'To Kill a Child' - a short story

The prophet lies in the desert as the air cools his shaven head and naked form in the twilight as he dreams of a mind that speaks to him though his subconscious. The mind within his mind says:

The symbiosis of cycles and prophets is divinity. Great ages pass into legend and with them men choose this realm to lay mind to the matters of the development and healing of human endeavours.

A storm swirls winds of change as the great cosmos undulates in parallel like the breath of a sleeping god, knowing itself through the minds of conscious beings. Cycles of life, death and lessons learned in science and philosophy all contribute to the new understanding and awakening of the One and the deliverance of self to an age of peace, cooperation and respect. A heightened state of awareness is the evolution of consciousness and the sleeping god awakens with a star glittered yawn to glean a better understanding of all.

Consciousness being the fundamental truth with all the universe singing to a frequency of creation. Matter is born of a whistle as frequency permeates consciousness. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was logos, pure vibration.

The days are dark and the collective psyche struggles with the daemons of a dying paradigm. Mankind has become schizophrenic as he tears his Eden down and outcasts himself into a world of competition and dreamless sleep. The rise of the false-ego reigns but the empire of the mind must fall as the cycle re-cycles so where can man look in days of transition but to the prophets of the old and young.

A timeless existence of man form cycles of birth, death, summer, winter, night and day. Knowledge is gained and lost age after age. Mankind cannot thrive with the underlying mental illness, the schism, the multiple personality disorder that argues with three faces looking past present and future. The Earth succumbs to cataclysm and with the tsunamis and terror, the learned and natural homeostasis of mankind and nature is lost into the deluge. Mankind re-learns his destiny and an age of enlightenment is born but the cycle must revolve and the global destruction again wipes the ancient esoteric wisdom from the troves of man.

Egyptian magicians construct the Giza wonders and lift rocks the size of great houses. The priests oversee as immortal mega-structures are birthed into the ground. These great pyramids are to survive when man cannot. No writing or glyph adorn the walls but the message bodes ill. It warns of the coming storm. The great pulse that cleanses the planet on a basis slow but regular, a great disaster that looms. You will be born and you will die. This is the nature of existence and the polarity that will be wiped from the tears of the mourning. I guide you today. I guide you to the child. Be understanding and open for today is the day of days.

The horizon is dark as the clouds pass overhead. The desert is blackening as the light fails with the sun blazing its last before the moon gains dominion in her clear, sharp sky.

The man awakes and rises, standing in the sea of sand. On Earth, there is no less lifeless land than the arid desolation of his location yet his form remains steadfast as a break to the continuation of the border between land and sky. A lone man, naked in the desert. He knows everything and has no-one to tell it to.

From a perspective you and I will never comprehend, a life watches and connects with the man. A life form of immeasurable quality and clarity. The waking mind that creates matter. This mind integrates with the man and from here the man knows all. He sees the desert ahead and remembers ancient memories of long-forgotten realms. The man-that-knows-the-god stands naked and the sun hides underground for the first time that night. A shiver runs up his spine; the prophet remembers what lies ahead and weeps.

The prophet starts walking. He knows the universe now and his god-connection; his supernatural awareness guides him but he is no god and his body is fragile in the winds of the dry desert. His shivers become violent and he remembers pain. Hours pass and the prophet stops to kneel. He rests and looks into the black. The stars and moon cast a wan light on the featureless topography. No hills grace this land nor trees or riverbeds. Tough weeds struggle to gain a foothold in this sandy soil and soon the prophet will dehydrate. He rises again. He knows the future. He knows the actions he must carry out to flap the wings of a butterfly continents away. Infinite actions have infinite opposite and equal reactions and they stream out in the prophets mind. He makes mental changes to the realities he envisions and studies the results, he constructs universes in his mind and models every action, emotion and thought as our universe is equally the mind of God. In doing so, chaos is controlled and the prophet sees the future as infinite possibility and defined probability.

Knowing a road is ahead, the prophet continues rather than sleep. His dreams play stage in the waking world as his subconscious mind is entirely accessible when he is awake. He sees dreams in his minds eye as he travels onwards, towards the road. Step by step the prophet plays out the future that he knows and sees supernovae explosion in his waking dreams as his mind follows the sensed electromagnetic field of the Earth as a homing bird might. The prophets connection to the outer-realm being is akin to a possession. He has all the dreams, all the light and all the wisdom of an eternal being yet the body of the prophet is mortal. The man is an infinity within a finite boundary of flesh and bone.

