Harman Horstmann had a few things he liked to try talking about, and so he took a visit to a local church this Sunday evening. After Mass he waited for those gathered to finish bustling with the priest on their way out, then approached him afterwards, introduced himself as Harman, and asked if he had a little time to inquire with him privately. "I apologize, I hope I'm not keeping you from anything."
"Oh, it's no trouble. I don't believe I've seen you here, before, Harman."
"Even if you had, you likely would not remember. People have trouble with my face."
"Are you new to our congregation?"
"No. I'm not certain why I came here, exactly. I often compare my life to a frog catching a fly with its tongue, simply to... I'm not certain whether I would be the frog or fly in this analogy. Perhaps I'm here simply to offload some things onto a stranger."
The priest nodded, led him off to a private room, sat with him. "Tell me what's troubling you. Perhaps I can help."
"There was a phrase my father taught me that I've given much thought to lately: that we should be careful what we do, for the eyes of God are always upon us. What a phrase to teach a young boy... the eyes of God. But what I've come to realize recently is that although those eyes may be upon us, that does not mean God is able to, or cares, to stop evil in this world. Genghis Khan was not punished by a deity for his deeds, nor Attila the Hun."
"Then you've come with a crisis of faith."
"Perhaps. I was religious once ago, but no longer, no doubt in part due to what I outlined just now."
"True, but what you are dealing with is a deep theological question: the ability of God to prevent, or not, evil. Scholars have debated for ages whether the presence of an evil in the world proves the non-existence of a caring or omnipotent God. I believe that punishment for evil may not always come in this world, but it shall eventually."
"Then like many who are religious, you delay justice into an ephemeral future. I cannot blame you, of course, for that seems to me the simplest explanation of why religion exists to begin with; the absence of justice in this world."
"When justice comes so little in this world, I see no reason not to expect it in the next. That, to me, seems more logical than the idea that our actions are simply abstract, that what we do has no consequences if it is unseen."
"A self-sealing theory, but one I have little interest in further debating. In truth, that isn't why I'm here. I've come to offload something that has bothered me of late -- you might call it a confession."
"Go ahead and speak, then."
"This was over a year ago... now, before I begin, I should say that I am not here because of any sexual sin. Female affection has come to me as needed, throughout life. But a little over a year ago, I engaged in a... tryst, one might call it, with a woman half my age. Things were going quite well; she was intelligent, if neurotic. She was not with me solely for my money, but I will not pretend such considerations were not in her calculations.
Now, I thought I might decide to marry this young woman, but I was slow and deliberate. This she could not stand. As our relationship grew longer with no proposal in sight, she began to make demands of me. She lied to me, and she grew unreasonable. That is not to say I had never erred, of course; I knew that I was whispering promises of love to her in return for sex, the type of natural interplay that irks women so if one is to directly reveal the game, as if no woman has ever whispered promises of sex in return for love."
"True, but a healthy sexual relationship must always come from a foundation of genuine love. Otherwise, it does not uplift but rots the spirit."
"At the time I gave her incessant nattering little notice. She was young, and I thought she might grow out of it. All I would need to do is calm her for now and allow time to reason it out of her. However, I acted stupidly. I drank with her for a few nights, and as the evening grew steep, I unwittingly confided in her a few financial improprieties I had commit to smooth over the initial hurdle of forming my own private practice. She forgave me, however, and I hoped that might be the last I hear of it."
"Then you are here because she did not."
"Time would not grant me justice. She threatened me with marriage; she blackmailed me. She backed me into a corner and trapped me in a position that would not have been so deleterious were I not simultaneously beset in my professional life by a business rival. This man spread lies about me, and sought to ruin my reputation over the most insane of reasons: my success. It irked him, and he viewed it as a personal mark of Cain. He would slander me to colleagues, in the sort of sadistic gossip of the middle-class world that mirrors the overt violence of the criminal underworld. He spread lies about me, but he repeated them for long enough that others believed him; scorned girlfriends joined him as well.
He turned all sadism upon me. My business began to slow. I considered legal action, but one cannot so easily recover their reputation in this country. One cannot easily be reinvited to every conference and social get-together they have been ousted from. Of course, his reputation was ruined, as well, but certainly he did not care for the wounds he bore upon his own flesh."
"Did you consider speaking to him, to help the man see reason?"
"He would not see reason. With each day, my young lover was further turned against me. I began to simmer in a fantasy of murdering them both, for I could see no other instrument to end my plight. How else was I meant to envision his end? I thought: how could I believe such things, that I could commit such acts? But, it was all rationalization, a delayed realization of what I was equipped to do in defense of myself."
"One cannot right a transgression by committing another, however."
"What transgression would be committed by righting a wrong incurred against me? … but, I suppose my state of mind is not so important, here. Suffice to say that by the end of the experience I awoke as if from a dream and with an entirely new morality at my disposal. But, before. I had an argument with my lover, and she again threatened me. She was an inch away from presenting evidence to police that would end with me in a cell. I despised her, even as I had once loved her, and this hatred all the deeper because of what heights it had previously been. …but, afterwards... guilt gnawed at me. I heard my mother's voice. You sound like her, at least in how you put words together. Perhaps not in tone... I acted swiftly. But in the heat of the moment I acted foolishly, and I called the police so that I could confess to them."
"Surely you are not speaking of murder."
"When I stood in that home, I felt that perhaps this was the punishment that my personal nemesis had wished to be visited upon me. The thought entered my mind that if I had already commit one, there would be no reason not to visit him, as well... though that came later. Something strange occured when the police arrived. I spoke to them. I confessed, yet they seemed not to hear me, as if they were stuck in their own respective realms of dream. They told me that they would question me at the station, and I was sat in the back of a squad car as another took her body.
Images came to me, strapped into an electric chair. But the circumstances of my own life had led to such a hellish situation; perhaps it would not be so bad were it brought to an end. There flashed across my mind a name stated by no voice, yet I knew it as something now inherent to my own being.
Only an hour later, I was released. I did not understand why, yet, and life seemed to have over it a thick veil. The police called me days later, and they expressed their condolences for having arrested me on such an obviously ludicrous claim. What luck. Where before my colleagues had shown me underhanded scorn, now they welcomed me. I could think of little else but my prior rival, and I thought again to visit him at his home. Where before he had rejected me, now he welcomed me. I had made some passes at his wife, in the past, and this had changed as well.
A few months later, I took a vacation with her to the Bahamas. Where before I had been moved to guilt by the mere thought of killing another living creature, now I was hungry for it. Murder became not only my method of security but a tool of pleasure. But I had developed this newly found ability, and with it came the desire for experimentation. Sadism or recklessness, I cannot answer. The venom of thought that twisted my hand gave way to the realer poison I injected into her. When I returned again, I was not punished… I prospered again. Then-on I was safe; there was no morality but what I breathed into this indifferent universe, one impossible for me to violate."
He looked over at the priest, who he knew would be, and was, silent about the whole affair. This irked him. The reveal of himself would not bring punishment nor fear, nor could it, and in these reactionless glares was the entirety of his being glinted.