Prompt 57--Barophobia
Aug. 25th, 2007 02:38 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
dedra.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
tamingthemuseTitle: Untitled
Fandom: None
Pairing: None
Warnings: May be considered sacreligious by some. If you are offended by religious themes, avoid this fic.
Summary: Suspended between heaven and earth, he thought of many things except his sacrifice.
A/N: As ever, who knows where this came from? What I had started for this prompt stalled in the middle of it and this, like Athena, sprang fully formed from my head much as she did from her father Zeus. I'm just surprised that it gave me time enough to type it up.
He looked down upon the crowd at his feet. The wailing women, the gambling soldiers, the fearful group of men gathered to one side who tried desperately to hide their tears. He saw the one that had denied him and forgave him with a smile, one that was unseen but felt nonetheless.
He couldn’t imagine why he was here. All the begging in the world hadn’t saved him from this; he knew that the Father wouldn’t listen, somehow, but he had to make the effort, no matter how futile. He didn’t want to die or save these people any longer. All he wanted was to go home.
With a little effort, he could make gravity lighter and take the unbelievable burden of his weight off the delicate bones of his wrists and ankles. If his fear of gravity wasn’t so great, he could levitate himself and the two beside him to the ground; he knew that any lack of concentration on his part would send them crashing to the ground and probably break what bones were left intact, crushing them to pulp and crippling them all for life.
Half of his mind was on the agony of dying; the other was strangely distant, thinking of other things.
He looked down at the soldiers at his feet and peered into their future, seeking some solace at the complete turnaround their lives would take for their part in this travesty. One would win the cloak and it would haunt him; he would feel the lash each time it was worn, biting into his back in ghostly reality as the material draped him with fine woven splendor.
Eventually he would see his error and find the light; for now, the specter of abuse would be enough to haunt him for his part in the play between heaven and hell that was being performed for the amusement of them both.
He was no more the Lamb of God than any other man that had been consecrated to his position. It was just chance, the alignment of prophecy and thousands of years of prayers from a people seeking deliverance from suppression. They didn’t recognize him as the one they sought because of his background; the scandal of his birth still followed him, even after thirty-three years of penance on the part of his mother.
He looked down at her and watched silent, pain-filled tears trickle down her youthful face. Forty-nine years old and not a wrinkle in sight; it amazed him how young she looked. Were it not for the lanolin she rubbed into her skin every night, he imagined she would look much older and less like a schoolgirl.
He called to one of the faithful friends that had trailed him from the first. “John, please—take care of my mother. She is all I have.”
John nodded and went to his mother’s side, pulling her into his arms and cradling her weeping form. One less thing to worry about.
Mary was another story. She was a strong woman with an intense sense of self-preservation and a need to survive. She would be fine without him, no matter what the future brought.
He looked up at the darkening sky, holding back tears. It was so hard to be sensitive, the feelings of the crowd flooding his heart and head with conflicting desires and needs that it made him ache for them. Some of them truly wanted him to die, the priests on the hillside for example. He had ridiculed them and made them fools and they believed that this was his just punishment for treating them with less than the awe they thought they deserved.
It was a pity that they would lose their place in the scheme of things. It was the way of the world—change was inevitable and this was a moment of change.
Throwing his head back, he yelled into the still air. “Father, I give you back the soul that you bestowed on me. Take it now as my sacrifice for those who would believe.”
With the last thought in his mind, before the blackness overtook his eyes and he knew that the spirit was being rifted from his body, he thought hard on the overlarge curtain in the Temple. He imagined it rending down the center and exposing the Holy of Holies to all who would look on its glory. After all, it had been fashioned by men—shouldn’t the descendents of those who crafted it be allowed to see its splendor?
There was a crack of lightning that was quickly followed by a ripple of thunder that literally moved the air and knocked it from the lungs of those still standing there, watching the last throes of his death. He wanted to smile but didn’t have the strength to as they stood gasping for breath, their hands pressed to their chests and their mouths gaping like the fish at the market. Their eyes bugged out with the effort to breathe and completed the last picture of them in his mind.
His time was close, he could feel it. He glanced at those who loved him for who he was, returning their feelings to them in a burst of power that could not be denied. Their peace washed over him and let him breathe freely for a moment as they dried tears that seemed to have been never-ending, smiles touching lightly upon their mouths as they looked on him as they never had before.
He looked at those who hated him and reviled him and forgave them as well, sending them a moment of respite from their evil feelings and letting the remorse wash over them. It moved some to tears and others were confused; he couldn’t expect much from them, since they neither believed nor knew him as his friends and beloved ones did.
A gasp of surprise fell unbidden from his lips as one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, shoving it deep enough to pass through the mental blocks that kept the pain at bay. Tears finally fell and they were of pure blood, his life’s blood that he had been told would save the world. From what fate he didn’t know—he was trusting in someone greater than him for that information, perhaps in his next existence.
With one last expanse of energy, one last powerful explosion of the gifts that had been bestowed on him from somewhere, he searched for those who had always needed him most—the crippled, the ill, the blind and deaf, the dying and the nearly dead. He sent them his last parting gift, the last touch of the master that would make them whole and intact once again, no longer cast out by a society that insisted on perfection for inclusion.
He let his head drop to his chest, exhausted. It was time to let go now. He was expended from the inside out and it was time to let it all go.
He saw the lightning behind closed eyes and gave himself up to his God. Suspended between heaven and hell, defying gravity by neither flying nor falling, he let himself go to a fate that not even he could predict.