He knows what he must do. The prophet must end the life of a child. The child resides in her sanctuary, her home twelve miles along this dark and dust laden road with her mother and father. They all sleep now, safe in their domain with two locks on the front door and one on the back. Their dog sleeps at the back door, his foot twitching to the image in his head of a bitch in the desert, running with a rat in her mouth.

The approaching road disappears into the desert like the last remnants of a dream forgotten on waking. The mind of the prophet looks upon his grim task with question. Why must the child die? Why by my hand? He is human, his mind passenger is not and reacts with an image of a dead planet. The Earth appears in the prophets mind and he sees not a devastated world, but a dead world. No life exists here; no human, no animal, plant, fungi. Not a single celled organism resides on the planet. Gaia breathes no more. Her resonant frequency has ceased to pulse. Her heart has stopped. The prophet looks at the dark road and tries to shift his mind from the dead world he is being shown. So be it, he whispers. The child must die.

At this moment, twelve miles away, Buster wakes with a start and jumps to his feet. He remembers a bitch outside. He just saw her, he could smell her scent. The memory fades and Buster curls back into a ball in his bed. His mind in the moment always, the beast concentrates on nothing and experiences his consciousness at one with the rest of the planet until something distracts him. He jumps up, something isn’t right, one of us is in danger, there is danger approaching, he barks - there is danger, there is danger, there is danger

Annie wakes. She hears Buster barking downstairs. She looks at her husband through one eye. He is still asleep. He could sleep through a collision of planets, thinks Annie. Buster continues to bark. He sounds serious, thinks Annie, I don’t want him waking the little one. She slinks out of bed, her bare feet padding along the wooden floor and down the stairs with silent dexterity of an assassin.

Buster knows that something is wrong. He senses a malevolence coming closer to his territory. The pack is in danger. He smells Annie and hears the wall opening up and his pack leader entering his room quietly. She comforts him and Buster feels better. Her scent relaxes him and he whines as he sits back down. He knows that the feeling is still inside him, the fear and approaching predator but his master is here. He loves his master.

Annie soothes the dog and strokes him until his eyes begin to close. His agitation concerns her but dawn will break in a few hours and the sun will come to dispel the daemons that run wild in the minds of the canine.

She slinks upstairs again and slips into bed next to her husband after quickly checking on her daughter. The brood sleeps, she thinks, so must I. Her eyes close and her minds falls to the chores in the day ahead.

The prophet walks to the quickening sound of his footsteps. His naked form casts a lunar shadow on the asphalt. No cars have passed since his journey began. He does not expect any. The mind in his mind knows probability factors that surpass any contemporary computer. The mind inside the prophets mind exists as an integrated field that has transcended reliance of material form. Human minds require brains to focus, this advanced being can project across vast distances. The mind acts as light and the realms of man are shadowed in an array of consciousness that permeates and constructs the universe. The consciousness emits individual, subjective points of creation into the reality that mankind is familiar with.

The mind in the mind of the prophet traverses and knows the universe as only a singularity, able to drop in and out of human experience at will. This mind has no material boundaries and can affect the universal consciousness with thought and ethereal suggestion. However, the death of the child must lie with the prophets hand. The mind in the prophets mind cannot affect the physical realm directly so the prophet acts as the vessel in which the great mind must steer towards infanticide.

The stars wander the sky slowly on their eternal paths and the prophet sees the small house in the distance. Sparsely placed street lights illuminate the roadside with a dull yellow light and the prophet stops walking. Remind me again, my passenger, what you expect me to do, he thinks.

The mind in the mind of the prophet answers the question in sound. The sound resonates at a frequency that shudders the eyeballs in the sockets of the prophets head. His vision blurs and tears stream down his face. He has a feeling coming from deep in his guts that travels up into his heart and encompasses his very soul with such mighty sorrow that he cannot help but wail into his hands. The feeling is grief. A guttural emotion that swamps every sense of mental and physical perception. The prophet drops to his knees for the second time that night and sobs into the grit of the lonely desert roadside.

He understands the message. No more visions of a broken Earth, no more verbal directions. This is a message of the end result. If the child dies tonight the prophet will weep. If the child does not, the prophet will weep as will humanity. He raises himself from the dirt and closes in on the house, step by step, his dark task casts horror and the prophet cannot stop his tears.

