The Man Who Sold the World

There was pain in his eyes as he descended the mountain, so sharply divergent from his ecclesiastical presuppositions that his hurt was shared by all who looked on him. The crowd had gathered. For fifteen weeks they sat under the grim peak which pierced the steely clouds and waited for him, the herd thinning as time marched on and the weather worsened. Finally, three days into the New Year, he emerged as a black speck upon the snowy mountainside, and the onlookers rejoiced at his meager form making its way down out of the clouds. Yet when they saw him more closely they frowned and hesitated - his back, formerly rigid and upright with the strength of his convictions was now stooped, his shoulders seemingly trying to break his clavicle and meet in the middle. Some thought it was the weight of his backpack, but when they saw him clearly they knew the answer was much worse.

A dead silence was upon the crowd as Peter Roseheart came into their presence again. His vivid smile and radiantly powerful eyes were gone, replaced by a haggard beard, long, unkempt black hair, and hollow cheeks. He was formerly a strong man - careless muscles were only just hidden by his cassock. Yet now his frame was wasted away, skin stretched over bones as though it were ancient, yellowed paper. In his crystalline blue eyes there was now a fractured, desiccated appearance, as though the windows to his soul had been smashed in. He tottered along for some time unsupported by them - his most avid followers. At last, a young woman whose heart was broken to see Peter like this rushed forward from in front of her tent and grabbed his arm, yelping when his skin, which should have been cold from his travels, burned her severely.

"Mr. Roseheart," said another woman, callously ignoring the groans of her compatriot as she rubbed ice on her hand, "Did you... did it work?"

He kept walking forward, a grim sneer on his face.

"Mr. Roseheart," said a man, falling to his knees in supplication of his master, "You've returned to us! I knew you would, all this time! People had doubts... a lot of them left, but I didn't! I knew it would work out-"

"You did, did you?" replied Peter, earning a gasp from the crowd. Once a powerful orator, his voice was now thin, hoarse, and as stretched as the skin on his face.

"My lord," another of his supporters, this one prostrate on the ground in front of him, "Please tell us what has come of your commune with the Almighty." He went to touch his idol's feet as he walked forward, and his skin was likewise burnt.

Peter stopped. He had not stopped walking since beginning his descent from Mount Kailash, but the sight of this helpless man who wouldn't even get up to nurse his scalded fingers was enough to cease the monotonous repetition of his steps.

"You want to know what happened?" he asked with a wry smile. A chorus of affirmative responses and eager eyes met the question. His smile widened almost unnaturally. "You may not... like what you hear."

"Please, my lord," said the man on the ground.

"Very well." Peter's small heart thundered under his ribcage as he stared out at them all. "There was no God upon that mountain, or at least, none that can fit your narrow perception. I communed with Him at the peak, but it was not what you're thinking."A strange flurry of whispers echoed through the crowd. He continued, "I went up there and did what I told you I would do. I prayed for the salvation of our souls before... whatever was up there."

"What was up there?"

"Wrath."

"But you said the Lord would be kind!"

"He is kind," said Peter in not more than a murmur, "He is wrathful because we have perverted his creation so deeply that it's beyond even the cleansing fires of Ragnarok. His ancient bride has been so utterly devastated by our presence that Her life can no longer be spared by any craft we now possess."

"What are you-"

"I felt his anger, and I felt the depths of Hell, and I know which is worse!" Peter's voice grew louder. "I was a fool to think it would be so simple to commune with God, or to believe that he would conform to my vision of him. We were all fools! I was lucky he chose to bring himself down to my level of perception..."

A dead silence followed his words, until a young man asked, "What did you... commune with him about?"

"He demanded a sacrifice be made... he demanded to test my own mettle, and that he did. What I was shown upon that mountain no living man should ever have to endure... I asked him what the sacrifice was, and he demanded a renouncement of the world."

"By you?" asked the young man.

Peter's voice grew cold and harsh, "By all of us, you simple minded idiot! I asked if His son had come forth into the world again, and he told me that he had, but that we had slain him yet again, though this time his death was in spirit, not body, and that our ostracization of one so pure was indicative of our misguided nature. He told me the Church itself had rejected His son's teachings and cast him out onto the street to die!"

