Genesis 4:10

[mattknox]

The camera comes on in the interior of an old, elaborate church. The stainglass windows provide the dim room with an ethearal spectacle of a light show that specs of dust are just too happy to dance thru, carried in the arms of a silent breeze creeping in from who knows where?

The camera slowly pans through the rows of empty pews, silence filling the scene as it closes in on the pulpit when suddenly..

“And the Lord said unto Cain, where is your brother?”

The voice of Matthew Knox cut the silence, his form seemingly appearing from nothing in the front pew, his back to the camera. After a heartbeat, he repeated.

“And the Lord said UNTO CAIN….WHERE IS YOUR BROTHER?!”

The camera slowly pans around to find Matthew Knox dressed in an ensemble befitting a gravekeeper, black from the waistcoat to the wingtips that offered only a dull gray to break up the bleakness. A storm cloud upon an inky sky. His glasz eyes blazed past the face paint he’d adorned, hair slicked back and mouth flat even as he screamed the scripture.

Slowly, he leaned forward toward the camera causing the wood of the old pew to creak, though he was sure his own knees could have been the culprit for the sound.

“Where is your brother, Gregor?” the question came in a rasp of a whisper, followed soon by a low chuckle that seemed to bounce off the stone walls. He stood to his full height then, approaching the pulpit in smooth strides like a black spectre.

“You speak so openly of the life you two shared. In reverence, disgust and disappointment. An enforcer…a right hand…a brother. And you let him die….or did you perhaps do the deed yourself?

He leaned over the pulpit, gently thumbing the dust covered bible upon open to a random spot.

“Did you strike down your brother, mark yourself Cain? Had you grown tired of being your brother’s Keeper, Gregor? Was your heart ever really in it?” a pause, he leans over the pulpit, closer to the camera as he gazes down at it “I bet you were playing him from the moment he thought he was tisting you up, eh Gregor?”

“Or, that’s how I suspect you’d tell the tale eventually, when your villain arc is set into motion. It will of course be a lie, like the rest of you…” his face flattened in expression once more, an eyebrow arching “You…do know that we can all see through this lie of yours, right Gregor?”

He walks around the pulpit then, one hand resting on the book via a fingertip, acting almost as an anchor as he begins circling the pulpit while speaking.

“Yours is a face I’ve seen a hundred thousand times, and a face I’ve bloodied millions more. A man so detestable, so boring that he has stopped living for his god and instead appointed himself to the role. Hell, you even replaced your father’s god with a god that you likely proved otherwise to appoint yourself to the position…”

“Ambitious, flawed, foolish…..and boring. So unbelievably God. Damn. Boring!” his arm swings then, crashing into the side of the pulpit and sending it crashing over. The bible upon it spins off its perch, landing upon the ground with a ‘thud’ that accompanies the cloud of dust its impact kicks up. Matthew stands above both podium and scripture, chest heaving as a scoffing chuckle escapes him.

“You’ve got to be fucking with me, right? You’ve got to be mad that I didn’t treat this place better when I was here first, right? Bitter that I set a record because I could. Because it took me the same amount of physical strain that a walk to the corner store does…” he turns his gaze to the camera, eyes narrowing “You’re wanting to bury me, silence me in mediocrity for what i’ve done and keep doing to your locker room…”

He raises a foot, shoving the podium down the three steps to where the pews were. He slowly took a seat upon the top step, running a hand through his hair as he collected himself, allowing another low, drawn out chuckle.

“I’ve apologized, haven’t I? I left this place to drown, turned a blind eye to the cancer eating it alive when I was one of the few who could do something about it….and because of my blindness, I suppose i’ll be doomed to this ire even after i’ve removed the tumor, no?”

He shakes his head, waving the rant off.

“Forgive me Gregor, I drawl on about matters far bigger than you. See, for the size of the role you’ve crafted yourself in your fantasy? I’m afraid the reality is much starker for you.” He licked his lips, a half smile forming, White teeth shining agains the black covering his lips “You’re just another victim. Another bag of blood and bones they’ve thrown at me to demolish…another layer of the meat shield between me and that cancer.”

“And with you, they’ve shown their most desparate hand yet. In you, they have gone with the last, desparate resort of brute force. A ‘modern day Viking’ who’s might they swear will make right, this arrogant fool who dares to keep starting fires within their house. Fires no one has been able to put out, or stop him front starting.”

The smile broadens as he raises a finger, pointing into the lens of the camera.

“You’re going to burn for them, Gregor. You’re going to suffer because they have sent you to do so. Sure, you’ll fight it. Of course you will, strong as you are. Big as you are. Big as I am.

You will fight.

You will lose.

Then you will go way. To where? I cannot say that I know, or care..”

He stood up with an almost unnatural fluidity, going and retrieving the discarded bible and beginning to flip through the pages as he paces the stage, each footstep like a distant roaring thunder in the confined and hollow space.

“I am the price that men like you pay for your hubris, Gregor. I am the wrath of the God you forsook for the one you replaced. I’m the bill long come due for you thinking any of us cared to share in your jumbled fantasy.”

“A modern day viking, living on a private island with a legion of followers for a church with no real God or message?” he looked up from the good book then, eyes narrowing “I can’t imagine the struggle you endure, being stupid, boring and a liar.”

He stops before a table at the end of the stage, decorated with a faded red velvet cloth. Upon it, a dusty old bottle of wine and wafers long gone to staleness sat. Matthew smirked, reaching out and taking a handful of the wafers. He turned to the camera, slowly crumbling the,.

“All your might, All your intent to MODify your path through the collection of my corpse crumbles to dust along with your bones come Odyssey, Gregor…and your blood…” he reached the same hand out, taking the bottle of wine and uncorking it with relative ease. He raises it above his head , pouring the liquid to the stone floor below and upon the discarded wafer bits “Will flow from each wound, a reminder of the toll you paid for daring to be in my way…”

He tossed the bottle offscreen, the sound of shattering glass cutting the eerie silence as he leaned closer to the camera then even as it zoomed in, catching and holding the murderous gaze he held for Gregor Winter and anyone else who watched the transmission.

“And as you lay there in the fresh, seering hell of the price you paid? Thank those who put you in my path. Thank Angel Blake’s mouth, thank his wife’s prattling, and his step son’s idiocy. Thank Nick Knight for sealing the IWF’s fate by throwing in with the cowardice Sabin and Blake showed..”

“And then, when that last breath rattles from your lungs? I want you to use it to Thank Me. Thank me for putting you in your place, and taking the grand weight of expectation off your less than capable shoulders….Thank me for destroying the burden of Godhood to all the fools who looked to you and saw it…

Thank me for the Mercy of your pointless, worthless End.

I am Raze. I am Ruin.

I am The Raven….

…UnMODifiable…”

He looked down to the book in his hand, at where his finger had stopped scanning. He looked back up, and read aloud.

“Romans 2:5…But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,

I’ll see you Friday, Gregor.”