Let the fun continue.! This is the 76th installment of a continuing fictional story. Before each new segment, the last paragraph from the prior edition will be shown in quotations.
“Though it is true that we cannot destroy each other, it is also true that the same God who cursed us just may love these people more than he hates us. And that, old friend, could be all that is needed to destroy the evil that you have brought to this place.!”
By C.L. Harmon
With venom and vigor, Weathers spews out a phrase in Latin and then spits on the floor as to give the words a tail in which to fly throughout the room. The hubris that had burned and been so abundant in him moments earlier was extinguished with Blaine’s words. It was as though he had not ever given thought to the possibility that God would intervene in the affairs in which he was involved. He was absent from God’s sight as far as he was concerned.
In that brief fleeting second, Blaine saw in Weathers’ eyes what must have been in his own eyes 400 years earlier. Weathers spun himself in a hurried fashion and exited the house without a word of his leaving. Blaine poured another gin, mixed with tonic water and fell back into his chair. He closed his eyes, not for sleep, but to draw back a memory.
As he reached into his subconscious for the memory, he thought how even his curse had a curse. When God cursed him, he was given a memory that never failed. Each and every minute detail of his actions, he could never forget. All the evil he had ever committed or witnessed was as vivid as the day it happened. Going back 2,000 years it was like a movie in his head, only with every detail alive and cutting to the bone. This particular memory was different though. This memory was the one when he learned that his actions were not absent from God’s sight as Weathers still believed. In fact, they were monitored closely by God.
The age old question as to why God allowed certain atrocities and crimes but not others was unanswerable to even those who were like him. For over 1,600 years, Blaine had been able to spread poison and hatred through his influence over others unimpeded. But that all changed on a ship sailing from Spain to the new world. Piracy was in its heyday and Blaine (Roberto as he was then known) had his fingers scattered throughout the oceans touching innocent souls with evil and prorogating the idea of thievery and murder on the high seas within them.
However, this voyage would be different. He had befriended an Englishman named Bernard Addison, who had been imprisoned in a Spanish jail for theft. Addison had once been a sailor in the Royal Navy but skipped out in search of a tale of gold and treasures that had been amassed by the Spanish from the conquest of Mexico 150 years earlier. Blaine had persuaded Addison and several other convicts who had been given their freedom on the condition of their leaving Spain, to hijack the ship and hold it and its crew ransom. Blaine had convinced them that the King Philip V would not allow one of his ships to be sunk, but would pay the ransom.
The mutiny would not come to pass however. The captain had a dream, one where he said he was visited by an angel of the Lord. It was so vivid that he was able to convince his crew that the men were demons. Addison, the other freed prisoners and Blaine, who had been acting as one of the prisoners, were thrown overboard. The last words to Blaine from the captain haunted him. “I know what you are. You are a descendant of the evil of Judas.” While the other men in the sea died around him, Blaine remained. Knowing now that God was watching, he waited for a death he knew would not come.