Commitment - Predatory Ethics: Book II by Athanasios Read Free Book Online Page A

you don’t have?” Despite his abhorrent background, Xar-eel was an interesting guy. I really couldn’t fault his pedigree because mine was infinitely worse. My ancestry made his look positively righteous.
    We had begun meeting and talking at coffee shops and diners. Our conversations wound around many topics, but the Storm and its Crusade kept coming around. Xar-eel continued his point.
    “Why would it be so hard to understand wanting to improve your lot?” he asked.
    One time, we left the coffee shop and were in an abandoned nineteenth-century warehouse. Xar-eel was driving his point home, explaining why he had come to earth to make a better life for himself. He continued that desire and ambition made the world go around. They made reality. I stopped listening an instant later because what I saw couldn’t be real. It staggered my senses.
    He had been making intriguing points, and some I had never contemplated. Hell was just like Earth, but everybody had a purpose. They lived to punish the sinners who fell to them. His point would’ve made a bigger impression, if I didn’t see the tribute he had had prepared.
    Any description could not compare to looking at it in the flesh.
    Oh so much flesh. A mind bending, unrelenting variety of flesh, and I couldn’t look away.
    There was a posed massacre waiting my approval. Xar-eel twirled in glee and ended in a deep bow, muttering prayers for my pleasure beneath his breath. I don’t know if I said anything. I only remember that a part of me broke off, took control, and pushed the rest dumbstruck back, deep and out of consciousness.
    Kosta was right. They would never listen. They would never do as they were told. I could rule with an iron fist, and these morons would still hurt or torture people because it was their nature.
    I noticed that Xar-eel had turned up his face from his bow to look at me and was honestly upset I didn’t like his gift. He straightened up. Deep hurt made his normally fluid movements awkward, he smoothed out a few wrinkles on his suit, and with a scoff of his throat holding back grief, left me alone. I looked out through eyes resting far too long on too many details.
    How could they keep doing this? I tried to answer, but I attacked me and blamed myself for it. I went on and said if Kosta were here he would be able to explain it all. And to think the imbecile Xar-eel believed I would like it. Each and every emotion warred against one another to make some sense and left me catatonic. Grief, outrage, horrible awe, frustration, and terrible wonder crowded too fast into a head overstuffed already.
    For an eternity my eyes moved around and pointed at each display. I let the minutia of the details take over. Unbidden my head began to name the different scenes Xar-eel had arranged. They were fiendishly inventive and unrelenting in their zeal for homage.
    Some were taken apart and put back together with separate pieces. A fat man’s torso had arms of a child, hands of a lady, and an old woman’s head. Another had its arms in place of the legs and the penis switched with the head. The scenes must’ve taken days to put together.
    A fully cast nude nativity scene complete with the three wise men in a daisy chain, cocks in asses and in a row was right beside an inverted crucifixion. The crucifixion was next to a resurrection and both were posed with a mad Daliesque genius. To one side of this biblical wing were the literary classics.
    Shakespeare was well represented by what looked like Macbeth but upon closer scrutiny was Hamlet with a young man killed at the flower of his life holding up an infant’s head as Horatio’s discovered remains. Further ahead was the Burgess’ film adaptation of Clockwork Orange with Alex De Large squatting among his eviscerated entrails and between his mates, all saluting with tall glasses of milk waiting for some ultra-violence and a little in-out. Xar-eel’s interpretation of Kubrick was putting little old ladies in the