Under the brooding sky, a tepid swath of rain morosely crept across the tangled hills and dripped into the squalid cell blocks roughly lathered with cracked cement, pulling new stripes of colour onto the muck and rot that stuck to its grainy walls.
An old man sat alone in an underground hole, listening to the myriad of faint footfalls pit-pattering above his hidden confinement. Bound to a series of rope girdles that extended to the ceiling, he would have looked like day-old bait, if there was any light to see him by.
The old man kept his sunken eyes shut tight in the pitch-black darkness, and he was gently swaying with the ropes, the frayed end of his beard occasionally brushing against the edges of his ribcage.
He was feeling a series of powerful emotions, but he ignored them. He could have stood, walked or hummed muffled songs to pass the time, he mused.
But there was no point in doing so now. He was already at peace.
He swayed in the rhythm of a faraway tide, rising and ebbing through the motions of the waves.
According to their law, he is a condemned man of numerous sins, due to pay with the worst possible death. He grinned, his jaw raw from straining against the gag they've tied on him,
Deadened thuds sounded in the distance, and the grating of stone against stone above pierced the air, sending echoes reverberating through the bones in his body.
The darkness, once complete and tangible in this oppressive air, fled to the corners as a flickering beam from above threw prisms of light into the earthen prison and sparked the death of unquantifiable stars in his skull. The old man sat stunned for a moment, the illuminated outlines of the hole doubling before his eyes.
"Get up." called the guard. "It's time.
The old man rose unsteadily to his feet, and a sudden wave of vertigo washed over him.
He fixed his gaze on the small round opening in the ceiling, the waves in his head crashing repeatedly against the shore. Orange spots that flew from the torch danced before him as he shivered in response to the sudden draught that came from above.
The ropes tightened around him, and he gave an involuntary gasp of pain as he was jerked roughly out of the hole and onto wet earth. Raising his head, he could make out three vague shapes surrounding him in the dim corridor.
A voice came from beyond the wobbling circle of light, sounding slightly out of breath. "Quickly, quickly, I have an online meeting later."
"Wa Ê¿alaykumu s-salam, Dato Haziq. We’ve got big fish this time." responded the blurry face that kept the old man from falling down face-first.
"Yes. yes, that's very nice." the Datuk muttered, surveying his dank surroundings with distaste. "… Who?"
The first guard barely hid his exasperation. "You know, the one that has been giving the
leaders in Kedah much trouble for the past months. They say he cannot be … easily persuaded."
Intrigued, Dato Haziq tilted his head and looked up to peer into the old man's eyes. "How long has this uncle been gagged?" he asked.
The Datuk shifted his gaze back to the erect guards. "Baik. Boss would be pleased.”
A peal of thunder sounded in the distance. The Datuk grimaced. “But not with this awful drizzle. It'll ruin the connection for the meeting."
His grumbling died off into a low mutter.
The guards crowded in and tugged the old man to his feet, keeping a very sharp eye on him, their hands skimming the handles of their batons as though worried he might lash out and escape at any moment.
Like a pack of vultures warily circling prey which was supposed to be dead but still managed, surprisingly, to bite back time and again.
But the old man yielded to them without any sign of resistance, his head bowed and the dirty yellowish beard lay limply against the ropes that bound him, as though what was happening now hardly mattered to him. After all, he was already in another world, and the sound of the waves splashed louder in his ears.
It was dark, and the old man was looking at the bleak shore.
This was where he spent his youth, when he thought it was tough being a fisher of the sea.
That was the last time he would walk the familiar shores with Me, and we talked about Love.
As Kef stood on the shore, he saw stars encrusted still in the naked sky above the sea, scantily clad with wisps of cloud. His gaze traced the patterns of the Crab, the Lion, then the Hydra as they winked and sparkled in unison to the flowing currents above. Stray strands of hair whipped his face as the wind rose. Lo, the wet chill of the morning from the mountains blew through his bones and stiffened his member as it rushed toward the high tides.
Kef vigorously rubbed his hands in the humid cold.
