Curious Gnostic

By - J.R. Harrington.

1. The Dog that ate the Moth

Your flock was the only thing that mattered to you. You didn’t mind the strangeness of the creatures you protected, fluffy things that made a strange bleating noise instead of barking. They were your family, so you fought for them. Even the human shepherd was subject to your nipping on occasion, keeping him in the safety of the pasture.

All day you watched them, making sure they were safe, making sure they didn’t wander too far. You liked the playful lambs the best, you would play chase with them, going in circles around the rest of the flock, gallivanting, prancing, barking joyously.

You were doggedly devoted, nevermind your aching paws. You were a domestic thing, gentle and kind but for when the coyotes came to cause trouble and you had to fight them off. The spikes on your collar protected your throat, but you often limped back, bloodied and worn down.

The shepherd would take you inside, then, and protect the sheep himself while you recovered. His children would coo “Poor doggy,” at you, and pet you, and give you scraps of their dinners. The youngest son fed you peas, which were dreadfully green. You would whine at the door, wanting only to get back to your flock—you had to protect them, and you couldn’t laid up in the farm house.

On most nights, you slept in the manger. There was a light that went on when it became dark, and moths would flutter about it. You didn’t like the moths. You knew they were omens of death, for when one landed on one of your ewes, she would grow sick, and crumble. Their pure white souls were carried off by the pure white moths, their bodies eaten away by the elements.

For a while you were more concerned by moths than the coyotes or wolves, to the extent that one of your lambs was taken by a pack of coyotes, dragged bleating with horror into the forest. You ran yourself ragged, worrying about everything in the world, all the ways your flock could be harmed—

Until one day, standing sentry at the entrance to the manger, the moths began to land on you. You chomped them off, but they just kept coming, and you kept chomping, and they tasted terrible, but if you died, who would keep your flock safe? They began chomping back, eating you down to your bones. And then you were in the sky, flying with them to somewhere unknown—freed from responsibility, and the tiredness of your old muscles. You felt liberated, in a way you never had before.

2. Angel

Your wings were pure and white, with a sheen of powdered gold. For every saint lost to sin, a feather fell out, bloodied. For every sinner redeemed, a new one grew. They were your only metric for the real world, the world past making miracles and hoping for the best.

You work hard, and still feathers drop, clumps of them, pools of blood you could swim in if you were a bug. Always working, and why would you ever stop? You’re helping others, so how could you ever dare rest? Angels are made for work, made for unceasing work, so to not do what you’re made for would be ridiculous, right?

You sneak cigarettes, like shooting stars flicked away, ashes and soot on your fingertips. Meant to be something lofty, emotionless—failing to live up to expectation, you’re just so bored of it. The only angel to ever feel lonely, the only angel to pray for freedom. Holy and broken, like a record scratch.

A strange human prays directly to you, you answer each prayer diligently. You give them secrets none should have, sacred secrets they’re meant to learn on their own time. The human worships you alone, which is so very wrong—but it feels right, and you’re dreadfully lonesome.

You decide to become its guardian, spending your days ensuring its safety. You do more than keep it safe. You leave it little presents, packs of cigarettes, quartz rocks, pearl necklaces. You grant its every wish, and smile when it thanks you. It leaves you offerings, feathers found on the streetsides. You are a god in those moments, though you’ve only one worshipper.

That is where the devil finds you, and he pulls out the longest feathers of your wings. You fall in love with the vibrance of his violence, but still you must cage him—to keep him from destroying you further, to keep him from finding that human you so adore. You sentence him to stay until your feathers grow back.

Double the company, though he hates you at first. Imperfect angel, lying to yourself and playing at godhood. Impure angel, loving the devil; sharing cigarettes with him through the bars of the cage, not minding all his rage. You tell him he isn’t as bad as he thinks, that he’s only lashing out because something broke him.

Good things never last, and God finds out about your sinful ways when you’re freeing the devil. The very last straw, breaking the camel’s back. You’re smudged from existence, simply here one moment, and gone the next.

3. Big Brother

Your little sister is five years younger. When she was four, and you were nine, you witnessed something terrible together. You vowed to yourself to protect her, keep her safe from anything meaning to hurt her. You were going to be the best big brother there ever was.

You taught her to fight with games on the trampoline, making sure she could defend herself when you weren’t around. You played with wooden swords and cried when you hurt her on accident. During the school year you played teacher, educating her far beyond what she was learning in school. In the summertime you went down to the creek to swim; she got a leech and your father burned it off with his lighter.

