The Two Swords, Part 1

by Benedict Herrman

The following is a full and accurate account of how the gift of two unusual swords from a mysterious Being completely changed my life and made me who I am today. First, however, let me tell you who I was.

Years ago, I started my career as a political reporter for a well-known New York newspaper. You’d know the name if I told you. Over time, I forged a highly respectable reputation for myself shining the light of journalistic truth on the many venal political figures of the day, of which, sadly, there was never a shortage. One particularly repulsive councilman became the favorite target of my self-righteous vitriol, for if ever anyone on the city payroll deserved a public skewering, it was he. Crude, venial, pugnacious, greedy and without the slightest hint of common decency, this self-absorbed, greasy slug of a man eagerly sought bribes from developers, unions, favor-seekers, aldermen, religious figures — indeed, anyone who wanted something from him. As his power and influence grew, so did his avarice, which clearly knew no bounds. Neither did his gluttony, for jokes about his mammoth girth were rife at City Hall, except, of course, when he was in the room. It wasn’t just his rapacity, however, that distinguished him from other political figures — there was no lack of that in New York politics. It was his propensity to silence his critics with thinly veiled threats of violence and running his empire like a mafia don that were hallmarks of his utter disregard for the even most basic standards of human conduct. Such a throwback to Tammany Hall days would seem like an easy mark, but he had a teflon shield of underlings who were all too eager to fall on their swords for him. Somehow, their fines were always low and their jail times strangely reduced if not done away with altogether, for it turned out this man’s influence extended deep into the courts as well. No crime, however obvious, could be directly attributed to him, and so he remained a free man, however maligned he was in the public’s eye.

I took delight in excoriating him as much as possible. I had legions of snitches, spies, and informers carefully imbedded in the halls of power gathering evidence, and though they got in, they never worked their way deep enough to put a finger on him directly. I still used their findings to full effect, damning him by inference and innuendo, drawing inescapable conclusions for my readers that made life increasingly uncomfortable for him. Perversely, the more death threats I collected, the more proud of my work I became, until it morphed into a strange kind of self-importance, a brandishing of my intellect and incisive wit against the forces of corruption rotting the heart of our city government. Then purely by chance, one of my informants uncovered a series of damning financial records revealing a series of dated receipts and payments involving various public figures, including a Cardinal of the Church, a union boss, and a senator. The house of cards finally collapsed, the councilman was carted off to prison (with much fanfare and celebration), and I won the Pulitzer. I was at the top of my game, my years of work justified and rewarded handsomely, and my arrogance barely tolerable.

Naturally, the paper threw a party to celebrate, and we toasted (rather often, as I recall) to the pen being mightier than the sword, to the legions of undercover moles I had planted in the councilman’s corrupt organization, and to our editorial staff that saw the project through despite the threats, the longevity of the job, and the enormous expense. I took a taxi back to my condo that night full of good scotch, the adulation of my editors, and, quite honestly in retrospect, full of myself. I glanced at the clock as I slid under the covers — 2:13 AM.

I had barely closed my eyes when a blinding white light suddenly filled the room. I use the word ‘blinding’ advisedly — although the luminescence filled my quarters, my eyes did not suffer to look at what was in front of me. A Being in the shape of a human, but much larger stood in the air before me. I say “stood,” but it hovered a few inches above the carpet. It (He? She? I could not tell) had no human organs such as eyes, nose, or mouth, as its visage was smooth and featureless. Nevertheless, a soft, deep voice emanated from it, and a feeling of pure, unconditional love and acceptance permeated every pore of my body. I arose to face it, though I cannot tell you why.

“Take this,” it said, and a sword about two feet long appeared in my right hand. The blade was not metal, but appeared to be made of shimmering light much like the creature that gave it to me. I found I could move it through the air with no effort as it had no weight, nor did it cut my skin when I touched it.

“What is it?” I asked stupidly, as it was obvious it was a sword.

“It is Truth,” the Being answered. Even as it spoke, a glowing transparent figure of my arch-nemesis appeared before me, a mere outline of the physical reality of him. I could see his face, bloated stomach and his balding head with a few hairs that remained scraped across the top, but I could also see through him somehow to my wooden dresser on the other side.

“Cut him in half,” the glowing Being said. It was not a request, but I hesitated nonetheless.

“I don’t want to hurt…” I started.

“Cut him in half,” it said again, in a voice both commanding and loving at the same time. Almost against my will, I swiped the sword half-hearted towards the transparent apparition (I truly did not wish to injure him) and the figure immediately opened precisely into two halves as if on hinges, displaying the councilman’s interior. I saw glowing outlines of the internal organs — heart, liver, spleen, stomach and lungs; however, imbedded within some of the organs were strange, discolored shapes, foreign bodies that appeared to have lodged inside the man that had no discernible function.