Though his skin was icy, his blood was still flowing hot, stimulated by his troubled thoughts. He hadn't had uninterrupted sleep since his return to the village, but it wasn't the weather that prevented slumber. It was the realization of his helplessness that did.
As the years fell away, he began to see more of the terrors of love than of the terrors of hate. Even now, his heart aches and pulses with certainty that they will see reason. They should know deep in their bones, the obvious Truth he had longed for years to share. Why shouldn’t they? This Truth is greater than any catch that can be snagged in any net.
They laughed at him.
It wasn't Truth that they embraced. The flesh abhors Truth. Man, he muttered, man is incapable of being content with love. Much less so to give others love. Only Allah is able.
And yet, the fool that he was, he had chosen to take this road of Love.
And so Kef suffered, and will continue to suffer well, under the clouded vision of those who hurt him. Understandably, they hurt what they hate. Understandably, they hate what they fear, and they fear what they do not know.
Understandably, people had asked why they should give love to those who maim, kill, and destroy. People ask why they should ever believe in something they would never truly understand. Kef asks. Kef asks too.
The wind grew softer, and Kef, swallowing the bitter aftertaste of sleep (and something else), finally sat. He had heard the whisper.
Hate the sin, not the sinner.
Love the sinner, Kef.
Do you Love, Kef? I ask.
The loose grains crunched as his toes curled involuntarily into the sand.
Love slaps like a wet fish, he said. His eyes did not reflect the jest.
Do you Love me, Kef? I ask.
He is silent. It is difficult for him to find words strong enough for the sensation he felt. His flesh knows nothing of that sensation, except that it had lodged in him a deep longing for its return.
Do you Love Me, Kef? I ask.
He shivered. It was as if the curtains of reality had shifted, ever so slightly in a sudden wind.
Thud.
The boggy ground squelched. The old man sucked in a rattle of breath as he was shoved through a tall patch of thick grass on his knees.
Wobbling streams of light from the guards briefly illuminated the garish blackness of the wet woods before focusing on him. The tattered pink shirt they forced on him had darkened with wetness into a deep crimson.
Dimly, he could feel the rain trickling, silky, silvery, in steady streams down the crown of his head into his beard, and between the gaps of his toes into the eutrophic lake before him.
The old man licked his teeth and spits a bubble of blood drawn from biting his tongue during the unexpected fall. The pain sears, expanding outwards in ever-widening rings. It stings.
The drumming in his chest hit a crescendo despite his attempts to regain peace.
It hurts. He feels pain too. Pain, in his lust for life.
Pain has been smouldering within ever since he awoke from ignorance to find himself caged in a tainted vessel of flesh. Though this revelation helped him find innate purpose, the acute awareness of his flaws stuck on him like limpets. His soul never did get any lighter during the entire conquest for Truth.
Petrichor thickened the forest air as the pit-pattering of the rain increased in volume, slapping against the leaves on the forest floor and churning the soil beneath into mud.
"Jaga payung, I'm getting wet!" hissed Dato Haziq. The guards grunted in response and did so, while unhooking their batons.
Polished hardwood gleamed slick in the rain, with chips and indents crowding at the rounded tips from past use.
A silence followed, as the rain roared thunderous white noise.
Then the tension broke. Unseen nods were exchanged, and then came the whirr and whistle of wood.
Kef closed his eyes as the blows landed.
The crashing of the waves had gradually stilled, and ebbed into a low tide.
Faraway in the distance, the soft crack of a shell could be heard. The celestial egg cracked, its cosmic yolk spilling and dribbling into the vast blue, tinging the sea with streams of yellow as the sky broke into dawn.
Do you Love Me, Kef? I ask.
Kef blinks. The fledgeling rays of light slowly but surely warms his skin as he stands stock still, stunned by the rise of the sun. Without warning, he could feel the trigger of the quiet avalanche within, tripping closer, tipping over, then, crashing and thundering and rolling into a soundless quaking.
He screamed inwardly, as the bubbling water trapped in ice cracks within spurs to boiling point, and staccatos into a series of snaps, ripping at the seams. Here the revelation pours, roars, quickening in pace down the heart-chamber steps, the flush of heat imploding, spurting, and melting down coarse snow from fissure to fissure before overwhelming his heart.
