****
After what seemed like hours, we reached what looked like an open ventilation shaft that jutted out from one of the walls of the elevator shaft. Father Sylvanus and Doshar had already leapt over and both were signaling to us to join them. I took a breath and with one great leap I landed on the steel platform in front of the shaft. Soon we were crawling through the shaft, bent forward. This led to another opening, and we found ourselves in a low-ceilinged crawlspace, resembling a steel-grated catwalk, above an empty hallway below.
“Hurry,” Father Sylvanus urged us, “Master Zule will only remain in his Contentment Chamber until a few hours before sunrise. We only have a short window of opportunity to get to him.” We followed obediently. The crawlspace led past the hallway and over a large, circular room. The steel grating that we moved along crossed over the center of the room. When I looked down at what was happening inside it, I gasped.
Below us were row upon row of unmasked, unrobed individuals. Each wore only a white strip of cloth that covered their private parts. They all lay together side by side, with barely a few inches between them. Though their eyes looked up at us, they didn’t seem to see anything. The frightening part was, upon each of their faces was a wide, toothy smile. The room was enveloped with mist, I realized, that floated a few inches above the floor. I shuddered.
Slowly, inch by inch, we began to carefully crawl along the steel grating across the room. Each of us moved silently, fearful of making any noise that would disturb the dozens of intoxicated beings that smiled up at us from below. My palms and knees ached as I crawled forward, my breathing becoming more laborious, my muscles searing in pain. My heart pounded as I watched my shadow pass over them, their wide, smiling grins, their white, glistening teeth, their unseeing dead eyes.
Suddenly, the steel grating below me began to shake underneath my weight, and before I could grab onto the railing beside me the panel below me gave way. I shouted as I clawed for the steel grating in front of me, my legs falling out from under me and into the void below. With all of my strength, I was able to hang on to the remaining grating with the tips of my fingers. My hands shook in agony as they bore the weight of my entire body.
At that second, I looked down, and my chest tightened. The dislodged panel tumbled through the void towards the bottom of the room, and a split-second later it clattered to the floor, just missing one of the revelers by a few inches. As I struggled to pull myself up, the sound of the impact echoed up through the room and my ears seared in pain.
“Quick, give me your hand!” The open palm of Father Sylvanus reached forward for me, and I took it, and he began to pull me forward and back up onto the grating. Before he could completely pull me up, however, he froze.
There was movement below. The bodies began to stir. The eyes began to blink. The smiles became twisted, and turned into frowns, grimaces even. Several of them began to shift from side to side, groaning, wondering what could have disturbed their hypnotic trance. Just then, one of them sat up in the far side of the room, pointed at us, and let out a terrifying scream. The others suddenly began to spring up all over the room, murmuring among themselves, pointing up at us in anger.
With one great tug, Father Sylvanus pulled me back up onto the grating completely, and fell back in exhaustion. “We must go, now!” Doshar shouted back to us from the far end of the crawlspace. Father Sylvanus quickly got back up to his knees and pulled me along. As the shouting below grew louder and louder, we finally reached the end of that horrid, horrid room, and crawled along into the next one.
It was a gigantic, barren room, circular, just like the last, except it was empty. Both the curved walls and the floor were made of polished white marble and shone from the ambient light that shot up from the spotlights lining the floor along the walls. Dr. Lombardi paused in front of us, looked back at Father Sylvanus, and whispered something. He nodded back at her, sweat dripping from the corner of his brow. Then he glanced back at me, and whispered under his breath, “This is it, my Son.”
It was then that I noticed that the room was not empty at all. At the very far end, obscured from the dim lighting, I could make out a tall, slender figure. He sat on what looked like a silver throne facing away from us. And although we were a few hundred feet away, those silver locks were unmistakable. It was Master Zule.
