Renee Re the Parade

Renee closed the dormitory door behind her and leaned against it, her back pressed to the wood, her legs barely holding her up.

The room was dark, the only light coming from the gray sky filtering through the window. The pickaxe was still in her hands, warm to the touch, though the orange glow had long since faded. She could still feel the echo of the battle in her muscles, the ache in her arms, the dull throb behind her eyes.

She did not know what the golem meant. A test from Dwalin? A trap from the Wanderer? A message from Moradin? Or perhaps all three at once, a knot of intentions she could not untangle.

But she knew one thing: the connection with Moradin had intensified during the battle. For those few minutes, his voice had been clear, urgent, present. And then it had faded, leaving her alone again, with only the fading warmth of the pickaxe to remind her that he had ever been there.

She set the pickaxe on the bed, wrapped it in the cloth, and sat down beside it. Her hands were trembling. She looked at them, at the dirt under her fingernails, at the small cuts from the shattered clay. Then she reached for her phone.

The screen lit up. No new messages. She opened the conversation with Izzie and stared at the cursor, blinking in the empty message box.

"Are you okay?"

She typed the words, then deleted them.

"I'm sorry about today."

Deleted.

"Please don't go."

She stared at the last one for a long moment. Then she deleted it too, and locked the phone, and tossed it onto the pillow.

She could not text her. What would she even say? That she had fought a monster made of clay? That she had heard a god's voice in her head? That she was terrified of losing the one person who had ever looked at her and seen something other than a body or a joke?

Izzie had her own life. Her own choices. Her own future. And Renee had no right to hold her back.

She lay back on the bed, her head sinking into the pillow, and stared at the ceiling. She ed.

It came without warning, the way memories sometimes do, unbidden and unwelcome. She ed the day when she had returned to school. She ed the whispers, the laughter behind cupped hands, the way the boys looked at her with something new in their eyes, a hunger that had not been there before.

She ed the locker room. The cold air on her skin. The ropes on her wrists. The voices of the football team, loud and eager, as they realized what had been delivered to them. She ed the parade.

She ed the zip ties on her ankles, the shoelaces on her wrists, the cold metal of the truck's grille against her back. She ed the lights of the city ing by, the faces of the crowd, the cameras recording every inch of her exposed skin. She ed the tape on her nipples, the tape on her lower lips, the small mercy that had only made her feel more naked, more exposed, more humiliated.

She ed the laughter.

And then, as she lay there with her eyes closed, something shifted.

The memory did not fade. It deepened. The laughter grew distant, and the landscape around her began to change. The streets of Oakvale dissolved, replaced by dusty roads, by low stone buildings, by a sky that was too bright, too harsh, too ancient.

The ropes on her wrists became something else. The zip ties on her ankles became something else. The pain in her shoulders, her arms, her chest, it was still there, but it was different now, sharper, deeper, a pain that came from nails, not ropes.

She opened her eyes and saw a city in the distance. Not Oakvale. Not any city she knew. A city of sand and stone, of domes and walls, of people in strange clothes who stood before her, watching. She was not in the parade anymore.

And then she heard the thoughts. Not her own. Someone else's. Someone who was living what she was seeing, feeling what she was feeling, thinking what she could never have imagined.

"I cannot breathe. That is what no one understands. It is not the pain in my wrists, it is not the blood running down the wood, it is not the thorns tearing my forehead... It is that I cannot breathe."

"The hanged body is a thing that was not made to be hanging. The shoulders rise, the chest sinks, and the air enters like sand. Each breath is a decision. I could simply not pull the next breath. No one forces me to continue. The cross holds me, but it does not force me to breathe. I breathe because I want to. And I want to because life, even now, even like this, still seems to me too good to be abandoned without a last look. It is a solitary choice. No angel witnesses it. No God applauds it. The sky is closed like a bronze door and I am alone with my own desire to live."

"Below me the city behaves as it always has. It es. It buys. It sells. It comments. The soldiers cast dice. The priests pray. The women carry water. The children point. Some weep, but they weep for themselves, because the death of a man is always an uncomfortable mirror. Those who call themselves good by and look away, and in the looking away is all the judgment they need to make. They do not condemn me with words. They condemn me with haste. With the relief that it is not I who am nailed there. The city is a machine for producing innocence. Everyone comes out clean. Everyone washes their hands. Pilate washed his and did not even realize the gesture would become eternal."

"They will build a religion on this. I see it already. It is not another prophecy, it is only human nature seen up close. They will take my failure and call it victory. They will take my death and turn it into currency. They will take my cross, this instrument of slow torture, and hang it on the breasts of women and men as if it were an ornament. They will call me king and give me a throne I never wanted. They will turn me into what I always fought: an idol, a regulation, a fear."

"And they will invent heaven and hell. I already see them being drawn by hands that never touched a wound. Heaven will be the reward of those who obey. Hell, the punishment of those who do not. And I, who never spoke of reward or punishment, will be the door to both. What strange power they will give me. What strange power they will take from me."

