Epitimia. Part III. The Logos
Theological/psychological short horror story with transgressive and historical elements. Part 3/5
I make an inventory of the food I have left. I am down to my last Snickers bar, which I bought back at the airport and forgot about until now. Sitting at the cave entrance, I inspect its squished and mangled packaging. My dirty fingers covered with streaks of crusted blood hold the wrapper as I try to work it open. Pink fingernails with dark-grey halos crawl around rustling plastic. An exposed coral of an emptied out nail bed salted by the fine sandy dust flickers as I twist the wrapper with my thumb.
Frustrated, I bite the edge and rip the packaging with a wide movement of my entire head. The nougat mixed with the shards of half-molten chocolate floats in the caramel resin, and I shove my last candy in my mouth. The stinging pain of a broken tooth pierces my mouth sending a pinching shiver across my exhausted body.
There is supposed to be a yelp, but my throat is a cracked shell of coarseness, so only an exhale, barely audible, gets out.
“Had enough?”
I chew on the right side, avoiding the aching left side as the sweet river flows through the rows of my teeth, across the broken lips and seep out in a slow thin line, ‘What do you want me to do?’
“Diaspora tou logou.”
I swallow a bite and it drops down, scratching my sore throat, ‘I don’t speak the language, Polly.’
“I thought you were supposed to be Greek, no?”
‘Get to the point before I rip out another nail.’
“Diaspora tou logou. Dispersal of the Word.”
‘Getting out - that’s how you get out? If I talk about you?’
“I don’t care what you talk about. Just talk.”
‘And what happens then?’
“I get out.”
I stand up and point to the nearest cliff, towering two hundred meters away, ‘Tell me what happens then?’
“I get out. And then people listen. They observe my Logos.”
‘What does that mean?’
“You know what it means. You have been observing my Logos in the past week.”
‘What is your Logos?’
A deep laugh echoes in my head, tearing my eardrums.
My stomach churns and I drop to my knees, trying to maintain balance and avoid throwing up. Setting my broken tooth and inflamed throat on fire, a large sip of cold water focuses my vision as I blink away my obsessive thoughts. An expanding cascade of pain and suffering fills my wet and moldy cave. I steady myself, sag down and lay on the ground. A glimpse of a brochure I had stuffed in my backpack sparkles with a resonant white and blue in a reflected diffused light.
‘Baldwin, the sacking of Constantinople - that was your Logos?’
“I do not care much for the Polis. You know the answer. You should get going. Once you spread my word, you’ll get help.”
The history is known. Western crusaders armies called upon as friends descended on the City with an animalistic heathen fury. Through the majestic halls of ancient temples trudged pack animals loaded with gold, stripped from icons and altars. Manure smeared across intricate mosaics, the blood of slain defenders trailing through the portal to the outside - to the port. The fire, the great fire, and the great sorrow.
This is what I carry. This is the type of demon that awaits tired travelers under cypress trees. I try to calm down the tremor in my cold hands, buried in the dirt as it clings to spots of smudged caramel.
What do I do now?
Avoiding thinking about a specific idea requires straining of whatever willpower I have left. There is something I can’t articulate because…
“Because of what?” says Polly.
‘Nothing.’
“Then say it.”
‘You have to promise to let me go afterwards. I yield. Pain I can do, sleep deprivation - no. I yield.’
There is an EKO gas station two miles away. I stand up and reach out to grab my backpack. I lift it by the shoulder strap and hoist it on my back. Staggering down the trail at a snail's pace with my boots soaked in lead, I grit my teeth unleashing the throbbing ache to outhurt the agony of muscles pushed past the breaking point.
Descending back to the village I’ve gone through a week prior.
Carrying the spirit hostile to humanity.
Step. Step. Misstep - I land on my palm and it bends under an unnatural angle and a firework of pain shoots up. Polly must have felt it - but he doesn’t care anymore. Through my eyes he watches the path, waiting for the village to emerge, ready to infest their minds.
Step. Step. The roofs peeking above the sun-burnt green of thornbushes.
I step on the asphalt and carry on, across the parking lot into the shop. Along the shelves with merchandise look for people. Here he is - an old man in a white cotton shirt and brown bridges, tanned into noble bronze. I grin, and take my phone out.
‘Hey Polly, you goatfuck, watch this,’ I say in my mind and take my phone out.
I type ‘I need immediate help. Please call medics. Don’t talk to me under no circumstances,’ and walk to the old man.
I raise the screen to his face.
I’ve tricked the demon.
Cracking laughter wipes my grin off.
‘What?’ I think, observing my phone shaking in front of an old man’s face, trying to look close at my words.
“You’ve spread my Logos. If others understand you, the Logos is being spread. Tell me, was harming yourself worth it?”
I stagger back, as my eyes bulge out and my breath seizes in an arrested wheezing cough along the carousel of bright packaging - red, yellow, blue, as fluorescent lighting illuminates clumps of dirt embedded into ripped skin encased in dried red. I guarded my plan for five days gathering as much as I could from Polly - only to fail, tricked by the manifestation of malevolence.