“Touch that one,” the Being said. I reached out to the one it was indicating, a small, dark curled-up figure inside the heart, and touched it with my finger.

Immediately my ears were assaulted by his father’s relentless verbal abuse during the years of his miserable childhood, constantly belittling his sense of worth, damaging his self-esteem beyond repair, twisting his ego into a raging bully screaming for recognition even as it consumed others as it sought to always come out on top. The pain, disappointment and sadness were completely unbearable. I could even see images of a little boy, desperately aching for a single word of approval from his father, until one day it came when, as an adolescent, he mercilessly disparaged an underling in his father’s presence and gained a slight paternal nod.

“Touch here,” the Being commanded again, indicating a deep red streak on the massive stomach I had so often lampooned. I touched it as directed, and quickly became overwhelmed with grief at the loss of a young woman, the first girl he had ever truly loved who carelessly left him for someone else. He had opened his damaged heart to her and tried to explain how his father had hurt him, but she was only interested in seeing how many boyfriends she could collect and discard before she had to marry — for her, it was just a game, the ultimate prize being the wealthiest boy around. His pain never ended, and caused him to eat endlessly trying to fill the hole in his heart she had left. Tears sprung to my eyes. I had never thought my enemy could ever have been so vulnerable, and I began to feel ashamed. However, the lesson was far from over.

“Now here,” came the command, as the shimmering presence continued to stand before me. I bowed my head, beginning to feel ashamed of my eagerness to destroy this man.

“I understand now,” I began, “I realize…”

“Touch here,” it said again, making it clear that refusal wasn’t an option. My hand reached out towards the transparent councilman’s intestines, into a purplish hole that perforated the colon. As I touched it, I experienced the crushing damage to the man’s esteem that nothing could abate. The self-loathing was literally eating a hole inside him that no amount of food, sex, power, or wealth could ever fill. I was completely shaken, and could only nod. The ‘body’ of the councilman vanished, and a new body appeared before me.

“Cut him in half,” I was told. This time I did so without hesitation. The two halves cleanly parted, and I could see within the glowing pieces once more. To my astonishment, it was my own father. I became afraid as I loved him so dearly, but always felt there was a wall between us I could never get through.

“Touch here,” the Being said, indicating a darkened mass within my father’s brain. I did so and experienced the unvarnished horror he had faced in World War II as a young soldier right out of school. Rushed through college and ROTC, he was a fresh-faced Second Lieutenant, a gentle, thoughtful man forced to carry a gun and shoot strangers in order to defend his country and stay alive. Through his eyes, I saw him thrown into battle as his own men fell and died all around him, his best friend’s body in a ditch with blood oozing out of several bullet holes and the many rotting corpses of soldiers lining the road as his unit moved closer to the front. I felt his revulsion as he quickly slit an enemy’s throat with a knife while on night patrol, a soldier as young as he, leaving him in anguish that haunted him all his life, the intimacy of the killing continually fresh in his feverish dreams. His idealistic Boy Scout’s view of the world died its own death on the muddy battlefields of World War II and left a black spot of personal angst in its place. In two weeks, both the Captain and First Lieutenant had been killed, leaving him, at age 21 the Captain in charge of 200 men, and his desire to get as many of them safely home as possible became his sole driving force, and a tenuous hold on a reason to live.

“Now here,” came the command, and my finger caressed a small white spot on his liver. My brain recoiled in reaction to the alcohol that he had used to numb the unbearable pain of the war and its inescapable memories. I remember him telling me that he would still awaken in the middle of the night, bolt upright, covered in sweat, over 30 years after the war was over, because for him the war never ended, and the alcohol was the medicine he and his generation used to mask the unspeakable. Finally, I understood the wall between us, for he could never talk about the war. He knew I’d never understand it not having been there, and within his heart lived a father’s ardent prayer that I would never experience war myself. Although his love for me was undeniably strong, the need to dull the pain of his time on the fields of Italy could not be appeased, and so I finally came to understand his silence, a distance that as a child I mistook for disapproval and rejection. Tears came to my eyes as I began to more fully understand my father as I never could before, but before I could speak, his outline vanished and my mother’s appeared in its place.

