and thanks again!
Victor David
This light-hearted tale knocked my out of my hammock! Thanks for this 10-years-in-the-making story, and for filling our inboxes with "sunshine and apple pie", reminding us that there is more to life than clouds or the main course. BTW, my path of denial usually leads to the panaderia. Thanks again, Victor!
A good feeling of H.P. Lovecraft in this one. Great job, Victor!