VICTORIOUS
PEN
Short Story
by Duane
L. Herrmann
“Have you killed them all?”
“Yes, Your Excellency, the entire
village, except for a few girls which we’ll sell.”
“Good,” the Commander answered.
“There's a good market for them. They probably won’t last long. Did you spare
any babies or boys?”
“No, Excellency. Orders were to kill
them all, and that was done.”
“Good. Good. Tomorrow we move on to the
next village. Our work here is done.”
“Yes, Your Excellency,” Efrat said, as
he backed away and left the room.
Later that day, as Efrat sat on the
ground cleaning his equipment and packing up to move on, some scraps of paper
tumbled past in the wind. One lodged against his leg. As he reached down to
brush it away, some words on it caught his attention.
"Verily, We shall render Thee victorious by Thyself and by Thy Pen.”
‘Whoever wrote that, didn’t win here,’
he thought to himself, amused, as he crumpled the paper and threw it away.
Riding in the truck in the convoy to
the next village, the image of an old fashioned quill pen came to his mind. It
was held by a hand rapidly writing on a piece of paper. The piece of paper
began to expand, flow out, around, and cover the globe of the Earth. As it did
so, Efrat felt a greater peace and contentment he had ever known.
“It seems like we’ve been trying to
kill these infidels for a long, long time,” the man beside him remarked
interrupting the vision. “I’ve been in service over two decades and this is all
we’ve done.”
“There seem to be plenty of them,”
Efrat agreed idly as they bounced along.
“They come out from under the rocks,”
the man snorted in disgust.
‘If the killing has been going on for
so long,’ Efrat began to wonder. ‘Why haven’t they all been killed. They can’t
reproduce that quickly can they?’ But he kept silent.
“These heretics have to be stopped,”
the man continued. “They are spreading corruption on Earth.”
“How so?” Efrat asked.
“For one thing, they never marry. The
fathers have sex with their daughters and the mothers, their sons. They’re
disgusting!” He spat. “We’ll get them cleared out though!”
“You know this for a fact?”
“Why else would their women walk around
as if they were equal to men?” The connection seemed obvious to him, but Efrat
didn’t see it.
Words came into his mind. “Not until the world of women becomes equal
to the world of men in the acquisition of virtues and perfections, can success
and prosperity be attained as they ought to be.” But he couldn’t place the
source. Where had he seen that, he wondered. ‘My mother would like that,’ he
thought. Then he realized, these people had no legal status in the country.
Their marriages were not legal. He was startled by this realization.
Two days later, after slaughtering the
inhabitants of the next village, though some had tried to flee, none had
resisted, which Efrat thought odd, he found himself in a room in a home there
surrounded by bits of paper with writing on them. He idly read:
“O
SON OF SPIRIT! Noble have I created thee, yet thou hast abased thyself. Rise
then unto that for which thou wast created,” were the words on one.
“Man,
the noblest and most perfect of all created things,” were on another.
‘I’m doing noble work, cleansing the
Earth of these scum,’ Efrat thought, satisfied that he was so engaged. ‘They
have no respect for God or Holy Tradition.’ He glanced up at some elegant
calligraphy on the wall, which began, “O
God.” Then continued:
“Every
time I lift up mine eyes unto Thy heaven, I call to mind Thy highness and Thy
loftiness, and Thine incomparable glory and greatness; and every time I turn my
gaze to Thine earth, I am made to recognize the evidences of Thy power and the
tokens of Thy bounty. And when I behold the sea, I find that it speaketh to me
of Thy majesty, and of the potency of Thy might, and of Thy sovereignty and Thy
grandeur. And at whatever time I contemplate the mountains, I am led to
discover the ensigns of Thy victory and the standards of Thine omnipotence.”
Efrat felt as if he had been punched in
the gut. These people were holy! They saw evidence of the Divine in everything!
These words were holy and more reflective of how he felt about God than any
others he’d heard in sermons. And, to find them here! The coincidence took his
breath away!
He now noticed a smaller framed piece
of more writing on the wall, compact, in smaller lettering. He had to walk up
close to read it.
“Be
generous in prosperity, and thankful in adversity. Be worthy of the trust of
thy neighbor, and look upon him with a bright and friendly face. Be a treasure
to the poor, an admonisher to the rich, an answerer of the cry of the needy, a
preserver of the sanctity of thy pledge. Be fair in thy judgment, and guarded
in thy speech. Be unjust to no man, and show all meekness to all men. Be as a
lamp unto them that walk in darkness, a joy to the sorrowful, a sea for the
thirsty, a haven for the distressed, an upholder and defender of the victim of
oppression. Let integrity and uprightness distinguish all thine acts. Be a home
for the stranger, a balm to the suffering, a tower of strength for the
fugitive. Be eyes to the blind, and a guiding light unto the feet of the
erring. Be an ornament to the countenance of truth, a crown to the brow of
fidelity, a pillar of the temple of righteousness, a breath of life to the body
of mankind, an ensign of the hosts of justice, a luminary above the horizon of
virtue, a dew to the soil of the human heart, an ark on the ocean of knowledge,
a sun in the heaven of bounty, a gem on the diadem of wisdom, a shining light
in the firmament of thy generation, a fruit upon the tree of humility.”
