"The Bulwark's Shadow" - A Novel in Progress via Steemit (Part I, Chapter 6)
I'm posting up the chapters of this uncompleted book as I hope the Steemit community might offer up its criticism (which would force me to finish it, honestly). Started in 2008, this was my first foray into novel writing and was my undergraduate thesis required to graduate. The story is about an executioner in the not-too-distant future. Executioners are highly trained individuals with extensive educations built to help them execute their prisoners in the exact same manner that the prisoner's victims died. This is called the law of retaliation or lex talionis; you may know it better as "eye for an eye."
Because I was also getting my degree in philosophy, I wanted to explore the ethics involved. While I feel I'm a better writer now and could certainly expand most of this book, I also really enjoy criticism as I'm usually too close to the work to see what's working and what's not (though in this case, there's plenty that I feel is not working). So please...feel free to criticize the work if you'd like, but be constructive about it. Simply saying "this part isn't good" doesn't tell me much; don't hesitate to tell me why it's not good or offer up possible alternatives to make it better.
Thanks in advance!
Previous Sections/Chapters:
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter One
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Two
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Three
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Four
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Four
The church smelled of incense and wood varnish, an oaky musk that always stuck with me hours after I left. The thick velvet curtains hung stoically between the dimly lit sconces lining the rows of pews as an altar boy cleaned around the pulpit. I took a seat in the first pew and benedictioned myself. I’m not religious, but I know better than to assume a higher power doesn’t exist. Playing it safe with a half-wrong belief trumps
outright atheism every time.
I had known Father Josef since my parents’ funeral. He oversaw the religious aspect of it and helped to be a kind of spiritual father figure for awhile until I succumbed to my grief and then later on, my studies. Once I gave myself over to the books, he and I slid apart, but I’ve been trying to make it over here more often. Maybe it’s the adversarial part of me, but sometimes I like to discuss things with him just to see the hackles on the back of his neck raise up. Not in a mean way, but…I don’t know. He’s good people, almost like a close older brother. He’s also very well connected, but guards that fact rather closely. He was never one to politicize the church by taking sides. “Let the politicians publicly fight over which doctrine they believe in,” he told me once. “I know who my God is, I don’t need to prove it to anyone but Him.”
The light swishing of slacks caught my attention as I turned to see him sit in the pew behind me. I rested my arm along the back of my own and gave him a smile. He looked thinner than the last time we had gotten together. “Father,” I nodded.
“Brein,” he replied, returning the smile as he offered his hand. The tiny crucifix around his neck caught the candlelight in a subtle way and gave his chest an undeniable aura. “It’s been a few months, how are you? I know the House of God is not your first choice, but you should come in more often just to say hello to your Creator. And at the very least, to me,” he chuckled, rubbing his hand along the fabric of the pew.
“I’m good, as usual, but I’m in a weird spot and I need the mind of someone much smarter than me in regards to an ethical self-debate I’m having.”
Father Josef looked at me and his eyes seemed to shrink down to beads. It was what I called his ‘God mode.’ “Do tell, Brein. Perhaps, Lord willing, I’ll be able to give you some insight. Let’s go to my office though and see what we can’t figure out,” he said, standing to escort me to the offices.
We walked around the worship area to a door just behind the pulpit that led to a thin hallway of offices smattered with oil paintings of Christ surrounded by children in fields, depictions of the crucifixion, and even more that looked like Jesus’ high school yearbook picture. The smell of incense was replaced by the neutral scent of new car. The carpet was thin and uncomfortable to tread on as we walked through the eerily silent hall. “How are things other than your self-debate, Brein?”
I shrugged behind his back. “Okay, I suppose. Nothing too exciting to report and work is still just that,” I said, pulling the file out of my jacket. “Except for this.” He stopped at his office door and turned around.
“Is this what’s on your mind tonight?”
I nodded as he grabbed the file and opened the door, letting me enter first. He shut the door behind him and laid the file on the desk as he pulled two rocks glasses and a bottle from one of the drawers. “Normally you know I don’t like going into details about your work.”
“And I normally don’t mind keeping the details from you, but this one has me vexed and the fact that it bothers me, bothers me.” He poured two fingers of scotch in both glasses and handed me one, then opened the file and began reading. “I thought you guys weren’t allowed to drink?”
He looked up at me and smiled. “The word ‘excess’ is where the loophole exists. A drink every now and again isn’t a problem. Jesus turned water into wine, so I don’t think he’d take issue with a bit of scotch.”
I smiled as my fingers tapped out a silent rhythm on the glass and let my eyes roam the walls of the office. His degrees from seminary school were framed in a dark wood and hung on the wall behind him in a regal way. Matching gilded crosses hung on either side of them and the half bookshelf below was covered in framed pictures of family outings and vacations. His desk was nearly spotless and perfectly ordinary. A banker’s lamp spilled light over an open text that had been marked up by notes and questions in the margins. It always seemed like a nice place to work. I took a sip of the scotch and felt it sour the inside of my mouth briefly before swallowing it. The initial burn was the nicest part of scotch. The taste, however, was a little lacking.
“There are a lot of things missing from this file, aren’t there?” Father Josef said, breaking the silence.