Rob had woken up when Annie had come back to bed. He had not roused noticeably as he had fully intended to slip quietly into his dreams quickly. He had been trying to get back to sleep for twenty minutes and instead of dozing, he had grown more alert. The earliest birds had begun their call amoung the thinly scattered bushes and trees outside and Rob. The sun would soon be gracing this part of the planet with it’s intense summer heat. Rob slipped out of bed and donned his dressing gown. A strong cup of coffee and a bagel was to be his way of introducing the day. Annie had gotten back to sleep. There was an hour or so before the sun came up and their daughter would be stirring soon. This would be the time of day when he could sit peacefully on the porch. It’s not too hot and the scarce bird call would be a symphony to listen to.

He slowly descended the stairs and slid the kitchen door open. Buster was there to greet him in the usual enthusiastic manner. His tail forcibly wagging so as his entire rear end sways back and forth. This always brought a smile to Rob and he knelt to give the hound a stroke and a kiss.

Breakfast time pooch he said quietly to Buster as he flicked the kettle on and picked up the dogs empty bowl.

Buster had woken on hearing this one coming down the stairs. His ears had sensed the male of the pack and his scent was growing stronger each second. However, the feeling was there still and he was just about to shout about the danger when the sliding wall had opened and the man had walked through. Buster couldn’t contain his happiness. He loved when they came through the sliding wall. They always stroked him and, when the light was like this, they always fed him too. He saw the man pick up the food holder and Buster knew he had to sit and behave quietly and the food would come quicker. His attention was completely on the man and the food. He failed to register the new scent, the heavy scent. The scent that was only on the other side of the wall outside, creeping, lurking.

The prophet circled the house looking for an easy point of entry. This house was the box of Pandora. All evils contained not in objects or persons but in actions. Actions of coming violence and fear. The prophet searched deep into the mind inside his mind. The secondary intelligence that had implanted itself into his consciousness held the infinite paths of the future and told him through probability what events would occur dependant on the actions he took. There was no certainty. The acts were measured to a quantum scale and the quantum scale does not deal in certainty, only chance. However, his Rubicon lay ahead and with it his damnation which walked hand in hand with the salvation of all the life on this planet.

The prophet knocked on the front door timidly. He knew there were two people upstairs and one downstairs. He knew the family dog was highly focused on wolfing down his breakfast and wouldn’t be disturbed in the next couple of minutes by a stranger in the abode. He knew that in the next five seconds, the door would open. He would have to be quick and silent.

Who the fuck is that? Rob said. He left the kitchen and approached the door. If this is Raymond drunk again.....

He opened the front door and a hand whipped out from in front of him and grabbed his throat, another hand covered his mouth. Rob did not have time to react before he was on the floor with a naked man on top of him.

Be very quiet Robert. Be very still. I do not wish to harm you or your wife. The prophet whispered in his ear and Robs eyes darted, wide and desperate. Rob struggled but the prophet had him pinned down. The prophet reached to his left, scooped up the doorstop and brought it swiftly down on Rob’s temple in one movement. The world went black. Rob travelled into the unconconscious realms and his last waking thoughts of fear dispelled as the apathy of darkness overwhelmed him.

The prophet rose from the ground once again that night and surveyed the situation. It was exactly as it should be. With this course of action it could be no other way. He is silent and hears the whining of a dog in the kitchen. He knows Buster is restless. The prophet can feel his presence as the mind within his mind probes the canine. He feels the mind through his own enter the awareness of Buster and slowly expel a feeling of security within the hound. Be still loyal dog. All is well with the world.

Buster returns to his bed after his feed and curls up. He knows that everything is alright, he can feel the serenity in the space around him and his life feels good. He slips quickly into a deep sleep and the dream-bitch awaits outside for him.
The prophet pads on the balls of his bare feet into the kitchen and assesses Buster quietly dreaming, twitching immediately and with the promise of a vivid dream. The prophet finds pleasure in animals. They are simple yet more connected with the universe than the forgotten minds of humans, making them more susceptible to suggestion. The humans suffered a blowing setback in their development as the cycle of civilisations embedded the material age. They have forgotten their connections and buried their shamans to the cacophony of gold and greed.

The naked mans body shimmers with sweat and the slowly rising sun begins to break into the house through windows that have been decorated from the outside with millions of sand grains carried up on the back of the wind from the desert floor.