"That's not-"

"Peter, are you sure you're feeling-"

"Oh, I thought you people wanted the whole story... well, I'll skip ahead. For weeks I endured His punishments as He took my body and mind away from me. I pleaded with him to forgive his creations. 'Though we may be misguided, we can learn if you simply teach us,' I said to Him, and He laughed at me. He whose hair contained the waters of the world, whose breath was the air which we breathe, and whose bride we have so callously thrown aside in a desperate attempt to subjugate her, He told me he would be willing to make a deal."

"Sir, this sounds an awful lot like a deal with the devil!"

"Lucifer would have been more reasonable than the being I met on the mountain. I saw His hands were stained red with the blood of His own brood - that He knew and felt every death upon His world. He also knew that the souls upon this world were no longer worth saving. Even those who claimed to act in kindness and compassion had become so extricated from His vision that there was no teacher who could guide them off of the divergent path. He demanded the souls of every man, woman, and child upon this Earth, but he said that he would only do it if I would agree to it."

"Why on Earth would he say that?" cried a disturbed woman.

"Because even the Almighty needs someone complicit in his crimes. He said that, if I were to cooperate, I could be spared the fate of the rest of humanity. That was his deal."

No one asked the obvious question, so Peter began walking forward again. At last someone called, "What did you answer?"

Peter stopped again, his lip trembling. His voice was thin, but strong. "I begged, prostrated in front of Him for two weeks. I didn't eat. I didn't sleep. His voice ran deep in my mind, as though it were cleaving my brain in two pieces. I felt His power then, more than I had felt it before, and I felt His conviction, and knew that mine was weaker... I said yes."

There was a stunned silence, which no one would break.

At last, Peter continued, "For my arrogance he marked me, as you have seen with your own flesh. I may touch no other man whilst I still walk this Earth, and it will be mine to walk alone once He takes your souls. He stripped me of my body, he stole away what I held most dear, and he showed me the fate which awaits all of you poor, tortured souls."

"You sold the world into Hell?" asked a man indignantly.

"Oh, nothing so dramatic, though I don't know what's worse... He promised you all a painless nonexistence - from the moment I said yes, anyone who died is just... nothing."

An explosion of shouts, screams, and demands followed Peter as he slowly marched forward again. Several people tried to grab him, hit him, or push him down, but their hands were so harshly burned that after a while they resorted to throwing things at him, though they somehow missed every shot. One man tackled Peter, but died almost immediately from the shock of his wounds. Peter pulled himself up carefully and looked back at the nearly one hundred people who had waited for fifteen weeks to see him come down the mountain. "People!" he said, his voice cracking with brittleness, "I know what I did was wrong... for my part, I apologize. I thought I was sparing you a greater faith... once I realized the alternative, I thought nothingness was a more merciful outcome!"

"That's not for you to decide!" screamed a woman hysterically, throwing a rock at him.

"I know... if you can find it in your hearts to forgive-"

"You sold the world to damnation, and you want us to forgive you?"

"No, no, not damnation! Nothingness! Look, do you remember anything from before you were born? It'll simply be like that again!"

"I would rather be tortured in Hell and at least feel alive than be nothing!"

"I... didn't think you'd see it that way. If you had been on that mountain with me, then perhaps you'd have agreed that this is the most merciful-"

"If we had been on that mountain with you," scoffed a boy no older than fifteen, "You said before you went up that it was impossible for anyone to make the journey with you!"

"How do we even know he's telling the truth?" yelled a lady suspiciously from the back of the crowd.

"You'll find it in your hearts to be true," said Peter woefully. "I didn't expect a hero's welcome... I know I wronged you all, but please, try to-"

"Go to Hell, Peter," said the woman who was the first person to burn herself on him.

He opened his mouth to speak again, but a choir of jeers made him turn his back on them and walk away. One last person asked, "How long do we have before..."

So they had begun to accept it. He said, "I don't know... could be any day now." Unaware of whether or not they had heard him, he kept walking, until he fell into a helicopter, not physically exhausted but having suffered the mental trauma of an eternity of Hell upon that mountain. There was a pilot already in the chopper, which had been arranged prior to his ascent.

"I suppose I have to take you somewhere?" She said bitterly. How she had heard him from all the way over here he didn't know. Perhaps the knowledge of doom was coming into the hearts of people all over the world, just as He had said it would.

"Take me to the Vatican, please."

***

By the time they got there, the world was in hedonistic chaos. Everyone seemed to feel their impending nonexistence, and all decorum had been thrown out accordingly. People robbed, had sex whenever and wherever they pleased, and even killed without fear of the law, as the law had ceased to be enforced. Even men of the cloth like Peter were drinking, gambling, smoking, and going to as many brothels as they could. Peter walked on the streets of the Vatican in a daze, watching the natural morality of humanity show itself as a last, panicked defense mechanism.

