When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it - Lewis B. Smedes
The wind whipped up in the loch and the whitecaps appeared on the growing waves of dark water. The old man wrapped himself tighter in the blanket and held fast to the fishing pole. Despite the storm approaching he hoped for just one more bite. He was shivering harder as a small child went out to the dock to retrieve the old man from the bad weather before it struck.
"Grampa come back in, the wind is too cold for you", the little girl in the blue dress pulled at the hand of the old man, nudging him until he moved towards the shore and the fire in the hearth of the small keep up on the hill. As the door opened an unnatural blast of wind pushed the two into the room and just as abruptly the door slammed behind them.
The two stood dumb as the tall Lotharian stood up from the rocking chair by the fire. Most of the Lotharians stayed to their own lands but occasionally desperados struck the smaller villages. As the boots echoed off the stone floor, the old man peered around the darkened room. The only other sound was the whimpering of the old woman tied up in the corner near the hearth, the broad hand of dark-skinned marauder pulling tightly on the woman's grey hair.
The soft voice of the leader was not unusual in his request, "Tell me old man, have you seen that flying ship again? They say you used to call to it and it came." The red eyes glittered as the sweet words of the dark soul floated to the old man's one good ear. "You wouldn't want to have anything happen to your wife while we go and find out….would we?"
As a punctuation point to the leader's words, the proselyte yanked the hair of the old woman, the yelp of pain echoing in the small room. The little girl in the blue dress whimpered as she hung tightly onto her grandfather's leg. A slow resounding lick across the lips in the darkened corner led to a snarl from the leader. "We don't eat the younglings fool! Not while that monster is still around we'd be hunted down for sure!"
Grabbing the old man by the shoulders the child is pried off the leg and tossed in the corner near the grandmother. Crying loudly the child clutched her grandmother and they both screamed in unison as the old man was pushed out into the driving rain.
~~~
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others is immortal.- Albert Pike
She sat at the diner counter, watching the customers entering from the large brown door, watching them from the mirror above the pie tray and the huge coffee urns. Most came in, ordered food, ate then left, but a few of them sat in the booths far away from the door. Most of those ordered large bowls of ice cream and large mugs of ice water almost in an effort to freeze their inner souls.
She passed the time playing chess against some of the customers and testing her new powers of movement. The pieces would travel the chessboard on their own as she used to her mind to move them.
Funny it felt like she just got here but it had been about 25 years she figured roughly. The clock hands turned the sun rose and fell but still she was here. It was her hell to spend the rest of eternity in a diner with a short order cook named Rico and a waitress named Maxine.
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The dark heavy clouds were full of rain that soaked the two figures at the end of the dock. Angry at the lack of cooperation, the old man was pushed to his knees on the wooden dock. The tall raider drew a sword and speared the man in the back just as the lightning struck the water turning it into a dark indigo glow. The old man's body was shoved into the cold waters and the leader ran back to the mounts, grabbed the reins and flung himself on the saddle and rode off, leaving the two henchmen in the hovel, unaware of the their leader's desertion.
The unnatural sounds coming from the loch as he shoved the body off the dock were enough to scare even the hardiest Lotharian and he didn't want to hang around to find out what made them. He had heard the stories of the dismembered bodies in the glen after taking on the humans and he wasn't taking his chances.
What the two accomplices found in the morning was enough to cure them from ever straying from their village again. The leader's body was pushed into a nearby tree with his chest sliced open as if in an effort to perform a sloppy autopsy. Only this was with the leader's own sword. The blood that had dried on the forehead was very readable.
You will all stand in the sun and melt into the wind unless you stay out of my domain.
They never did find the body of the old man, but near the dock a jasmine bush grew and flowered for the next few summers and the Lotharians never set foot in the area again.
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The diner rattled as if someone had grabbed the building itself and shook it violently for minute. While attempting to hold on for dear life, most of the people were spilled across the shiny linoleum floor. The people in the darkened booths remained sitting, rather effortlessly despite the shaking.
As the building calmed down the redhead was still sitting at the counter, hanging onto her apple pie, managing not to spill one crumb again.
"They got another one didn't they Maxine?" she smirked as Maxine made her way over to the whiteboard and put down another red mark in the column. The waitress turned around from the board as the old man entered the diner looking somewhat lost.
"Another customer eh Maxine?" she nodded to herself as she used the force more easily now and the sugar container slide across the shiny table to her hand, "Park yourself old man…care for a cup of coffee?"