Multiple times a second, his mind digs into the vestiges of his passenger mind to seek the next action. He is being guided by a god and his questioning has been answered. His memories are nothing from the moment he woke in the desert only hours ago. The mind within his mind assures his reconnection with the death of the child.

A staircase is in front of him. A stairway that holds at the summit an adult woman and an infant child. The woman is dozing. She is not quite awake but not quite asleep. She is touching the void of her unconscious and she sees images of old lovers and her husband whispering for help. Her light sleep projects the reality of dreams as she slips from the material world once again. The child is awake and sucking her thumb as she plays with her doll in her crib. Soon she will get restless and call for her mother. The prophet must hurry.

He climbs the stairs with a dexterity that can only be learnt through ancient lessons, long forgotten to his memory but not his body. With the stealth of a cat, the prophet enters the room of the woman. He makes no noise. but he is keenly aware that the changes in light patterns and reflections could just as easily wake the woman. He follows the instructions of the mind within his mind with military precision and balls his fists. He brings his knuckle to the temple of the woman in a mighty swoop and her dreams are smashed into oblivion. One eye opens, unfocused and staring at the ceiling as she falls into the darkness. She will be unconscious for thirty minutes. Rob and Anne are to wake to a nightmare of the prophets making. Their world destroyed to save their brethren. They will never know why their child was killed.

Once again, the prophet searches the house in the present and the future through the mind within his mind. With the dog asleep downstairs, no conscious beings remain apart from the child and the prophet.

I’ve been expecting you, the girl says as the prophet opens the door to her small bedroom. She sits cross legged on her bed adorned with covers of pink floral patterns, The prophet says nothing but lowers his head and sits at the end of the bed, the girl to his right hand side.

Who are you, girl? The prophet searches inside the mind within his mind looking for the answer to his question.

You carry a passenger prophet, do you not? The mind that shows you the universe?

The prophet finds no answer in his internal search. The mind within his mind has closed off. He cannot detect the knowledge, he has no access any more. Is the mind within his mind still there? He probes but only has his sparse memories and a residual feeling of the passenger. It has left him.

I come to bear a message to you girl. You must die this morning. If this does not occur, this planet will die.

The girl adjusts her seating slightly. She can not be more than six years old but her eyes portray a wisdom of millenia. She does not answer the prophet, she only stares into his eyes. He knows he is not speaking to the human child. Her steady tone and her lack of fear tell him so. He is speaking to her passenger.

I am a prophet of the ages child. I come to fulfil the prophecy. I have seen the universe in it’s infinite forms and possibilities. I have seen this day in my passengers mind and I know exactly which actions to take to complete this unspeakable quest.

The child smiles What does your passenger tell you now prophet? Does it bay for blood? Is it there to share in your torment as you commit this infanticide?

The prophet stutters a negative response. He cannot access the probability universe, he does not know what will happen next. His mind is only his own and panic rises in his gut. My passenger has left me. I am single and only. My decisions now rest with my own free will.

The girls eyes roll into the back of her head. Your next actions will affect everything on this planet prophet. You have no guide to tell you what is right and what is wrong. What do your feelings tell you? Do you trust a foreign mind that advocates the murder of an innocent?

Again, the prophet asks Who are you, child?

I am the mind within the mind of this human child. I am the antithesis of your passenger. I am the heaven to your hell and the light to your dark. I cannot exist without you and the polarity must continue. Ask yourself prophet, did your passenger justify his request? Did he show you images of horror and desolation? Is this why I am to die?

The prophet turned to his right and clasped his hand around the throat of the child, pushing her down onto the bed. Quiet now girl.

The girls eyes suddenly darted around the room, confused and terrified. She was no longer the passenger, she was the child again and her innocence and fear stuck the prophet in an almighty blow. His grip tightens and the girl thrashes on the bed, pinned only by the soft flesh and delicate spine of her neck.

Quiet child. Quiet and pass over. Your task here is done and your consciousness will reconnect.

The child slumps. The prophet remains steadfast moments more and sees the life leave the child. His dark task completed, he rises and makes his way out of the house. The decision was made and the hands of time cannot alleviate his actions for they march onward into a present of this choice; the choice of death over uncertainty. The choice of fear over hope. Is this the plight of mankind? The prophet whispers to himself as he walks into the morning light of the desert. The polarity continues. With the death of the girl comes the life of many others. He looks up and sees a storm on the horizon, it’s dark clouds rolling out across the sky.

The prophet turns to the storm and walks towards it’s chaos.