Morning Star

A Story by MurderBears

There is no other to feel the lactic fire that burns down my arms. There is no other to feel this hammering of heart against ribs, nor this uncontrollable spasm of limbs...

Morning Star

Zero meters:

I am not afraid.

As I adjust the straps across my shoulders the wind starts up again. It lashes everything into a whipping frenzy: my coattails, hair, the rickety non-functional streetlights and the road signs upon their rusted hinges. The cables trailing from my backpack hum and whine and try to drag me off my feet. It weighs seventy-eight kilograms but I am strong.

When my brothers and I became men, father said my sons, my sons, you are strong. Use that strength well and I asked him how, father, how. He said use it for good.

I have seventy-eight kilograms of electronics in a canvas harness that I finished putting together just this afternoon. It is a light. It is mine, mine, my light. I will set it in the sky and it will be like a star in the morning.

I stand before a tower of corrugated crisscrossing iron piles. It is useless because somebody built it a long time ago but everybody forgot what it was built for. Reaching two hundred and fifty meters into the sky, above the dark streets, above the dark buildings, and above the people so noisy yet so mute at the same time, it stands proud and haughty in its uselessness, in its magnificent wastefulness. I lay my hands upon it.

The chill of metal in subzero air burns through cloth, skin, muscle, and flesh, though my bones, all the way to the nerves. I haul myself up by the first handhold, dig the toes of my boots into footholds, and begin to climb. When I look up I see a road of shadowy twisting metal silhouettes before me that stretches beyond eyeshot. But I know I will make it to the top despite the shrieking winds that tear at my skin, my nerves, that seek to pluck me off the tower so that seventy-eight kilograms will pull back down to the streets and break me against the filthy concrete like the rest who have already been broken but do not know it.

When father said for good Michael asked him what he meant by that; Michael the dimmest of my brothers. When Michael asked him he replied that to use our strength for good is to use it for others. And I asked him. I asked him. I asked him why.

Thirty five meters:

I am not afraid.

But my muscles are already afire and my breathing irregular. I exhale and if it were not so dark I know that I would see great clouds of white streaming from my nose and mouth. Seeing what I can I plot my ascent from handhold to handhold and foothold to foothold, from one metal pile to its neighbor. The wind sets astir the cables trailing from my light and seventy-eight kilograms feel like three hundred on my back.

Long woven industrial lengths of copper and tin cased in rubber, they are as thick as my forearm, each a leech upon the city’s power grid. The wind howls and shrieks but it will not break them.

Father said man is an entity of duty, and all that is good in him lies in his capacity to give to those weaker than him. Do so, my sons, for you are strong.

I said then who would give to us, to me, father and he said it is just that the strong man be thus diminished for the sake of the common good and so you should set your selfish pride aside and serve, my son, and be as a lamb for the succor of your fellow man, like all your brothers were meant to be.

And when the weak are fed by the flesh and blood and toil of the strong they would be all that remained and then the common good will disintegrate in a puff of ineptitude, I said but then father struck me down and placed his heel on my neck.

Damnation lies down that line of thought, he said, and in my pain and tears and fear I wept and begged his forgiveness. My brothers wept as well for the peril I had put my soul in and Michael, next-dearest of all my father’s sons, asked to burn my sins from my flesh.

I was weak then but now I am strong, father. I am climbing this tower of an aborted dream with my light on my back. I will put it at the top and with the flip of a switch, I will take all of the city’s light and make it mine. Father said that all that is good in a man lies in his capacity to give to others. But I will take from those below me, those in the stinking streets, those who have broken themselves, the weak and the sick, because I am strong, because I am stronger than them, and because I can, father. Because I can take it I deserve to have it. That is justice. That is justice, father.

The wind, the cold, the pain, the strain of arms and neck and shoulders and back.

Eighty-nine meters:

I am not afraid.

I stand with the soles of my boots flat against a relatively horizontal pile, and lean against another that twists upwards. Standing thus, it is almost as if I am part of the tower, part of its wasteful extravagance and its rusted arrogance that it sheds upon whatever it looms over.

A reprieve. But not for long as I know that my destination is still far on high. Too much warmth will leak from my limbs if I rest any more and so I inhale raggedly, and thrust my hand upwards and…

And I begin to climb again.

One hundred and twenty-eight meters:

I am not afraid.

The straps around my chest and back cut into my flesh so that I bleed.

Dampness, flowing across the ribs. It slows. It congeals. In the frost that the sky is made up of. The warmth it brings is lost swiftly to the wind.

And then all is cold again.

Down. Seventy-eight kilograms try to pull me down. The cables bounce off the tower again and again. They sound…they sound like a bass beat underlying an insane soprano chorus of rushing air. The noise is deafening and I open my mouth to tell them to shut up.

But I am alone and

I have misjudged and I have slipped

Four nerveless fingers on metal. Four coils of bone and gristle lashing one hundred and seventy-three kilograms to the tower. Another voice joins the chorus and I realize it is my own as I hang by my left hand and scream.

Boot scrabble uselessly at empty air

The right hand unbidden, reaching outwards

The emptiness below is dark. It seems to reach up with black tendrils for me. I know there is nothing there. There is nothing there. There is nothing there, father, no matter what you say.

Nothing to scourge me and burn me and flay me forever should I fall now

There must be nothing

No. My right hand has found its mark and one steel toecap wins a perch after another. I am safe and I blink away the tears that have crystallized at the corner of my eyes. I breathe. I breathe. I breathe, alone.