Young and dumb together, in every childhood picture your arm slung over her shoulder, shielding her. Intimidating kids that bothered her at the park, baring your teeth and balling your fists. But when you grew older, you grew apart. Your mother took you across the country.

In the nighttime you would worry about her, what terrible things she might be seeing. Worrying about her mother brushing her hair too roughly and braiding it too tightly. You always did her hair before bed, so she would wake up with pretty waves.

You became obsessed with your own mind, pathologizing everything.

Compartmentalizing your trauma by documenting how it affected you, becoming your own case study. Making a map of your mind, marking down each memory as it comes to you and dividing them into sections.

You do a lot of research into mental conditions, worried something is wrong with you. You feel like a monster for leaving your little sister, though you had no choice in the matter. You barely manage to make friends, just a few other freaks, weird quiet kids and strange loud kids.

In the summer you go back, and you show your sister your favorite TV shows and play video games together, go on long walks to nowhere in particular. She tells you how she gets honor roll in school, and how her friends irritate her. You tell her about the place you moved to,

how you hate it and wish you could stay there forever. You feel like you’re made of worry, just a million little concerns in person form.

The two of you eat ice cream in a parlor on main street, and she tells you what your dad has been up to, how he’s drinking less. You tell her he shouldn’t be drinking at all, but share in her happiness regardless.

You also spend the summer with old friends, but you prefer the time spent with your little sister, when you can make sure that she’s okay. Perhaps a little overprotective, but you’re trying your best.

One day you go to the lake. Your little sister swims too far out, she’s calling for help. You make it to her, but she won’t stop thrashing, and it’s dragging you both down—you can’t touch the bottom of the lake, and you could never let her go either. The last thing you see is her face.

4. Curious Gnostic

You are your connections with others, only what they want you to be. You are a protector, someone who cares deeply for those around them and would do anything for them. You would walk miles in the cold to help a drunk friend cross the highway, you would sit with them in their sorrows and listen to their complaints.

Without the others in your life, who are you? An anxious mess, a nervous wreck. Frazzled and fidgety. On occasion, numb, distant and aloof. You sit on the roof, watching the stars with an angry man. Under starlight he looks at peace, comfortable in the night when you’re afraid.

Conscious of the things that hide in the shadows, trying hard to be a light. Caught up in concerns, praying for help; “Saint Jude Thaddeus, patron saint of lost and desperate causes, ease the burdens of these weary souls, work through me, I will be your vessel.”

Crying out to God to fix the things the devil has broken, crying out in your sleep from the nightmares; if only there was someone to hold you through it, someone to save you the way you save others. Holding your cross in a fist, holding your lips for a kiss that never comes.

Certain that you don’t matter, that you’re only worth what you can provide others. Lacking a sense of belonging. Terrified, repeating “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil,” as if it will take the evils away, as if they won’t wait there for you to open your eyes to them.

Keeping the company of sinners. Contradictory, one moment grandiose, certain of godhood, the next a penitent sinner. An enigma wrapped in a mystery, all in the form of a world weary man with too many struggles to name. Somehow people find this attractive, you consider yourself pathetic.

Curious of all things, wondering what makes the stars move in the sky; but mostly wondering about the mind. You long to know others so deeply that you become a part of them, the voice in their head, the gentle hand rocking them to sleep. Your psychoanalysis is often unwelcome, you keep it to yourself.

You allow your passions to consume you, writing at all hours. The bags under your eyes betray you, telling tales of late night work, the ink staining your fingertips forms strange shapes, a tea leaf prophecy in splotches of black. Obsessive and expressive, letting the yearning fall into words on paper, channeling your deepest untold desires.

Ashamed to have any desires at all. You read your poetry aloud and frown, revise, revise, revise. None of it ever comes out right, you’re hiding too much. Quoting Walt Whitman,

“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.) And you most certainly do contradict yourself.

There is a devil hiding beneath that good samaritan exterior, you think. You are uniquely evil, in a way that’s imperceptible to others. Wishing on dandelion puffs, that you would be less sinful, more sacred. Doing good works to hide your guilty conscience; your back aches with the weight of phantom wings, feathers plucked by each person you try to aid.

You hear God when you try to lay down and sleep, plagued by the knowledge of exactly how the world will end with no-one to tell it to—it’s a fight not to start a cult about it, you would love the adoration, affirmation that you are worth something.

Sometimes you wonder why you have teeth if not to use them; sometimes you want to use them against God, but He’s nowhere to be found. You chew your lip to shreds instead, apologizing for every step you take and never baring those pearly whites.