Patchwork

You may think that you know good and evil and, who knows, you may be right; but just as the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the very best intent of all can lead to the greatest ruin.

Back in the midst's, when people ought to have more sense, there was a Physic who was known in his village, and for many miles around, as a wise and just man. So compassionate was he that not even the most hardened criminal would hold him up, nor thieve from him for he had treated everyone; often times accepting no form of payment.

He was governed by no man and people often times sought his council for he was wise too.

He had no vices and to his wife he was oh so faithful and he drank only what was medicinal and only in good measure. He very rarely gambled; only at Easter (when he always broke even) and Christmas (when he gave his winnings to the poor.)

No, he was the perfect model of a man if ever there was one. And all would have been perfect if only his son were cut from the same cloth as he.

But that was not to be the case (and then there would be no story!).

His son, to be fair, had a lot to live up to and from an early age a high expectation was placed upon him; one might say an impossible one.

And it wasn't as if he didn't try; but each time he tried and his efforts fell woefully short everyone would tutt and cluck and exclaim “Not as good as his father.”

At first he tried harder but he was not built the same, had not the same apt or skill or art and so more spectacular were his failings.

Is it any wonder, then, that he soon gave up even trying? Worse still, he grew to hate those words “Not as good as your dear father.” and thus grew to hate his father.

But his father cared not, his father loved the boy more than life itself and would have done anything for him.

Mark this well, for whilst it is true that love can be blind, it can also wound or even kill if wielded wrong.

The father could not believe and would not believe that flesh of his flesh could do any wrong. And the son played his part very well. Ever the innocent, ever the wronged party no matter who made the accusings.

If the son were accused of thieving by the baker then the father would demand the evidence presented before him and it mattered not that the son had eaten all he had stole; crumbs carefully brushed off before the accuser.

It mattered not if the brewer had accused him of thievery either. Obviously the son would go up to his father with fragrant breath, however tipsy and tricksy on his feet.

All who accused his son were jealous, harbouring grudges, so the father said and so the father became more of a recluse. And people no longer felt they could trust him; his view was no longer sought out as he only had eyes for his sons justice and no other.

His wife, blind to the world, but not to her husbands pain, petitioned him one evening: “I know he is blood of your blood, but he is also of mine and we have not always seen eye to eye. Can you not at least entertain the notion of his guilt; that he is not as perfect as you, dear one?”

“I am far from perfect, my sweet.” He would reply, “but my son shall inherit my mantle and surpass it.”

And nothing more was said.

It wasn't long before the villagers tired of the sons ill manners and thieving ways. If the father weren't to dispense with things as right, then they should. And so they did.

Planned ahead, the son never stood a chance. Blamed on a pack of wolves that still roamed the countryside, when in truth it was their hunting dogs one night when the moon was full and the kill was in their blood.

Rent limb from limb, with only the face and torso left (for not only did they want the father to still recognise his precious boy, but also to allow the mother, who had done no wrong, an open coffin)

The father buried his son in silence, allowed no one to visit -for no one truly wanted to- and would not even speak to his wife. His son, his spark, the one truth of his life, was dead.

Now Physic's knew many things, not only of that which cure but also that which killed. There was also knowledge of a different kind, one that was almost forgotten, even in his time. Yet he had in his possession books that shared that which no one ought to know.

They had been handed down generation to generation to prevent them being given to the wrong minds.

And in those weeks following the burial the father, the physic studied the books until he was sure of his next course of action.

He could not imagine his life without his son and so it was not possible that he could be dead, not in Spirit.

There was still time!

The elemental Alchemists who wrote those books wrote that the soul stayed in the body one week for every year lived, as it did in the womb before birth. By that reckoning he could still re-birth his son. He needed limbs though and for such a rational man -one for one of such a single purpose- that was to be no trouble.

He knew who had killed his son, he was not a naïve man, and so it was just that they be the ones that would now supply the arms and legs that his boy lacked. It was right that they suffered as he had suffered, and his boy before him. That their actions were justified and his not never entered his mind any more, so fixated was he.

Digging up the corpse was easy enough for a man of such determination, and it was not long before the boys torso was laid out on the kitchen table, each new limb resting by its side.

And when it came to attaching the limbs?

Oh, he had no qualms any longer. The lies came easy to him now. His wife, blind though she was, was also a great seamstress and it was childsplay for him: “It's the scarecrow for the village crops.” He lied, “he's been torn apart by dogs and I need to make a new one.” And when she questioned the wetness of the limbs, “Oh, it's been raining out, my sweet.”

And because she loved him, never thinking him capable of such a deed, she sewed her son back together again.

When this patchwork abomination was finally ready the father said a silent prayer and fed the boy the elixir he had been working on.

Should I tell you what this mixture consisted of? If I did so you may feel compelled to do the same and that I would abhor. Suffice it to say, that for such a potion, such an elixir the ingredients caused the father much and pushed him to much darker places he could never come back from.

Such dark magic is realised quick and the boy was awake again with a start, shocking his gather and causing his mother a faint. His father was overjoyed and the boy doubly so for he had loathed his time entombed.

And for a time it seemed as it should. The boy stayed inside and because no one visited no one was any the wiser. Even the mother grew to love her son again and so the ending seemed happy.

But everything has a price and such magics are never stable; life is a hard thing to hold on to, doubly so when you've already died once.

And so the boys condition soon worsened. He hungered and nothing the mother fed him made any difference. Other things were noticeable too; at first the boy had a healthy discourse, could chat fluently and then less so until groans and grunts were all he could muster.

Since he could no longer be sated by his parents he took journeys alone at night to get his fill, for there was only one that thing that could satisfy him now and that was flesh.

This went on for days, maybe weeks before the first of the victims dug themselves up out of their graves, for he had passed on the elixir from his blood into theirs -so potent was the spell cast by the father.

And the villagers soon realised what was happening and who was to blame. Village life was small and the worst news travelled fastest.

But for the father, he had happened upon the truth himself. So hungry was the son now that anything or anyone would do so he forced himself on his own mother, who had not the faintest idea anything was wrong until it was too late.

It was her screams that alerted the father to the terrible woes that were afflicting them all. Scarcely could he believe his eyes now that the truth was so final.

“Why have you done this to me, boy?” He screamed, to which the boy shouted in finality, closing in on his maker,

“Why have you done this to me? Look at what your love has done to me!”

So, know you the difference between good and evil still? If that be love, would it not have been better to hate?