Father said that every man is but a part of a greater whole and that he is thus indebted to it. But I am alone here so high up above everyone else. There is no other to feel the lactic fire that burns down my arms. There is no other to feel this hammering of heart against ribs, nor this uncontrollable spasm of limbs. Not this molten fury that roils within and which makes me want to scream, tear at myself, and tear at others. Not this set of scars I cannot see but which feel colder than the wind could ever be and that poisons everything I look at or think about.

I am alone, like everyone else is and will always be. But once upon a time I gave them everything I had because I was told to do so.

I will give them nothing now, father, because that is all I owe them, now and forever.

One hundred and ninety-four meters:

I am not afraid.

Father said that there is always something above every man and that he would do well to fear it, to love it, and to serve it; that there was someone above him as he was above us - my brothers and I �" and that we should be stalwart in our faith and service, for all that is good in a man lies in his capacity to give to others, especially to the one above him.

I cough. Shards of glass rake across my lungs. My brothers’ lives were full of fear. Raphael woke up screaming many times, in the middle of the night, in the dark, in the cold, saying over and over again that he was sorry, he was sorry, father I am sorry, sorry, sorry please forgive me sorry

No.

I bite down on my lip and blood fills my mouth. The pain tells me that I have not just calmed Raphael down; I am not going back to sleep yet. The next handhold.

He would listen only to me, the first and the eldest of our father’s sons. Whatever Michael or Gabriel tried to say to him only made him cry harder. In the dark, they would tell Raphael to pray and have faith in the providence and forgiveness of our father, no matter his sins, until I told them to be silent. To him I was the strongest and wisest amongst our brothers, but even he turned away from me on that day.

On that day father gave everything he had to Gabriel’s b*****d brat in whom he most saw himself. I did not want what he had to give, though as his faithful servant I had nothing for myself. But then he said my sons you are nothing if not servants of the glory embodied in this piece of myself. You will serve him as you did me.

My brothers, all in white, knelt. Michael and Gabriel - worthless fools - raised their voices in praise.

And I

I said no

I will not serve.

Father, I will not serve.

My breathing and heartbeats have drowned out the wind. I leave slick handprints of blood on the metal that I grasp, and they frost over moments after. The pain…is only pain, and though it makes me weep and try to utter curses I do not have the breath for, it will not stop me.

Up. Up to the sky.

I climb to the sky.

Two hundred and eleven meters:

I am not afraid.

On that day father said my son, you have sinned but I will forgive you if you would just repent.

Over the pounding and rasping of heart and throat I hear the tower’s own mournful tune as it sways under the hurtling air; a metallic cacophony. I hear in my mind the creak of sinew and muscle and bone as I pull myself over yet another pile.

Together we sing our useless defiance amidst the darkness.

I will place a light upon the tower. It will serve no purpose. It will not give the people below anything. No good will come from it, but I

I will place a light upon the tower.

I climb higher.

On that day father said my son, you have sinned

And I, what makes an act of sin a sin; he, an act is sinful if I call it a sin; I, so you make things sinful; he, no, my wisdom tells me if an act is sinful; I, but what if you are wrong; he, I am never wrong, my son; I, I don’t believe you, I don’t believe in you

That is the greatest sin of all, my son

There is no sin. I have never and will never sin, and though I be damned for it I will never repent, father

And, as if I had anything worth holding onto to begin with, for that he cast me down

Down

No. My hands are numb and trembling but their grip on the metal is sure. I am not falling now. I blink to clear my vision and to dash away the crystals that have gathered at the corners of my eyes.

Two hundred and forty-six meters:

I am not afraid.

In the darkness I can discern my destination �" the top of the tower, a seat in the winter sky, where there is no sun and where the moon cannot be seen behind the clouds of smog so thick that they reach even beyond here.

My body screams in pain with every movement. It protests at every micro-inch I ascend. The cables and tower hum and sing as the wind accelerates. Its shriek slices past heartbeats and breaths so that I am forced to hear it. My fingers start to uncoil from the metal they clutch and my light pulls me, bids me to take the plunge into the nothingness below.

But I will not fall this time. Is this all you can do, father? The wind, the cold, this pain and this fatigue? You have done worse before, father. Do not hold back now. Do not hold back now because I am still climbing.

Handful of metal after handful of metal brings me closer to the sky.

You have never held back before, when I was still the first amongst your sons, the humblest, most contrite, and most selfless of them all. Where is your fire and brimstone now? Where are Gabriel and Michael? Do they still fear me, your eldest and brightest, more than they fear you? You have lost a third of your sons because of me, because I have sent them to the hell they so fervently believed in with these hands.

These hands

Broken, bloody, and frostbitten, seize and pull and seize and pull

My eyes fill up with crystals and I blink them away as I reach out once more

and

You are weak, father. You have always been weak. You are old, useless, impotent, and senile.

Because I now clutch the ledge of the small platform the tower plateaus into and you have not stopped me.

Two hundred and fifty meters:

I am not afraid.

The light stands on a tripod I have unfolded from my backpack. I lash its legs to the top of the tower as the wind continues to steal the warmth and life from my body.

Can you see me now, father? I stand high above creation, looking down on the neon and fluorescence that glimmer dimly upwards through the smog back at me. I am making a strange sound and many moments pass before I recognize it as laughter, so shocking in its authenticity. It is sadistic and hateful and cruel and I drink it down to the last drop. Out here in the outer darkness where there are wails and shrieks and the gnashing of teeth, I have found true peace, father. There is nothing you can give me now that I will want.

I flip the switch and the cables hum again. They sing their sweet electric song. Through the smog I see the city lights blink out one by one. My wristwatch beeps. It is midnight. I blink and when I open my eyes:

A Morning Star