“I think so, yeah. I have to call the courthouse in the morning to make sure, but for all the news coverage this guy got, something about it just rubs me the wrong way.”
Twenty minutes passed and he closed the file, laying it on the desk. He leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling and twirled the drink in his hand, sloshing the liquor up to the rim, but never over it. “So,” he started slowly, “your question then, is…”
“How do you kill an innocent man and keep a clean conscience?” I felt his sigh from across the desk. It wasn’t loud, but I saw his chest heave slow and big. He sipped his scotch, grimaced, and turned to face me.
“As a man of God, I never liked your profession, but I try not to vilify you for it because I know your character. ‘For the Lord's sake accept the authority of every human institution, whether of the emperor as supreme, or of governors, as sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.’ That’s from First Peter. Just because I don’t like your choice of vocation doesn’t mean God looks down on you for it. You do the will of the people through the acts of the government, ergo, technically you’re fine. I won’t try to lay a lot of scripture on you, but I’m just coming at you from different angles.”
“I understand,” I said, nodding in agreement. “But if the government is wrong in deciding who should die, does that make me wrong as well? If this guy is actually guilty, I have no qualms about killing him, but if he’s innocent…” I trailed off.
“Morality can be ambiguous, Brein. It has to be if we question it all the time. No one living person has come up with the right answer, but no one is completely wrong either. If you follow your orders, you do what the government tells you to do and that’s your job. If the person you dispose of happens to be innocent, it won’t be easy for you to do, but it wasn’t your decision to consider him guilty either. The man used all four of his appeals, Brein. If at that point, the courts can’t find any holes in the prosecution, then you have to accept that decision. On top of that, if the man is truly innocent and you still kill him, God will have mercy on him in the spiritual realm. I’d tell you to pray for a better answer, but we both know how that will end up,” he said. He tried to smile and failed.
“That seems really lazy to me,” I shot back. “Especially if I can taste the guy’s innocence tickling at the back of my brain. I know you don’t want to hear about it, but suppose I’ve got the guy on the siphoning gurney and he’s feeling the pain that’s really meant for someone else? I can’t, in good faith or conscience, take that man’s life, regardless of what my government says. I don’t think I could do it even if your God asked me to.” Father’s Josef’s lips tighten in frustration. “I’m sorry, that was out of line, Father.”
I saw that his eyes had misted a bit when he looked back at me. “It’s okay, Brein. You may not believe in ‘my’ God, but you believe in something and for the moment that’ll have to do. The fact that you’re here also means something.”
I stood up, feeling ashamed. “I should probably get out of your hair. You’ve probably got a sermon to write or something anyway.” He stood up slowly and walked around his desk, grabbing my hand and pulling me into a brotherly embrace.
“Brein, my door is always open. When you find out more about this, come talk to me and we’ll discuss it further. Should you wish, of course,” he said, releasing his grip on my hand and clapping both of my arms.
“I will Father, thank you. Thank you for the drink. I’m sorry about the…thing.” Backpedaling was never a strong point of mine. He opened the door for me, a sincere smile on his face.
“I’ll be here when you need more counsel, Brein. Don’t ever forget that.”
I waved over my shoulder to him as I walked down the hall, now dimly lit from the late hour. The cleaning ladies must’ve done it, not realizing we were still in the offices. I could hear the faint roar of an industrial sized vacuum cleaner somewhere on the other side of the church as I made my way out to the main annex, pushing open the large wooden doors and stepping out into the night again.
Spring had returned to the park during the time I visited with Father Josef and it felt right. The night had cooled considerably, but the colored foliage was nice to see on the way home. The quiet covering the streets turned my footsteps into dueling metronomes and kept my meditations focused as I swiped my keycard across the lock to my building. The elevator was still not working properly (an antique no one had bothered to replace simply for the ‘antique’ attachment to it), so I took the stairs up to the eleventh floor, thinking the echoes of my footfalls seemed louder than appropriate.
Ten minutes later, I entered my apartment and stood in front of the door waiting for my eyes to adjust to the lack of lighting. The lights work, but this is more calming for me. I poured myself a bourbon after opening up the curtains that hid the large window in my living room. I like the sound of an ice cube dropped from just the right height into a glass. The right plink sets the tone for the kind of drunk you’re going to be that night.
Halfway through my second drink and still looking out the window simply staring at the city skyline, I decided to call her. It was late, but she might be up.
“…Congratulations, you’ve reached me. Sorta. Leave a message. I might return the call if you’re lucky. (giggle)” Guess I was leaving a message.
“Hey stranger, haven’t talked to you in awhile and I guess I was just, uh…just checking up on you I suppose. You know the number.” Even the most practiced message can make someone sound stupid. I was just drunk enough to go over the impromptu message in my head and figured it was good enough. It would have to be, not much I could do about it now. She hadn’t returned my last several phone calls, but the message on the machine had changed, so I’m not sure what that means. I polished off the rest of my drink, licked my lips and went to bed, lying awake for another two hours before finally letting the liquor overcome the heavy thoughts.
More Chapters:
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Seven
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Eight
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Nine
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Ten
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Eleven
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Twelve
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Thirteen
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Fourteen
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Fifteen
The Bulwark's Shadow - Part I, Chapter Sixteen
good work!
thank you! glad you like it!