It is too much, impossibly much, Kef screams as the almost painful warmth engulfs him and spreads through every fibre of his being.
Could he Love, even after failing so many times? Did he dare to Love?
Kef runs out of breath. This is the end, he thinks. There is nothing left to hide. This is what he is, a broken man cowering in cowardice, littering the sea still, with the remainder of his bits and pieces.
Oh, he thought he knew what Love was. Love. He thought he knew what it meant.
The truth was, Kef didn't.
The truth is, Kef still doesn't.
At least, not in the way I do.
Regardless, from that day onwards, Kef stayed with Me, and I in him. My questions did not condemn him, they put him together again. My Pain washed away his shame. Kef knew that his life wasn't his own anymore.
The old man thrashed involuntarily as his lungs rejected the rushing water.
His heart ached terribly, almost bursting with the overflowing emotion.
"Forgive them, forgive them, forgive them" he pleaded as the life force cascaded from his lips.
I thought love had to be blind. I thought you couldn’t give reasons for God. I thought belief was something you simply had or you didn’t. Criticism without an alternative is empty. If someone wants to say your faith is blind or based on ignorance, ask them in turn what they believe in. Ask them if they live by a better alternative for making sense of the world. At which point, you can put the alternatives side-by-side and see which beliefs make more sense.
Love. He thought he knew what it meant. As the years fell away, he began to see more of the terrors of love than of the terrors of hate.
Silence breaks, the snow caps shiver
Feel the trigger of the quiet avalanche within,
tripping closer,
tipping over,
Then
crashing and thundering and rolling into a soundless quaking.
A reverberating, a soundless shaking.
Hear! Hear here bubbling water trapped in ice, cracks, spurred to boiling point,
staccato-ing into a series of snaps and rips at the seams.
Here the revelation pours, roars,
quickening in pace down the heart-chamber steps,
the flush of heat imploding, spurting, melting down coarse snow
from fissure to fissure before bringing
the ice mountains down.
All the diverse of elements in the end, go back to the source and are absorbed in it as all waters are finally absorbed in the ocean…A lump of salt may be Produced by separating it from the water of the ocean. But when it is dropped into the ocean it becomes one with the ocean and cannot be separated again.
The hour has come to part with this body composed of flesh and blood. may I know the body to be in permanent and illusionary.
Witch of Endor: King Saul summons the spirit of prophet Samuel. After receiving no reply from God. And the Philistines were marching on the City of Gilboa, he fresked out and asked for help.
A talisman was used to invoke the dead from the netherworld.
touch me, I am not a ghost, ghosts don't have bodies like I do.
Deut 18: 9-14 banning calling of spirits,
According to the Gnostic Gospels Jesus appeared to his followers of the spirit to prove that the soul survive death, What do you either to selective editing of the gospels or amiss translation of the rich metaphorical language of the Gnostic us both the central teaching became later realised simple or attempted to clarify that I did a Jesus had risen physically from two and in so doing made a distinction between a three form and our spirit.
1. Building a character – name, age, physical description, favourite things/colour/food/music, childhood, relationship with parents, obsessions, secrets, joys, love/hate, goals, fears, how they dress, music, money.
the old man: Kef Yohanan, otherwise healthy 53 year old mixed male with low blood pressure. He enjoys guitar music and has a habit of eating fish he catches himself. Wears a simple suit after ditching his fisherman's garb. Spent his youth on the east coast fishing with his family until his uncle took him into the family furniture business near Kuala Kubu Bahru, which provided him a means to be financially independent. He studies passionately and was sponsored by an investor to study an online course majoring in theology and a subdivision of philosophy. Kef spends his 30s spreading the truth about corrupt leaders and undermines them, while he himself leads a group of youths to feed the poor and teach his discovery of Truth/enlightenment. He meets his wife during his travels throughout the peninsular but had no children due to her past physical trauma which rendered her unable to bear offspring. His dream is to free the enslaved minds of those around him, and to educate those in poverty. During his younger days, he was frequently seen to argue with various religious leaders.
