Beaming
Only in your loneliest hours can you get a sense of your true moral sensibilities. I must tell you a story. I stood once, ten feet above a cliff edge. And in my hand was a knife. I could see further than the wings of pangu could beat given a thousand chances. I saw no one but a slight shadow. But from where I stood I was confident that it could not see me. I took the knife and I plugged it into my gut, I took my heart from its chords, shook its brains until its three pennies of sensibility fell out. I summoned the dragon in the cave of my chest and let it breathe down the blade as I struck my heart into tiny slices. I knew not why I performed this heinous act but that it was a possibility, and that my fingers felt an itch. I watched my mortality wash away down my body. It dripped and then dropped of the cliff edge, down deep below. The droplets struck a liquid mirror: I thought it was the sky above. And as if on que, the shadow descended from far away. He saw not what I did, but the evidence was now before him. He shook his head three times and took the knife from me. He said three times: I know what this means. But only explained twice his demeanour. He said: I am without heart and I have murdered. You do not know what it is to take another's life.
Later in the day, I sat in the thick jungle. My monkey brought me nuggets of gold from the days past. He said: The jungle has whispered. You are forsaken. Not even the shade will touch you. Tomorrow you should burn to death. And it was the next day at noon that I have given up on the hope that the trees would not croon; as thick as the jungle was, the canopy refused to protect me, from the vicious sun above, its beams drilling deep into my skull. I screamed: Mr. Monkey, you can have your gold! Teach me a way to repent to this shade. The monkey whispered from afar. You must die twice and then murder. And in that instant my heart broke. I picked up the pieces, and heard the monkey call: Well done, now just two more lives to take. My legs gave out and I hit the ground. Two fingers from my face, in the shade of a leaf, there walked an ant. Monkey dropped down in that instant and said: here is where your head is landed, I suppose now you'll just be dead. He lapped up the ant and down descended shade. My skin burned and since then it forever will.
I attend now, three pools of blood. Each in the next world, the previous one I loved. I wince and burn each day as I bathe, each bath of blood hotter than the other. All that separates them is beams of sun.
