Calel

Below is my pseudo-tribute to the mythos of Superman, first published in 2009 by the late, great, weird-fiction magazine Farrago's Wainscot as part of a series of linked vignettes titled "Seven Men (in Various States of Fabrication)." No, I don't really know what I was thinking.

VI: Calel

Ice cannot harm me, nor fire. Swords and pitchforks fall blunt against my skin. My thews, taut and thick, are knotted with monstrous energies. There is a furnace in my breast, a flintlock in my spine. My name is Calel. I never wanted this.

But I cannot remove what God has seen fit to install in my body. I often feel as though I am his finger, as if there is a vast, intangible fist behind me through which courses divine love, divine will, divine might.

And then abruptly, in the midst of such rapturous delirium, I remember. I remember where I come from. I remember who I am. As base as it is to hold one's soul at arm's length from heaven and covet it so, I cradle what little is left of myself as if it were an orphaned child, wasted from thirst and hunger.

But at night, I forget. At night, I fall. At night, the cloak calls.