“I’ll go easy on you, Peter. I might let you live after all. I…”
“Den katalavaino Anglika. Ti theleis apo mena?” says the old man, shrugging his shoulders and inching away from me. His gaze wanders up and down measuring me and his hands form fists.
What did he say? I don’t speak Greek. I don’t…
Wait.
He doesn’t speak English. He stands still, he doesn’t grab his head, he stands and watches me - and I hear the frustrated growl coming from within my mind, yet not from me.
“Neare, eisai kala?” asks the old man, and I back away without acknowledging his words. Holding my breath, I avoid nodding or shaking my head, hiding my eyes in the merchandise.
I grab my wallet, drop a hundred euro bill on the floor and grab food off the shelves - candies, bags of chips, anything I can walk away with. I back out into the afternoon heat and dash up into the mountains, dropping bags of Skittles on my way.
In my cave I arrange my haul and lay on the ground and roll, laughing as my torn voice echoes under the stone arches of my chambers, “You goatfuck you tried to trick me,” I yell, drenched in sweat as my unkempt hair sticks to my face, obscuring my sight.
“Let’s see how you survive on the snacks you stole.”
“They are paid for. Fuck off,” unable to contain my joy, I laugh through the torment of my sore throat and grab a Ka-Bar knife from my backpack, “And if you don’t let me sleep, I’ll…”
Polly says, “You will serve my Logos.”
“Not today, shit face.”
I spend the rest of my day cleaning my cave. Outsmarting the demon might not have worked, but as long as I can stay away from the people, Polly will be contained within me. There is nobody to spread Logos to in these cliffs.
The evening comes and I gaze at the stars. Cold and distant shards of a greater light serve as a background for the human history unfolding below. I came to the land of my ancestors to find my peace, and what I’ve found cannot be made peace with. Under the speckled dome, I shall become a hermit until I can’t think of a better solution.
Polly has no idea what I am.
I go back to my cave and spread atop my bedroll. Viscous languor envelops me, and I drift into a nightmare. Unable to scream or move and fully aware, I observe the absolute anger engulfing the city paved by bricks. Chios. Smyrna, raped into becoming Izmir. Cities left in ashes, tens of thousands slaughtered.
I open my mouth but I cannot scream.
In front of my eyes, families perish, old and young, men and women, those who fight and those who yield as soldiers with faces sinister and contorted walk the innocent streets beneath a gaping sky, from which pour the rain of immeasurable sorrow and peals of cruel laughter come to humanity’s misfortune from the roots of green cypress trees.
I stand with my mouth open, and the muscles in my jaw seize with a creeping pain.
The heavens overturns, and tears turn into a downpour, and through a flash of lightning upon the black ash, the wrath elemental is washed into the soil, poisoning the earth as neither salt nor lewisite ever could. From a cypress tree, indifferent and tall, the glimpse of the face of insanity flashes.
My throat vibrates and the scream tears through my lucid dream and I wake up screaming, “This is madness, stop it, I said stop it!” I wave my arms pushing the images away, thrashing my arms as if to pull the intrusive scenes out of my head and find myself outside my cave, “Stop it, you foul fuck, stop it,” I scream, covering my ears with my palms. In the morning glow, I see a group of people in the distance. One of them pulls the cell phone out and starts typing, throwing his gaze at me.
I don’t think they heard me.
Did they?
“No, they did not,” said Polly, “You wish to defy me by staying silent, and yet, you are bound to lose control. Submit to me, and you shall get to be a part of the festivities. Submit, before your tongue betrays you again.”
Among the people in the distance I see the old man from the store. He could’ve sat this one out ignoring a troubled foreigner. Should’ve done that, old man. Should’ve done that.
“This is what compassion gets you,” the demonic voice in my head says, “Submit or suffer.”
I dash inside the cave. It will be only a matter of time before I slip again, before my tongue spits out the poisonous Logos, and the spirit of murder springs out of Pandora's skull box once again.
Smyrna and Chios. Repeating in perpetuity.
My gaze falls upon the black plastic sheath of the Ka-Bar knife. To the accompaniment of Polly’s yelling, I swing it out with my right hand and stick my tongue out as far as I can and grab it with the fingers of my left hand, tasting salty dirt.
“You won’t dare.”
“Wak-kh me,” I say and slice the blade across my tongue, leaving deep cuts on my bottom lip. Scolding pain exceeding imagination follows as the warm metallic brine fills my mouth. The cut off flesh dangles inside on a string of skin and I rip it out, sending a gush of blood on the rocks. On the ground I wail, pressing my tongue to my forehead as the screams inside my head intensify. In the corner of my eye I see the group staring at me with their eyes full of pure terror.
Holding a former piece of me in my hand, I think to Polly, ‘If my tongue causes me to stumble…”