‘Is that how they try to live?’ Efrat
wondered. His mind reeled. If everyone tried to live this way, the country
would be paradise. The entire world would be Paradise! It can’t be true! Yet,
these were the heretics! He stumbled outside to catch his breath.
Two days later, he burst through the
door into a home in another target village. A man inside rose to greet him with
a smile.
“How can you smile and greet me when
I’ve come to kill you?” Efrat demanded.
“You will be sending me to Paradise,
where I will join my Beloved. How can I object?” The man asked.
Efrat cut off his head.
A little girl standing behind the man
screamed as she watched her father’s headless body fall to the floor. Efram
quickly slit her throat.
He then noticed an old woman sitting in
a corner mouthing words in a low voice. Efrat quickly strode over and severed
her head.
“Praised
be God,” were the last words he heard her say.
“Daddy!” A very little boy called as he
charged into the room. Efrat impaled him. As he did so, his eyes fell upon
framed calligraphy on the wall in front of him.
“The
children of men are under the mercy of the Great God.” Efrat gasped.
Another next to it stated: “My object is none other than the betterment
of the world and the tranquility of its peoples. The well-being of mankind, its
peace and security, are unattainable unless and until its unity is firmly
established.”
And another, in much larger letters: “Ye are the stars of the heaven of
understanding, the breeze that stirreth at the break of day, the soft-flowing
waters upon which must depend the very life of all men.”
Around the room, he now noticed
photographs of people: people of all colors and ethnic backgrounds, their
clothing and scenery behind them were very different. Each photograph showed a
diverse group of people. All were smiling. In every photo was a person or two
who resembled those he had just killed. In many cases, those were either
holding or standing behind children, who looked like a mix of themselves and
the others in the photo. ‘Are these all family?” he wondered. ‘How could that
be?’ The photos were obviously from all around the world!
He was still pondering that when he
saw, yet another saying: “Amity and
rectitude of conduct, rather than dissension and mischief, are the marks of
true faith.”
This was directly opposite what Efrat
had been taught by his religious teachers. His mind was now reeling. The
contradictions between what he had been taught, which had lead to his
enlistment in this holy war and his subsequent actions, were so diametrically
opposed to the words and evidence he now saw all around him. The words of peace
contrasted vividly with the bodies and blood littering the room. As he stumbled
to the door to escape, his eyes saw the words in large letters above the door.
“My
home is the home of peace.”
He burst into tears and ran from the
house. He knew he must not let anyone see him and wildly looked for a corner
where he could hide. When he found that shelter, he could only huddle into
himself and sobbed bitterly. He saw that his whole life had been a lie. He knew
that no matter how much his people would try to stop these people, their
efforts would be in vain. No wonder they had not all been killed in two decades
of slaughter. Then, he dimly remembered that, actually, the slaughter had been
going on for over a century. Any group of people should be wiped out in that
time, but no, the killing had not succeeded.
The wind blew a poster into the corner
where he huddled. Efrat caught the words on it.
“Sow
not, O people, the seeds of dissension amongst men, and contend not with your
neighbor. Be patient under all conditions, and place your whole trust and
confidence in God. Aid ye your Lord with the sword of wisdom and of utterance.
This indeed well becometh the station of man. To depart from it would be
unworthy of God, the Sovereign Lord of all, the Glorified. The people, however,
have been led astray, and are truly of the heedless.”
He hung his head in shame. How could he
live with himself? How could he continue? How could he go on doing this? How
could he keep on killing these people? His mind and heart were in turmoil. He
sat the poster against the wall beside him. As he turned his head, a scrap of
paper blew into his face. Efrat grabbed it to throw it away, then read the
words on it.
“Arise
and, armed with the power of faith, shatter to pieces the gods of your vain
imaginings, the sowers of dissension amongst you.”
He knew, now, what he had to do. He had
to be careful though, very careful. He now knew why the killing had not
succeeded in the past century and more. These Words were worth dying for. They
were true and holy words. HE was now willing to die for them. These Words will
not die. The Pen WAS victorious. He was now one of THEM!
Duane L. Herrmann, internationally published, award-winning poet and historian, has work in print and on-line: Midwest Quarterly, Little Balkans Review, Flint Hills Review, Manifest West, Inscape, Gonzo Press, Tiny Seed Literary Journal, over one hundred other publications, over sixty anthologies, plus a sci fi novel. With branches of his family here before the revolution, and a Native branch even longer, he writes from, these perspectives.
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