Murderer, they cried

By Don Harold

Yes, Murderer, they cried at me, on my perch. not Hero.. not Savior.... naught but Murderer... and what of you? will you too send me into damnation? I lie here on my deathbed and dictate these solemn, solemn sins to you through my most trusted friend and scribe. He wishes not to be named and I'm sure it is for good, not ill. Do not fret, he will write things in the best and most comprehensible way possible, he is a master of words.

For now, we will talk of my past and my feats in a younger life, when I had little reason to fear and little done wrong. Please, as you are reading, do not think of me as a madman, but as one of your own kin, someone normal. someone.. like you, my darling reader.

As a child I was never really a bad person, growing up in Jerusalem, I followed the teachings of god as well as I could, for no one is perfect and can follow the teachings of god without folly. So often the eyes of the church would be passed over us as children, seeking out new apprentices with the church. Often the children were made to sit quietly inside the monastery and stare, unseeingly at the statues of the gods until one was spoken to. Theses children were Messiahs. While the upper class portion of the city loved these messiahs, they brought them food all the time and asked for the children to join a kings council and other such things. Consequently, half the city hated them, for as more children blossomed into the Messiac fold, more were shunned and some even killed for such disappointments. I tell you this for reference, in case you are not aware of what punishment awaited us if we failed in our duty to please the lands, and put for a Messiah, a chosen one. God was not with us.

As a child, I was named Azrael, my mother died giving birth to me, maybe even that was a sign of my damnation, how I , of all people, should be cast out and damned for my own existence. In the end, it doesn’t have much significance, my mother probably couldn’t have saved me anyways. this part has to do with my father. He was a large, and barbaric individual. He rarely bathed and even when his children were awake, he had whores and prostitutes at the house, always he had a woman, he made money by repairing the churches. But of course, what was there to repair? The crusades had not yet begun and not many people back then had the gall to desecrate a church, even non believers, of which feared not only god, but the wrath of their death to a great extent, despite their apparent disregard for God.

But back to my father. He did have a name. but in my lifetime, I have long since forgotten it, his name bearing no semblance to the man himself who if I should name him, I should name him Diablo. He beat all of his children and many were killed when he tired of them. I was a lucky one, I guess. He beat me regularly yes, and he drank often.

"You damned child, where do you belong?" he would scream. Sometimes I would have some untapped source of courage to scream back and cry, running off into the city, as he cast his wineglass or plate at me, in a sure hope it would harm me. In the city I meant the person who would have the biggest influence on who I would come to be. It was a dark cold night and I had stolen Diablo’s' worst tunic to keep warm. I used old alleyways and made my way all the way to the church where I was taught. The Priest there let me in with a sigh.

"Hello.......Azrael, has your father gone drunk, once again, child?" I felt a sigh of remorse escape the parched lips of Father Yaumuhn. He did not like my father, and I could imagine he was slowly growing tired of me, as well. I nodded feebly and showed him the welts that had been raised on my face neck and arms. He offered me something to eat before sending me into a small chamber where sick or cursed people usually stayed. Normally, no one went in unless they were cursed. But since my earlier years, I was in there more often than anything else, I thrived inside this dying place. It was corrupt, the marble was cracked and you could smell the madness. But it was a haven to me. I slept there on cleaned blankets and white sheets made of a silk we could not afford at home, nor could we manage to wash our sheets any where near as often as they did. The red sea was where we did that most of the time, because father often went there once a month, usually to drink.

The next morning it was cloudy and it felt almost like it might rain, were everyone patient enough to just stand still for a moment and wait for it. But no one seemed to want the clouds to come down. In fact, most people seemed to be less patient than usual. My father, for instance, seemed in more of a hurry that morning. He had gotten up early to find me in my forsaken haven. He was quick to shove Father Yaumuhn out of the doorway and he quickly hit me with one of his massive hands across the face. A wake up call that none ever enjoyed and few ever wanted to receive. I was barely coming around when I heard his voice yelling at me and the priest.

"how could you let him run away from his home? who gave you the right to do that to anyone? I was up all nigh-"

" Do not mock me, sir You know that you did the wrong thing when you struck him the first time….let alone all of the following beatings” Yaumuhn muttered “… you are a fool to ignore what your own sons birth signified.”

Darkness took me, in my sleepy form as I listened to the argument from my borrowed bed. The last words that reached my were these-

“I don’t care if he is the goddamn messiah or not!”