The Apocryphon of Remus - Short Story by Raymond Alexander Turco

 

The Apocryphon of Remus

Short Story

by Raymond Alexander Turco

 

            The revelation of the Monad given to Remus, known as Remo, has been recorded as divine proof of the sanctity of Jesus Christ, handed down by the upper powers in the year AD 2019, in the following way. May He be forever praised.

 

            I was troubled by my usual convulsions, spitting. foaming and delirious on my own little island of the soul, which drove me to seek shelter at the Hospital Saint-Lazare. The functionaries of the hospital conducted me in solemn requiem mass to the psychiatric ward.

            I languished for forty days and forty nights on my cot flowing with sweat. I imagined a host of players laughing in my fever dreams, Beelzebub and the hosts of Gog and Magog laughed at me in my fever dreams. I was roiled and raving, and no one tended to me. I was a lamb that bleated anxious for the slaughter. The orderlies were blind and very nearly faceless, with grey turbans and a second face was on the backs of their heads. The second faces mimed the opposite emotion of the first faces. The First Men were gone and I tried to push my will beyond the door of the night of forty days. But I faltered, and the wood outside the hospital became the wood of sin inside of me.

            At three in the afternoon of the forty-first day, a blazing cross blinded my vision and I knew the ordeal was over. The first ordeal of the men with two faces laughing at the door of the night was over. I removed a cloth that bound my head, and went for the first time outside of my room, able to stand, eager to walk. I thirsted for the apple of knowledge, still bewildered. My lower back began to ache.

            I walked into the day room and met a hearty banquet laid out upon the table that was surrounded by a host of ancient, mishappen figures. They were ugly to me, with horns and upturned noses. I perceived the superior one, a man who was a woman, a woman who was a man. It noted my presence.

            It said, “I am the Demiurgós, the maker of this and all realties, the Creator. There is no one above me. I am YHWH, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. My name is Kathleen. I am called Adonai. This is your afterlife, your forever. You will bow down to me or feel my windy breath.”

            The Demiurgós attacked and I parried. We struggled there in opposition for one revolution of the Earth. I was bewildered but I resisted. The Demiurgós spoke also inside my mind.

            “Remo, you will be made subservient at the end of days. You will know me in that time as your Mother and your Father.”

            I would not be defeated. The Demiurgós, that YHWH, would not be defeated. I told it that we must strike a deal.

            “Give me your spine and I will not molest you any longer. Give me your spinal cord and you will be free.” Kathleen grinned.

            At that point, two angels descended from on high, one male and one female.

            “Your spine contains a whole world, Remo. Let us end it.” said the female one.

            “Your spine contains a whole world, Remo. Let us complete the Apocalypse within you.” said the male.

            The male angel, that Archon, produced an ice pack. The female angel, that Archon, produced a heat pack.

            “Place the ice pack on your lumbar spine where it hurts the most and freeze that world.” The male angel implored.

            “Place the heat pack on your lumbar spine where it hurts the most and burn that world.” The female angel implored.

            Not knowing what to do, I took both packs and placed them on my lower spine, I felt that victory was mine and that the world housed in my back would come to know of me as its creator. Fire and ice together covered the world of my spine and blossomed into a victorious dawn. The people of that world shouted “Remo! Remo! We feel you; we hear you!” I could feel them inside of me cheering.

            YHWH gnashed its teeth. “You have swayed this Apocalypse in your favour. It is not the end. YHWH knows, YHWH is always the victor.”

            The angels bellowed a fearsome howl and departed. YHWH vanished from my sight. A False Prophet Remo laughed but scampered away in fear, cast into the lake of fire and sulphur. Night fell where once there was day. Where before I passed through the door of the night into clarity, now I passed from clarity into peace. I left behind YHWH, who was Samael, who was the Yaldabaoth, that fiery serpent and bush, and gave into the exhaustion of my earlier battle. I lost my senses on my cot.

           

            When I came to my senses, the world was different. It was the same hospital, but the darkness gave over to light, the requiem mass was the hallelujah. I walked among the shapes of the ward, some glorious, some mysterious. In the day room, there was an old woman where the Demiurgós had been. I approached apprehensively because I knew my past.

            “You do not know your past. You do not know your present.” the old woman smiled serenely. She knew my deepest thoughts. I saw that she was missing teeth and had a foul breath. “I am Kim. I come to you on behalf of the Monad, the Supreme Being of Light, of the Greatest Consciousness I am but an emissary.”

            “And YHWH?” I inquired.

            “YHWH is less than the Monad, formed in the image of the Monad, but impure. The Monad is a great light, the Absolute, Aiōn Teleos, the primal Father and Mother. YHWH believes it exists supremely and by itself, so it creates blindly the whole world and everyone in it. But it deceives all creation into worship. The Monad is in the Pleroma, YHWH is not in the Pleroma. YHWH can never enter the region of light that was begat by the Monad.”

            “I see. So all Christianity is a lie.”

            “You have attained peace and victory in defeating YHWH for a time. I am here to bring you to gnosis. You have met the true nature of YHWH at the dawn of your second life. Now I will show you the Christos. It is enough that you look in a mirror.”

            “I don’t understand.” I humbly bleated. The old woman Kim chuckled.

            “You are Christos come again. Born again. Your gnosis is to know that you are the Saviour. Your gnosis is to know that all of humanity is part divine.” The emissary of the Monad smiled, yet she became lost in thought.

            “The gates of Paradise are shut. There is no way in. The Monad allows no one more to enter. We must pray to the Monad, forget YHWH. Do not trouble yourself with the Demiurgós any longer. Though it is eternal, it can be subdued.”

            “So the true God has shut the gates of Heaven.” I remarked. “I am the Son, I must open it for the world.”

            “You speak Hebrew?”

            I confessed I did not know a word of Hebrew. The Monad’s emissary was troubled, after all I was a Sephard many generations ago. Kim’s face brightened.

            “It is no matter. The Monad understands your heart. YHWH only Hebrew, Greek, Latin. Let us pray.”

            We moved rhythmically and chanted syllables. Were they Hebrew syllables? I could not say. We chanted all around the ward and joined many to our cause. The orderlies were mystified. We proceeded. The emissary to the Monad kicked down the door to the night that was braced in ignorance and solitude.

            “The gates of Paradise are open once more but I can see you still doubt.” Kim asserted. “I can cure you of your convulsions. The powers of the Monad flow through me.”

            So saying, Kim placed one hand on my head and one on my lower back and filled me with warmness. The old woman teared up as if she could gaze within my soul and feel all the pains of my life’s history. She released her grip.

            “There is no convulsion. You are free. You are Remus Christos, can you not see it? I have restored you to power and you must minister to the world. I know the world of your spine has never doubted your divinity. We are all divine, but you are Christos.”

            I moved over to the window and spied a white dove outside. Kim smiled.

            “That dove is old Christos, Iesus. You are the new Christos. Hail!”

            After this knowledge, I was released from the hospital with a favourable outcome. I was confident that YHWH was subdued and would not trouble the world for a very long time. Perhaps there had even been a covenant between the Monad and YHWH. Who can say?

The sun was bright like I had never seen it. It was bright like the Monad, that Supreme Light of the Universe. Personal knowledge, that spring of gnosis, in me abounded.

 

Say that these words are not false and come from a true revelation. Praise the Christos, may He reign for ever and ever. Amen.

Raymond Alexander Turco is a poet, short story writer, and playwright born in Hackensack, NJ, USA. He writes poems in English and Italian and has a special affinity for European history, travel, surrealism, magical realism, and absurdism. The author of nine stageplays, he has published his poetry in the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, and with Bordighera Press.