Becoming Nothing

AUTHOR: This is the next chapter in The ShambElla Saga, where we'll hear a new Doosermon...

NARRATOR: You're not going to call it that. Surely.

AUTHOR: I just did. It's up there in the subtitle too. How d'ya like that?

NARRATOR: I don't, but I'll work with what's in front of me, I guess...

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Becoming Nothing

As they sat pondering Sam’s question (Why us?) the EYEGOONS rumbled to life. Ella pulled it out of her pocket.

They gathered around the small screen, which showed Doose sitting on a stool in the middle of a seemingly empty room, bass in hand.

The song that played was sad, but the words stirred something deep in the companions, something elusive but tangible, a knowledge of something hidden which can’t be spoken outright, not because it is impossible to understand, but because it can’t be expressed or perceived directly.

Your evil has no power over my indifference.

I found a way out through logic and inference.

You’re still living trapped inside, the same old lie, succumbing.

I tried to break your bonds, but you’re addicted to the numbing.

Becoming…

…nothing.

When the song ended, Doose spoke:

“There are those of us who will drag others down into the darkest depths to indulge our own envy and spite.

Then there are those of us who will plumb the darkest depths in hopes of showing others the way out.

From an outside perspective it’s difficult, if not impossible, to tell the difference.

I may have become nothing, but nothing is something if I become what I am rather than just what others would coerce or manipulate me into being.

This is the riddle of your existence, friends. I was preordained to explain, among other things.

Each of you plumbed the darkest depths. Each of you chose, in a critical moment, to reject what you were conditioned to be and become the type of person who will lead others out of the darkness.

This is why you were chosen. As for those of your loved ones who you had to watch destroy each other, I am sorry for that. Such wounds were also mine to bear.

I offer this consolation: it is not that they were bad people. Many of them had the very spark which you possess and could have been chosen in your stead. But it was precisely because they did not descend into the dark in the first place that they would not have been prepared for what you have and will continue to encounter.

So please consider that, despite their unhappy endings, they were shown mercy and grace you've yet to fully experience, though I so strongly believe in you all, that I know you will have earned it by the end.

You’re here to right what was wrong, what caused the Turning in the first place. The Beast was only one stop on your path. Next you will find a small oasis and a friend who will help you on your way, though he won’t go with you.

It’ll be unmistakable when you see it.”

Doose shook his head and laughed at some internal joke.

“Sometimes I can’t believe this shit is happening. But it will be unmistakable when you see it.”

Just then, a young woman’s voice called from off-camera: “What did you say this was for, Dad?”

Before he answered, a look passed over Doose’s face, and all the companions saw it, though he hid it very quickly.

It was the look of a man who must tell an acceptable lie, one of those lies that saves the person to whom it is told a pain the teller would never wish upon them.

A lie, yes, but one that avoids heaping insult to injury. Even an injury yet to occur.

“A theme album I’m writing, dear. One of those albums that tells a story, like Rush’s 2112 or Pink Floyd’s The Wall,” Doose replied, and then coughed, as if something got stuck in his throat.

“Let me guess,” Doose’s daughter shot back in a playful tone. “You’ll call it The Misadventures of Depressed Dude-Bro. It’ll be all about how you saved the world with your wit and wisdom while fighting a hangover!”

The last thing the companions heard as the EYEGOONS faded to black was Doose’s roaring laughter, and four words that hit them right in the heart-gut:

I love ya, kiddo…

After a brief discussion about what might lie ahead, the companions turned in for the night, but those who slept had trouble sleeping, thinking about how awful it must have been for the guy to have foreknowledge of his own kid’s untimely demise.

Knowing, as they each did, how terrible it was to behold, they were horrified by how it must have been to anticipate it while remaining powerless to stop it.

***** * *****

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