Renee thought of the Wanderer. Of his words in the dream. Of his certainty that the world was empty, that love was a lie, that sacrifice was meaningless. And she heard, in the voice of the dying man, the same sorrow, the same weariness, but transformed into something else. Not something empty. Something that refused to look away.

"I think about this and understand something that perhaps can only be understood here, with arms open and air running out. I understand why people want something afterward. It is not out of love for life. It is out of weariness with it. No one wants an afterlife in order to continue being who they are. They want an afterlife in order to escape who they were. They want a second chance that does not require conversion, a justice that does not require forgiveness, a tribunal that will do for them what they did not have the courage to do. They want to see their enemies burning. They want those who triumphed over them to fall at last. Heaven is the desire of the humiliated to humiliate. Hell is the desire of the resentful to punish. I know this poison. It lives in the hearts of those who call themselves good and of those who call themselves oppressed. It is the same poison with different names."

"If there were a beyond, I think, and if it were just, who could bear to look at himself for all eternity? Who could endure being who he is, without the excuses of the world, without the noise of the crowd, without the excuse of the flesh? No one. That is why they invent a beyond in which they will be others. That is why they invent a heaven that is only the revenge of the weak. I do not want that heaven. I do not want that hell. I want the sun on my face, the bread divided, the wine in my mouth, the hand of a woman, the laughter of a friend, the silence of a morning before any word. I want the life I am losing. And that is what hurts me more than the nails: I love this life. I love it too much. I love it to the point of accepting its loss without cursing the one who took it from me."

"I spoke of a kingdom. No one understood. They keep waiting for a throne, an army, a reversal. The kingdom I announced is not here nor afterward. It is among you, when you stop hating one another for an instant, when you share bread without calculating, when you look at the other without wanting to convert him. It is not an institution. It is not a doctrine. It is not a book. It is an instant. An instant that does not let itself be captured. That is why they will betray me. They will turn the instant into law. They will turn freedom into obligation. They will turn love into dogma. And then they will adore me and not follow me. They will quote me and not hear me. They will build cathedrals over the place where I only wanted someone to breathe with me."

"Few will understand. Perhaps none. Perhaps understanding is always a late thing, a posthumous thing, a thing that arrives when it is no longer good for anything. What I know is that I cannot come down from the cross. It is not pride. It is that coming down would deny everything I lived. It would say that truth depends on the result. It would say that love is only worth it if it wins. It is not worth it. Love is worth it because it is. Truth is worth it because it is. And I will not betray myself to save my skin. Not only because I am strong. Because I am stubborn. Because there is in me a fidelity I cannot explain, a fidelity to what I saw and what I said, even if no one saw it and no one understood."

"The crowd is the lie. I always knew. The crowd has no face, no name, no responsibility. The crowd crucifies and then goes to lunch. The individual is the one who suffers. The individual is the one who chooses. The individual is the one who answers. And I answer alone, as I always answered, even when I was surrounded by people. The anguish I feel now is not new. It accompanied me from the beginning, from the first time I realized that no one can die in my place and that I cannot die in anyone's place. Each one carries his own weight. Each one jumps his own leap. And my leap is into the dark."

"My Father is silent. If he exists, he is silent. If he does not exist, the silence is the same. I do not know which of the two hypotheses is more terrible. The faith I had was not certainty. It was a leap. And now, at the end, the leap is into the dark. Without a net. Without a promise. Without consolation. Only the dark. And still I leap. Not because I expect something. Because leaping is what I am."

"I will die at thirty-three. I did not see enough. I did not love enough. I did not drink enough. I did not dance enough. Life is short and I wasted it in arguments with men who did not want to understand. I should have gone home earlier. I should have stayed longer with those who loved me. I should have laughed more. Now all that is a country I will not visit again. And yet, if I were given the chance to go back, I do not know if I would change much. Perhaps I would change everything... Perhaps nothing... Yes... Nothing. The life I lived was the life I chose, even when it seemed I was not choosing. And there is a strange dignity in that, a dignity no one can take from me, not the nails, not the mockery, not death."

"I accept. Not because it is just. Because it is mine. Because it is what fell to me. And because, deep down, I never wanted anything other than to live in such a way that my whole life would be a yes, even when the whole world says no. I say yes. I say yes to pain, to abandonment, to the cross, to the dark. I say yes to the life that slips through my fingers. I say yes."

"And now the air runs out. And I still want to breathe. And that is perhaps the only prayer I learned: I want to breathe. I want to live. I want. I want. I want. And even without an answer, even without heaven, even without anything, still I want. And in that wanting, which is all I have, I give myself up."

And then, one last time, softer than a whisper, the voice spoke.

"It is accomplished."

Renee opened her eyes.

She was in her bed, in the dormitory, the gray light of evening filtering through the window. The pickaxe was beside her, still wrapped in cloth. Her face was wet with tears.

She did not move for a long moment. She just lay there, staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of what she had just experienced