Fandom: None
Pairing: None
Warnings: May be considered sacreligious by some. If you are offended by religious themes, avoid this fic.
Summary: Suspended between heaven and earth, he thought of many things except his sacrifice.
A/N: As ever, who knows where this came from? What I had started for this prompt stalled in the middle of it and this, like Athena, sprang fully formed from my head much as she did from her father Zeus. I'm just surprised that it gave me time enough to type it up.
He looked down upon the crowd at his feet. The wailing women, the gambling soldiers, the fearful group of men gathered to one side who tried desperately to hide their tears. He saw the one that had denied him and forgave him with a smile, one that was unseen but felt nonetheless.
He couldn’t imagine why he was here. All the begging in the world hadn’t saved him from this; he knew that the Father wouldn’t listen, somehow, but he had to make the effort, no matter how futile. He didn’t want to die or save these people any longer. All he wanted was to go home.
With a little effort, he could make gravity lighter and take the unbelievable burden of his weight off the delicate bones of his wrists and ankles. If his fear of gravity wasn’t so great, he could levitate himself and the two beside him to the ground; he knew that any lack of concentration on his part would send them crashing to the ground and probably break what bones were left intact, crushing them to pulp and crippling them all for life.
Half of his mind was on the agony of dying; the other was strangely distant, thinking of other things.
He looked down at the soldiers at his feet and peered into their future, seeking some solace at the complete turnaround their lives would take for their part in this travesty. One would win the cloak and it would haunt him; he would feel the lash each time it was worn, biting into his back in ghostly reality as the material draped him with fine woven splendor.
Eventually he would see his error and find the light; for now, the specter of abuse would be enough to haunt him for his part in the play between heaven and hell that was being performed for the amusement of them both.
He was no more the Lamb of God than any other man that had been consecrated to his position. It was just chance, the alignment of prophecy and thousands of years of prayers from a people seeking deliverance from suppression. They didn’t recognize him as the one they sought because of his background; the scandal of his birth still followed him, even after thirty-three years of penance on the part of his mother.
He looked down at her and watched silent, pain-filled tears trickle down her youthful face. Forty-nine years old and not a wrinkle in sight; it amazed him how young she looked. Were it not for the lanolin she rubbed into her skin every night, he imagined she would look much older and less like a schoolgirl.
He called to one of the faithful friends that had trailed him from the first. “John, please—take care of my mother. She is all I have.”
John nodded and went to his mother’s side, pulling her into his arms and cradling her weeping form. One less thing to worry about.
Mary was another story. She was a strong woman with an intense sense of self-preservation and a need to survive. She would be fine without him, no matter what the future brought.
He looked up at the darkening sky, holding back tears. It was so hard to be sensitive, the feelings of the crowd flooding his heart and head with conflicting desires and needs that it made him ache for them. Some of them truly wanted him to die, the priests on the hillside for example. He had ridiculed them and made them fools and they believed that this was his just punishment for treating them with less than the awe they thought they deserved.
It was a pity that they would lose their place in the scheme of things. It was the way of the world—change was inevitable and this was a moment of change.
Throwing his head back, he yelled into the still air. “Father, I give you back the soul that you bestowed on me. Take it now as my sacrifice for those who would believe.”
With the last thought in his mind, before the blackness overtook his eyes and he knew that the spirit was being rifted from his body, he thought hard on the overlarge curtain in the Temple. He imagined it rending down the center and exposing the Holy of Holies to all who would look on its glory. After all, it had been fashioned by men—shouldn’t the descendents of those who crafted it be allowed to see its splendor?
There was a crack of lightning that was quickly followed by a ripple of thunder that literally moved the air and knocked it from the lungs of those still standing there, watching the last throes of his death. He wanted to smile but didn’t have the strength to as they stood gasping for breath, their hands pressed to their chests and their mouths gaping like the fish at the market. Their eyes bugged out with the effort to breathe and completed the last picture of them in his mind.
His time was close, he could feel it. He glanced at those who loved him for who he was, returning their feelings to them in a burst of power that could not be denied. Their peace washed over him and let him breathe freely for a moment as they dried tears that seemed to have been never-ending, smiles touching lightly upon their mouths as they looked on him as they never had before.
He looked at those who hated him and reviled him and forgave them as well, sending them a moment of respite from their evil feelings and letting the remorse wash over them. It moved some to tears and others were confused; he couldn’t expect much from them, since they neither believed nor knew him as his friends and beloved ones did.
A gasp of surprise fell unbidden from his lips as one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, shoving it deep enough to pass through the mental blocks that kept the pain at bay. Tears finally fell and they were of pure blood, his life’s blood that he had been told would save the world. From what fate he didn’t know—he was trusting in someone greater than him for that information, perhaps in his next existence.
With one last expanse of energy, one last powerful explosion of the gifts that had been bestowed on him from somewhere, he searched for those who had always needed him most—the crippled, the ill, the blind and deaf, the dying and the nearly dead. He sent them his last parting gift, the last touch of the master that would make them whole and intact once again, no longer cast out by a society that insisted on perfection for inclusion.
He let his head drop to his chest, exhausted. It was time to let go now. He was expended from the inside out and it was time to let it all go.
He saw the lightning behind closed eyes and gave himself up to his God. Suspended between heaven and hell, defying gravity by neither flying nor falling, he let himself go to a fate that not even he could predict.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-25 12:00 pm (UTC)defying gravity by neither flying nor falling beautiful
really enjoyed this, nicely dealing with his blended nature
no subject
Date: 2007-08-26 05:02 am (UTC)