I needed no instruction this time. My sword sliced the transparent avatar before me, and it opened evenly as had the others. I was struck immediately by the great numbers of discolorations and imbedded figures inhabiting her interior, more than my father and even more than the pathetic councilman, a man I now pitied as being irreparably damaged by forces beyond his control. Her heart held several strange shapes of various shades — I touched one carefully, knowing I had to, yet feeling I was somehow invading her privacy, a feeling I had not had with my father’s likeness. A small, yellow curled-up form attracted my attention for some reason, and as I touched it I experienced a young girl’s frustration at being held in emotional prison by her mother and father, both missionaries in India during the British Raj. She went to a boarding school far from home, cruel and impersonal to her adventurous spirit, the piano teacher smacking her knuckles with a ruler for playing a bit of jazz instead of the assigned tedium of scales. I felt the pain on the back of my own hands as her memory flowed through me, and understood it was the insult to her independence as much as the physical blow that caused the resentment that burrowed inside her and took up a permanent, smoldering residence.

She came back to the United States as a young woman and earned her Bachelor’s Degree and then later a Master’s in Piano, a subtle act of defiance against the British martinet that punished her so many years past. Not satisfied with mere degrees, however, she then learned to fly a biplane, and I could sense the daredevil exhilaration in her heart as she performed Immelmanns, and flew so close to the ground that the bottom of the plane had grass stains when she returned to the hangar. She became so proficient that she taught flying to others during the war, a female instructor almost unheard of in those days. Another figure, blue this time inside the spleen, and her desire to conquer the stage came to life. She left the skies and took up residence in post-war New York in Greenwich Village, began auditioning and started getting parts on Borscht Belt comedies, off-Broadway plays, and even had a spot on the Ed Sullivan Show, a big deal back in those days. My father, who had also gone into the theatre after the war, got cast with her in a touring company. They fell in love, married, and two years later I came along.

Her resentment of my existence came as a complete shock to me at first. I remembered her as a loving, caring mother who, like many women of the day, put her children’s interests first, tending me when I was ill, getting me to school, cooking an endless supply of mediocre meals. Touching the blood red spot on her heart, however, revealed that I was not a child who had been planned — and thus, interrupting her rise to stardom. Suddenly, little pieces of my childhood life fell into place. Her drinking, the little comments about how difficult her life was, the muffled arguments with my father I could only half hear from my bedroom, the overly dramatic ‘sacrifices’ she kept making while making sure everyone around her noticed, all the while continuing to present the carefully crafted front of contented wife and mother. I withdrew my hand and the figure disappeared.

“So,” I said quietly to the luminous energy hovering nearby, “now I understand.” I began to sit, but its voice commanded me to stay.

“There is one more,” it remarked, and another transparent outline of a human figure loomed into focus before me, this one oddly familiar. The Being nodded towards it, silently directly me to cut it. I reluctantly did so and my own interior opened before me. There, embedded within my body’s muscles and organs were echos of what I had seen within my parents, but there were also colors and images unique to me. There was the childhood trauma of getting lost in an enormous parking lot at age three at a summer theatre festival, and my helplessness and disappointment that no one had come looking for me. A green and red circle held my anger at my former wife’s dishonesty about her affair, and my inconsolable grief that followed the ending of our childless marriage, a grief that lingers to this day. I then touched a gray, throbbing streak on my large intestine and an emotional avalanche slammed me, along with an understanding of why I had been as arrogant in my successes as I had been, for buried deep within my subconscious was the understanding that I was not wanted, and that simply by existing, I had both hurt and enraged my mother such that her own alcoholism led to her early death. My arrogance, and indeed much of my public persona was a shield to protect my profound lack of self esteem and abandonment. My own self-hatred lay bare before me and I wept, for I knew it to be the truth. I could see how I had kept the world at bay, detaching myself from any emotional connection so that no one would come to see how awful a creature I really was.

During this time, the Being said nothing, waiting patiently for me to experience each damaged piece of my Self. I sat on the bed, weeping, recognizing the honesty of my inner landscape and how I had behaved in the past… and why. The campaign against corrupt pols was yet another bulwark at bolstering a rapidly collapsing sense of worth, the Pulitzer just another empty, shiny bauble to put on a shelf to impress those who dared to get too close.

Then, it all fell away. The pain, the shame, the grief, the betrayals, the self-abnegation… the entire facade of my corporeal existence fell away and I could see myself as I truly was. Even now, I find it hard to describe other than to say, we’re all perfect. No one is more aware than I how ridiculous this sounds, as I had carved out a considerable niche for myself as a chronicler of human folly. Yet, there it was, displayed before me as a vision no one could misinterpret. My transparent avatar hovered before me clean of the infestations I’ve described, empty of the ‘non-human’ influences that had controlled me for so long. Floating behind my own astral image were thousands, perhaps millions of similar figures, slightly out of focus, as if just out of reach, and in my understanding, I knew these beings constituted the entirety of the human race.

Above: Gray steel sword on ground during daytime, by Ricardo Cruz on Unsplash