Innocent guilt.

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Not being able to sleep, I went in search of stories.  Music, movies, combinations of those.  Nothing.  Well, nothing out there.  In the search, for horror that was respectable and intriguing, I saw a wasteland of lost human endeavor.  But... that wasn't the tail, the horror, that came to my mind.


Imagine, if you will, a storyteller who writes for years, decades, perhaps more, much more.  A teller of tales.  Whatever his mind alights upon is put into words.  Of tongue, electron, or print, these thoughts come into existence.  On and on, he paints worlds and notions as he sees things.  Some read, listen, and move on.  Touched?  Any one of them he will never know.  That isn't a concern.  Not of his.  He is barely conscious of a greater world beyond the words he writes and the little life he lives.  Literally, he is barely awake.  He simply, and just, writes.

After decades, or more, or less, he begins to wake from the isolation.  A friend here.  A moment of consciousness there.  A bit here, a piece there, memories of what he is, was, has written, and it all begins to come together.  As if leaving a fog, or thawing from a freeze, the notions begin to form patterns and become discernible.  He sees both the real and the analog, the examples and the fact, the reason and the emotion.  One dot at a time, if haltingly, and in error from time to time, but more surely as time passes, the outlines of his thoughts become visible and begin to make some sense.

Then he sees it.  Startlingly beautifully and terribly.  Without a way to hide as the fog is lifting, and without true guilt, as his intent was not coherent, he begins to see.  His writing has destroyed some, while lifting others.  Sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly.  He has shamed some, he has blessed others, and he has indeed changed the world.  He has created forms of reality with his words, blind fool that he is.  He has become a form of reality.  A wretched, sometimes unforgiving, but very final, form of it.

The horror of knowing that a kind word to the wrong, or an ill word to the kind, and he has changed things forever in ways not even his new understanding allows a full accounting regarding.  Tired.  Shamed a bit.  But hopeful even so.  Nothing can be undone.  His words were written, the reality created.  True as they might be, or not, the acts have been done.  There is tomorrow.  But the surety that words tomorrow, regardless of his intent, will be as they were before.

The talking monkey, arbiter of fate, son of the sons of God, or merely delusional?  I tell you, my words travel and move the world.  A shameful thing, often.  You will not understand until you stand before my brother.  When all of your time and all you have said and done are laid before you.  Then, brother, sister, you will understand my horror.  Why I see it all, and now?  Tired, weakened by it, and yet I am not through.  As with life, my words are no longer just mine.  They have been turned over.  And, as such, as failingly as they sometimes are presented, they will continue until I am called home.  Such is the price of grace and a life in a world of sin.  Lord have mercy.  Amen.
There... is... always... hope. Or is that merely for the lost? In any case, it is what I have.

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