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Let the fun continue.! This is the 77th installment of a continuing fictional story. Before each new segment, the last paragraph from the prior edition will be shown in quotations.
“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.”
By C.L. Harmon
He floated out there for days with an abyss beneath him as dark and deep as he knew hell would be…his eternal home when the end finally came. Sharks came but never tasted him. The sun baked him and his thirst clawed at him from the inside as though violently begging for a sip of water. Hunger pains convulsed through him leaving a pounding that felt like a hammer in his head, but the angel of death didn’t whisper a word of an arrival.
He rested atop the waves as though they were a bed of solid stone. He could not sink or swim. Days drifted into nights again and again with sleep his only escape from the misery. God did not speak, death did not come and there was not a saviour in sight. This hell would, however, finally come to an end. He drifted close enough to land that he was finally rescued by fishermen off the waters of Cuba.
His appearance had death all over it, but there was still breath in his body. It frightened the fishermen to the point they believed him to be possessed of evil. The men took him to a monastery in Havana and told the priest that they had saved a disciple of the devil. They were new converts to Catholicism and feared they had endangered their souls by saving him. They begged for the priest to pray for them to be granted absolution.
Monsignor Gervasi, who headed the clergy at the monetary, was baffled by Blain’s ability to be alive after seeing his initial condition, but he did not believe him to be a demon. He ordered the priests to care for Blaine and nurse him back to health. During the weeks of the recovery, Gervasi prayed numerous times as to the origins of this mysterious man who had been brought to him. Not one word from God was given to him.
He was a good man who had heard the calling to serve others since childhood. He knew of the corruption in the church and wanted to serve God and not the church, which he believed had been the choice of many of his brethren. He always chose to work as far from Rome and Vatican politics as he possibly could, even volunteering to serve in locations that were not very hospitable. He deeply felt there was certainly something different about Blaine. This strangeness he felt though did not frighten him as it did the other priests.
Once Blaine began to regain his strength and a normal appearance, Gervasi visited him frequently in hopes of learning who he was. It was to no avail for weeks. Blaine, just as God, didn’t utter a single word. He walked, ate, slept and read, but remained quiet and would not leave. it seemed. It seemed to Gervasi that this man had no where to go both literally and spiritually. He did not push Blaine though and simply allowed him to remain at the monastery. Doing so even against the wishes of the other priests.
This was not a silent monastery and Blaine could hear the whispers of the priests about how they believed he was evil. The truth is that he was evil. The greater truth was that he longer wanted to be. This revelation would eventually lead him to Gervasi’s chambers and a confession that would change the lives of both men in a way that allowed neither to ever return to what they had both known for most of their lives. The truth not only sets us free, it also imprisons us outside the world we once knew.