War Pigs - Black Sabbath

Distorted versions of reality have fucked us up, brother. Generals gathered in their masses, just like witches at black masses. Evil minds that plot destruction, sorcerer of deaths destruction. 

Last night, at around eleven, Arthur woke up from the longest sleep no one had ever seen him enjoy since everyone returned from the last "God Call."

His hands shook unlike any other tremor we have ever seen; it was almost rhythmic, melodic as if he had been guiding an invisible orchestra playing right in front of his bed. After what felt like hours, his face turned red, and a broken scream was stuck on his tongue. 

Juta placed her hand next to Arthur's bed on the floor and prayed for God to forbid all his sins and mishaps. At the end of the day, his only flaw, the only thing that kept him away from his family and foe, was his insufferable resistance to reality, as everyone had to agree to. His voice was bitter and left a bitter taste of disgust in everyone's hearts after listening to him; he had lost (or gained) his tune many, many years ago.

Reality, you see, is much more complex than what we admit to knowing. Everything is possible. Everything. Redemption and forgiveness were mere objects used to manipulate those who had their eyes covered when the opportunity came.

Arthur had lived a long life, after all. Juta was a merciless Christian who had tried to make him a better person for her own benefit, knowing all about his riches, but she had ended up genuinely falling for the broken man with an obsession for the "real truth" and its preach.

Her life was spent between their country home, where she chose to take care of the gardens and chickens, while her husband brewed the state's most renowned stout in the main farm. 

On weekends, they would gather their neighbors on an assembly that looked more like an after-church gathering than a master class. Arthur would talk about his experience with apathy and guilt and how he tried to overcome them by creating a lesser monster of himself.

His hands clenched in pain while the words got out of his mouth, narrating the cruel evenings he had shared with death and companions, after having tried to make the world a better place according to the rules of those who knew, of those who had written political and philosophical treaties many centuries before him, talking about the enlightened man and its power to make everything turn to good. 

Juta had taught him about the biblical verse "all things come together for good," and during times of war with himself, Arthur tried to make sense of those words. Many times, he found himself lying in the cold floor of their living room, wondering about the great despair that awaits all human beings after a life of misbehavior is over. His hands started trembling right around the same time every time he thought about the possibility of destroying all ideas of morality and goodness. Not all human beings are built the same. You see, after his lengthy life battle, Arthur had only met one woman who understood him and his crazy, radical idea about life and existence, and after she left, all he got was a hole in the middle of his brain that kept growing bigger and bigger alongside his deception. 

Not understanding what others had to say, or what their intentions were left Arthur scared being alive. His only truce, his only moment of solace with his own thoughts, came after the bottle was emptied, and his senses reached a dimension known only to those strong enough to pack up their stomachs and hold the liquor long enough to experience anything and everything under the black light of this newer reality. This pure, magnificent, but cruel and objective, reality.

Last night, Arthur woke up differently; his hands were shaking, trying to hold on to something. Maybe they were trying to clasp to their last breath, their last breath of human existence, before they indeed turned into something colder and darker that was not afraid of its objective truth. Maybe that was all of us. Holding on to dear life. Holding on to dear, fucking, life before anything comes burning down.