An ancient and abandoned church. From the outside it is an old, rotting, wooden building from an age long gone where men built their own houses and their own churches. But inside light comes through the windows and the holes and lights up the dust so if, by chance, a passerby looked in he might think the air was thick with fairies and magic. The silence inside is broken only by the hum crickets and the babble of a nearby stream. Then three children enter the church and, suddenly, the spell is broken.
“I don’t believe it. I just don’t,” said Jonathan. He wasn’t the brightest of our group; all of us but him had already moved passed the denial stage.
“Oh, come on you idiot. He used us. Just get over it,” said Sid. He was, perhaps, the brightest of us. But he was angry all the time, and it was almost like he was angry at the whole world. For what, I have no idea.
“Like you’ve gotten over it? We only just found out, give him some time Sid,” I said.
“Why? ‘Respect others’ that was something he taught us, right? Everything he taught us is meaningless, just a cover. I don’t have to listen to it anymore.”
“It wasn’t meaningless. He was the only one who ever taught me anything worth learning,” said Jonathan. I looked away.
“Oh really? Did he teach you how to stab someone in the back too?” said Sid.
“No!” Jonathan shot back. “He taught me compassion, he taught me that everyone has a reason, that not everyone is selfish, he taught me the world is a bigger place.”
Sid scoffed, “Not everyone is selfish? Yes they are. Just because people have reasons doesn’t mean they’re not selfish. The only true reason anyone does anything is because they want something. I want to get up in the morning, so I do. I want money, so I go to work. I want companionship, so I have a wife. I want to live, so I live. I want to die, so I die. It’s all just self-serving bullshit! No one really cares about anything.”
“Don’t say that…” said Jonathan. Poor Jonathan, he just couldn’t keep up with Sid.
“Even if that’s true,” I said, “Isn’t that something he taught us as well? To think for ourselves, to come to our own conclusions, to find to our own answers?”
“Our own answers? Haven’t you been listening? There are no answers, not to anything. Right and wrong are opinions; people can justify anything if they try hard enough. Since there can never be an answer, why even look? It’s all pointless.”
“You might be right, but I can’t just give up on the world. Even if all my answers are personal and selfish, I’m still going to keep asking,” I said.
“Why? What possible reason is there?” Sid replied.
“Because,” I said, “I believe, no, I know that there are answers out there.”
Sid laughed, “You, ha…ha, you can’t possibly be talking about God…can you?”
“Not God, no. Or, maybe God, I’m not sure,” I really wasn’t. “I just know there is an answer.”
“Yeah,” said Jonathan. “You’re right, I know it.”
Sid laughed scornfully at us again, “Who even cares? ‘The answer’ doesn’t exist, and even if it did, who even wants to know? When you know the secrets of the world, then what? Nothing. The sooner you realize it, the better.”
“Realize what? That everything is pointless? Walk around like you’re condemning everything because, by its nature, it’s pointless?” I said.
“That would be a start. At least get rid of all the crap ‘he’ taught us.”
“Would you stop saying that!” said Jonathan.
“Get rid of all he taught us? But, Sid, he taught us how to think.” I said.
“So what? Thanks for that, but he stabbed us in the back, and the two of you still treat him like some kind of God! I hate him,” spat Sid.
“I…I know that he tricked us and used us,” said Jonathan. “But he taught us too, and he never promised to be perfect. He never promised us anything. All of our expectations were things we created. If he was on a pedestal as a God, then we put him there. I’m going to forgive him and I think you both should too.”
I looked at Jonathan, stunned. But Sid just scoffed yet again,
“Why should I? Forgiveness is just word people made up to make themselves feel better about the ‘bad’ things they’ve done. If I do something bad, I can be forgiven and the bad thing will go away? Like it could actually erase the past. Forgiveness doesn’t change anything,” said Sid
Then I got it. “You stupid idiot,” I said to Sid, “Forgiveness isn’t just for the guilty. If you forgive someone for the all bad things they did to you, it means you don’t have to carry those bad things anymore.”
Jonathan smiled at me. It seemed I had gotten it right.
“I’m going to forgive him too. I think you should also, Sid. At least you won’t have to carry that weight anymore if you do,” I said.
Sid seemed to be breaking down. His whole body shivered violently as if he were freezing. He choked and swallowed, and then a single tear fell from his eye and rolled down his cheek. As it fell from his cheek and into the air I thought it looked like gold in the sunlight. Among the thousands of tinny dust particles in the sun it looked like a golden king.
How had we met “him?” By chance. One day, while playing carelessly in the woods, we came across this old church. And inside was a man, a man with a broken arm in a makeshift splint. He had asked weakly for food and water. So we had gotten him some. As he ate, he had started to speak to us. Such things he said, we had never before heard or thought. We came again and again and he talked and talked and we learned from him and he taught us. He taught us about love and loss, about life and death, about reality and dreams. And through this we learned to think. Then he started asking for things other than food. A little money, some jewelry, a watch, a knife; by then we trusted him completely. Then one day, he was gone. After that, exactly one week after he had left, we saw him again.
We had been in a convenience store and he had been robbing it. Jonathan had recognized him even with his mask.
“Hey, what, what are you doing?” he asked terrified. He looked at Jonathan, then at all of us.
“I’m sorry,” he’d said. And in his eyes I had seen real pain, but at the time, that pain had not been enough for me.
“I…I can forgive him,” Sid said wiping his eyes. He smiled, “If it’s what you assholes really want.”
I smiled back at him. Jonathan was smiling too. After that, we got up one by one and filed out of the old church and into the brilliant day that awaited us outside. Behind us the sun came in still, oblivious to the three of us and our troubles. In the sun the fairies danced, and on the floor lay the tear king, still shining weakly and throwing out presumed light across the floor.
Thomas Storey lives in South Lake Tahoe, California, where he was raised, with his family and a goldfish. In his free time, he attends the local community college and studies English among other things.