Guards: private sector security guards, employed for undercover work, secret police
Datuk: Haziq, pudgy man in his early 40s, successful cement foundry owner, likes to indulge in pretty items. Manages troublesome apostates
Kef's Mentor: wise man, ageless, clean shaven, twinkling eyes that go dark, speaks in riddles sometimes. Graduated from UM.
2. Setting - you have to have setting in the short story, figure this out, and write a short paragraph.
Jungle camp nestled in a ring of hills with an abandoned base of shoddy concrete and cement, near the borders of Perlis and Satun. Hotspot for illegal imprisonment, executions and concentration cells for "reeducation". Multiple dugout prisons for short-term containment before subject termination. No discernible latrines, no local resource of sustenance. Shores of churned earth, shallow graves previously dug by *redacted*. Flora and fauna consistent with rural Malaysian tropics. No visible road leading into enclosure, probable that an entry on foot is the only option to somewhat navigate through the initial dense ring of vegetation. Part-time guards on patrol, 6 within enclosure and 2 outside enclosure.
Episode: Seaside on the east coast.
Under the brooding sky, a tepid swath of rain morosely crept across the hills and dripped into the squalid dungeons of Tullianum Prison, pulling new stripes of colour onto the muck and rot that stuck to its sandy walls.
An old man sat alone in an underground cell, listening to the myriad of faint footfalls pit-pattering above. Bound to a series of rope girdles that extended to the ceiling, he would have looked like day old bait, if there was any light to see him by.
The old man kept his sunken eyes shut tight in the pitch-black darkness, and he was gently swaying with the ropes, the frayed end of his beard occasionally brushing against the bare edges of his ribcage. He was feeling a series of powerful emotions, and he ignored them.
He could have stood, walked or sang songs to pass the time, he mused.
But there was no point in doing so now. He was already at peace.
According to the emperor's law, he is a condemned man of numerous sins, due to pay with the worst possible death.
Deadened thuds sounded in the distance, and the grating of stone against stone above pierced the air, sending echoes reverberating through the bones in his body.
The darkness, once complete and tangible in this oppressive air, fled to the corners as a flickering torch from above threw prisms of light into the cave and sparked the death of unquantifiable stars in his skull.
The old man sat stunned for a moment, the illuminated outlines of the cave doubling before his eyes.
"Get up." called the guard. "It's time."
The old man rose unsteadily to his feet, and a sudden wave of vertigo washed over him. He fixed his gaze on the small round opening gouged out of the ceiling. Orange spots that flew from the torch danced before him as he shivered to the sudden draught that came from above.
The ropes tightened around him, and he gave an involuntary gasp of pain as he was roughly jerked out of the hole onto wet cobbled earth. He raised his head to make out six vague shapes surrounding him in the dim corridor.
"Landica! Horrible morning, isn't it?" spoke a voice beyond the radius of light, sounding slightly out of breath.
“Ave, Prefect Cinaedus. We’ve got Cephas.” declared the blurry face that kept the old man from falling down face-first.
"Yes. yes, that's nice." muttered the prefect as he surveyed the dank surroundings in distaste. "...Who?"
The head guard barely hid his exasperation. "You know, the biggest rioter of that lunatic Christus, and probably the one who stole the body right from under Pilatus’s very nose."
The prefect shifted his gaze back to the erect guards. "Good. Nero would be pleased.”
A peal of thunder clapped in a distance.
The prefect grimaced. “Not with this awful drizzle though. It'll positively ruin his gala opening." he grumbled.
The guards crowded in and tugged the old man to his feet, keeping a very sharp eye on him, their hands skimming the edges of their sword-hilts, as though worried he might lash out and escape at any moment. They looked like a pack of vultures warily circling the prey which was supposed to be dead but surprisingly bit back at them for a multitude of times.
But the old man remained slack and yielded to them without any sign of resistance, his head bowed and the dirty yellowish beard lay limply against the ropes that bound him, as though what was happening now hardly mattered to him. After all, he was already in another world.
“I have been astonished that men could die martyrs
for their religion--
I have shuddered at it,
I shudder no more.
I could be martyred for my religion.
Love is my religion
and I could die for that.
I could die for you.
My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet.”
―
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