Father Sylvanus carefully removed a panel from the steel grating below us, and untied a balled-up cord from his belt. He quickly tied one end to the steel railing, and then let the other end drop through the hole and down into the room. Then, without a word, he descended down the rope. Before I could protest, the others followed, and I soon found myself silently climbing down the rope towards the floor.
When I finally reached it, I saw that Father Sylvanus had begun sneaking his way across the center of the room, while the others were each quietly working their way along one of the side walls. The three would converge on Master Zule, I saw, at the same time. I followed Father Sylvanus across the room, remaining about twenty feet behind, making sure to hide my footsteps along the way, not daring to make a sound. We made our way across the length of the room, and I saw that to my left and to my right, Doshar and Dr. Lombardi each had their eyes locked on Father Sylvanus, taking cues from his movement. Father Sylvanus had once again pulled out his knife, and he held it at arm’s length in front of him. The figure ahead of us remained frozen, seemingly unaware of our presence, just sitting there, waiting.
I stopped when we were about ten feet away, and watched as Father Sylvanus moved forward, silently approaching the figure from behind. He made eye contact with the others, who began to move towards the figure from their respective sides of the room, knives drawn. Just as Father Sylvanus’ knife was only a few inches away from those silver locks, the figure in front of us stirred.
“Death,” the man suddenly thundered, “is one of the paths that lead to happiness. End my life, if you must, foolish man, and send me to my eternal dream. I beg of you.”
“Death without God?” Father Sylvanus chuckled to himself, “That is a path that leads only to destruction. You see, my forsaken friend, it is the pursuit of God, of the knowledge of God’s will on Earth, and progress for the sake of God’s mandate, that is the key to life, the key to everything.” His knife still trembled a few inches away from the back of Master Zule’s head. The others now stood only a few feet away, surrounding the mysterious leader of The One True Way from both sides. “God,” Father Sylvanus shouted in triumph, “He is the true key to eternal happiness, and eternal life.”
A terrifying cackle filled the gigantic room as the throne upon which the figure sat spun around. Master Zule, with those hypnotic blue eyes, stared directly at Father Sylvanus. He smiled, and his white teeth shone brightly.
“You fool,” he shouted, sending the others back a few steps, “that is where you are wrong, utterly, painfully, wrong. All of you. One touting God. The other science. The last spiritual oneness. Each of you are fools. You each deny the truth.”
Master Zule looked past Father Sylvanus, directly into my eyes, deep into my soul, exploring, with his mind, my innermost thoughts. “The truth is what I offer you. The truth, is that the worship of God, the pursuit of knowledge, the freedom of thought, these are the keys to eternal pain and misery. The truth, is that by giving up control, by giving up your faith, by giving up your desires, your expectations, your hopes, your dreams, your past, present, and future, your spirit, your soul, by giving up the elements of grief and giving them to me, I can give you something much greater. Something you all want, something everyone wants. Uninhibited happiness. That is the key.”
At that moment, something inside me seemed to awaken, and my arms and legs began to move without my control. “Nooo!” shouted Dr. Lombardi as I leapt forward and threw my hands around Father Slyvanus’ neck, choking him from behind. Master Zule sprung forward, and thrust Father Sylvanus’ knife into his own heart, squirting dark streams of blood on the priest’s stunned face and my clenched hands. As
Doshar threw himself towards us, Master Zule pulled the knife from Father Sylvanus’ chest, and in one fluid motion, jabbed it into Doshar’s stomach. The dark-skinned man’s face was frozen in a look of pain and agony. A second later the knife was flying through the air and striking Dr. Lombardi in the head, impaling itself in her brow. Her body dropped to the floor with a thud.
I stood there, with the crumpled body of Father Sylvanus at my feet, breathing heavily, shocked at what I had done. Master Zule stood in front of me, staring at me with those mesmerizing blue eyes, smiling. It was at that moment that I knew. I had discovered the truth, after all these years. Finally, esteemed readers, I had found the key to eternal happiness.
Modus Operandi is part of the In-Futura ( In the future… ) short story collection
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