Along with the knowledge of doom, another piece of information seemed to be intrinsic to everyone: That Peter was the cause of it all. Everywhere he went, he saw people casting dark, hopeless looks at him, even as they sinned beyond sin. He had things thrown at him, he had people come up and try to strangle him, and he had people try to shoot him. Nothing they did harmed him. The bullets seemed to always fly askew, and anyone who touched him was hurt so severely that soon people just stuck to looking at him helplessly in rage.

He found himself in a cathedral which was being mauled by hedonism as he walked in. He kneeled before the altar and tried to contact God once again, but his pleas were met with indifference. The sound of a thousand crimes being committed around him broke his focus repeatedly, and he found that all of the prayers he had memorized at one point were gone from his memory. At last, he got up, completely defeated. He turned to find a young man looking at him with a distant gaze.

"If you could take it back, would you?" The man's voice was soft and flat.

"After seeing this... yes. When I was with Him, it seemed like a good alternative, but now... I thought that I was sparing you Hell, but it was much worse, what I gave you."

"I understand."

"You're not out there committing crimes like the rest of them?"

"Crimes? What crimes? I only see people desperately trying to wring the last few drops of joy out of their lives before they die... and no," he added with a sigh, "I spent my whole life as a criminal. It's an odd feeling - knowing you're going to die and never be reincarnated in any form. I just want my last moments to be... uneventful, I guess."

"I see. Can you find it in your heart to forgive me?" Peter couldn't keep the longing out of his voice.

"My heart? There's nothing left in there. I can't forgive you." He walked away, watching someone execute another man for no apparent reason with a dull whimsy.

Peter found such wayward souls several times as night fell on the city. Each time he asked for forgiveness with increasing despair, and each time he was met with an indifferent negation. The last person he asked was a little old woman who was strolling along the cobbled streets, dried tears cracking on her wrinkles. He asked her what she was doing, and she said that she had just had a grandson two days ago, and now they were both headed towards the same fate. She had never believed in God herself, but she had always hoped that being a decent person would keep her out of His wrath. At last, he asked her the dreaded question:

"Could you forgive me? Please, all I need is one person to lend me a hand..."

She considered him somberly for a while. "Forgive you? The man who sold the world? I would, darling, but there is nothing left to forgive of you, and nothing left of me to lend you the hand you seek." She went on walking, and was hit by a stray bullet which had been intended for Peter. She was dead before she hit the ground.

At last he found himself a comfortable bed to sleep on, which didn't have a couple on it already. He fell asleep almost instantly, and in his dreams he saw himself with the whip of the Devil, using it on his fellow man when all he had wanted to do was help.

***

When he woke up, all was quiet. There were no gunshots, no screams, no drunken laughter. He pushed himself to his feet and saw the utter ruin on the street. However, what caught his eye was the lack of people. It's done, he thought grimly. He knew it in his heart to be true. He was the last man on Earth.

He realized he wasn't hungry as he walked outside and saw the crumbling old cathedral he had visited the night prior. He debated on what to do. He could go anywhere, do anything. The world was literally his playground. His first instinct was to cry, but when the tears had dried the streets were still empty. He couldn't even find a cadaver. He thought for a minute of stopping in a bar and getting a drink, but he didn't think he could stomach it. A whole world of vices was open to him now, though some were notably missing, but he realized he didn't want any of it. The only thing he wanted was for these streets to be as he had known them before his journey: lively, loving, and mysterious. The stones were so cold under his feet that he walked gingerly. He went into another cathedral and tried to pray again, but God didn't come to him. The deed was done. He would walk the Earth for eternity, or however long God decided to host him. He understood now that he had been dealt the worst punishment in his agreement, though he felt guilty for thinking that, knowing he had effectively killed billions in the process.

So he walked on. From the Vatican, to Rome, to India. He piloted boats when he could find them, and tried to find any trace of life on the plant besides himself, but either the animals were avoiding him at all costs, or they too had been swallowed up in his error. He tried to drink his pains away, but alcohol couldn't drown out the voices of the people who couldn't forgive him in the end. He travelled for decades, centuries even... time lost all meaning. At last he settled in Hawaii, far from any other land mass. The echoes of the old woman still panged in his skull. He was the man who sold the world, and nothing he did could change that.