The man was wet but as he walked across to the counter his clothes magically dried out, astounded at the sound of common spoken to him, "I think I need that right now….tell me kind lady where am I?"
She spread her arms wide and with a broad smile proclaimed "Welcome to our little corner of the universe Purgatory for some, Hell for others, and for those that did things to upset the higher planes, a place to contemplate your belly button for a few eons. Plus they make good pie"
Rico sang out from the kitchen, "Don't help the newbie you were one of them once as well sweetheart, save-the-universe, damn-yourself-in-the-effort types." A plate of eggs and ham slide out for a customer and Rico continued, "It's that space between your ears that needs adjustin. Simple fact babe…you gotta learn how to use that noggin of yurs for more than putting that cloak hood up over yur neck and moving the chess pieces around to entertain the customers."
The redhead at the counter turned to the cloak across the back of the chair next to her, smoothing the dark cloth, her hazel eyes still saddened as she remembered how she was gifted the cloak "Rico it was a gift from someone who should just stay in the shadows. He was a nice old man who did nothing to no one."
The old man was slightly bewildered at the give and take of the conversation but picked up the fork as Maxine slide a piece of lemon meringue pie over to the now-seated old man. "Here, I'll put it on your tab."
Time past in the diner, people came in and out, the ones in the darkened booths left eventually and soon it was only Rico, Maxine, the newcomer and the redhead. She was finishing up the last of a piece of cherry pie, when the old man came back from looking out the window for the upteenth time since he got there.
"Why are the windows frosted over young lady?"
She caught Maxine's smile then took a long slow breath; "This is going to take some time old man sit down."
Looking up to Maxine, "Got any tea left?" The waitress went to fetch cups all around as she started to explain, "Here is the diner."
Using the force the sugar container slide across the counter startling the old man slightly. "Here, see?" as she poured the sugar in a circle in the middle of the counter.
"Where you came from is here" pouring another smaller circle on one side and continuing on, "There is god, note with a small g dear." She wrote out the word god at the top of the big circle.
"Trust me there are different names for it as well. Afterworld, arcadia, atmosphere, azure, beyond, bliss, Canaan, dreamland, ecstasy, Elysium, empyrean, enchantment, eternal home, eternal rest, eternity, fairyland, felicity, firmament, glory, great unknown, happiness, harmony, heights, hereafter, immortality, kingdom, kingdom come, life everlasting, next world, nirvana, paradise, the pearly gates, promised land, rapture, Shangri-La, sky, the blue, transport, upstairs, utopia, wonderland, Zion… you pick"
"And here is the opposite of it" As she poured out the sugar she focused and now brown sugar drained out into a small circle on the opposite side again. Abaddon, abyss, affliction, agony, anguish, blue blazes, bottomless pit, difficulty, emergency, everlasting fire, grave, Hades, hell-fire, hot place, infernal regions, inferno, limbo, lower world, martyrdom, misery, nether world, nightmare, ordeal, pandemonium, perdition, pit, suffering, torment, trial, underworld and my favorite underverse. I read about that from some graphic novel."
"To each they seem as simple route, you start here at your origin, you go to the diner and you leave and end up with god or hell. Big problem here, everyone defines hell differently. Remember that guy a couple of years ago Maxine, sworn he was going to heaven with 9 vessel virgins as a reward for blowing up those innocents, boy did he have a surprise waiting for him when he opened the exit door. Think he is still out walking in that sand storm."
Rico piped up "Yup poor boy tries to get in every so often, the door won't let him back in."
"It all depends on what you gave up to get here. Most give up family, friends, their existence as a whole but some take more than they are allotted. They keep them here for awhile until they decide to go through the door…that is if the door will allow them through to their next level. Then there are those folks in the back booths." The redhead pointed out the small booths with the definite stench of burnt flesh coming off the benches.
"Nasty folks, never pay their bills, but they always come just before the scum come in. This I suppose is a sign that you ain't one of them. So tell me old man, what is your story, why did the gods send you here?"
As the old man started telling his life story, in another part of infinity the Pinnacle class Hunter's lights started to flicker on. Its slumber beneath the dark waters had been speculated to be the death knell of the technomage contained within the dark ship.
Long thought to be dead and gone by the Lotharians the ship routed the precious battery life to the engines. As the sun rose over the cold waters, the glow of the ship turned the water to shade of indigo blue, frightening all the residents in the depths of the loch to scatter away from the metal hull.
Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again.
~to be continued~
