In the town on the south side of the mountain, a man awoke next to a beautiful woman and, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out why. He was quite sure that at some earlier time in his life he had loved her and pursued her and she had come to love him but for what reasons he did not know. He was a simple man and occasionally in the midst of a conversation with several others he would say a good thing and there’d be a small chuckle, but that wasn’t a reason to love anyone. He had no real talents to speak of; he was functional at everything in such a way that he was neither labeled good nor bad at anything. Yet here he was, lying next to a very beautiful woman and vaguely aware that a whole beautiful family lay in different beds stationed throughout a big, beautiful house he did not deserve. He got up and went to the bathroom.

Surely all of these things taken together made for a satisfactory life by every worldly measure. And yet, the darkness remained, like the dust brushed under the bed, out of sight but accumulating.

The man sat on the toilet. He knew he could always find peace here, engaged in what he deemed to be the third most satisfying activity permissible to man. The darkness had set in earlier than usual. He needed to calm himself. There were worries, there were always worries, but a rational mind could displace them with comforts. There were plenty of comforts as well. A very beautiful wife, for one. Three strapping young men, two well-mannered young ladies. A rewarding salary. A big, lovable dog. Maybe some goldfish if they had survived the night. And — best of all — happiness. Surely all of these things taken together made for a satisfactory life by every worldly measure. And yet, the darkness remained, like the dust brushed under the bed, out of sight but accumulating.

He could never put his finger on what the feeling actually was. Perhaps it was the realization that each human emotion is impermanent. Or the absence of God. Or that big secret that everyone wonders about but never speaks of, that lingering fear — or hope — that amidst all these people and plants and planets you’re all alone in the end, with nothing old and eternal to guide you, nothing to punish you if you fall, or love you if you triumph.

Whatever it was, the darkness had begun at some point in his adolescence. It would be sudden and intense and then would leave as soon as it would come. He would be standing on a street corner, waiting for the right moment to cross, and he would feel the urge to throw himself into traffic. On tours to tall buildings and old castles with his classes over the years, the thought of throwing himself over the edge would overtake him, and his hands would tremble and his feet would become cement, his body’s defiance to the possibility of its termination. And in classrooms when the teachers turned their backs to write on the board and everyone was supposed to be quiet, he would be so compelled to jump from his chair and spout obscenities that he would have to bite his lip; on several occasions he drew blood.

After years of this struggle, the man imploded. In a lecture hall in college, while four hundred studious souls were desperately scribbling away their midterm essays, he was watching the second hand of the clock. Sweat swept down his brow, blood poured from his lower lip, and he was grinding the tip of his No. 2 pencil into his palm. His neighbors had stopped writing and were staring at him with a strange fascination, as if asking themselves, would he do it? And then his eyes glazed over, and all the people and world around him no longer felt real, but viewed through a lens caked in Vaseline. He stood up, unclenched his jaw, and shouted the first word that came to mind, “Deviance!” He continued shouting it, “Deviance! Deviance!” and then with a new passion for the word and an inhuman power of breath, “DEVIANCE! DEVIANCE!” When he had finished, he regained consciousness and felt four hundred and one pairs of unfriendly eyes drowning him with their stares. He ran from the room crying. But that night he slept better than he had ever had.

In the weeks and months that followed, the man would go to movies by himself late at night and sit in the back. Whenever the darkness set in, he would happily submit and the shouting of “Deviance!” would ruin many a movie experience. It was a glorious, freeing defiance, but one night it came to an end. As he was leaving the theater, a big muscular smiling man chucked a cup full of ice at his head and called him a jackass. A very beautiful woman was at his side. The muscular smiling man put his arm around the beautiful woman and they walked off into the night and street musicians played in the distance. That was the last time the man shouted in a movie theater.

He went to a doctor the next day and explained his problem. The doctor did not understand it but prescribed him medicine anyway. The medicine dulled the greens of the trees and the blues of the sky and muted the songs of the birds, but every day he took it. And gradually, painfully, he learned to control the darkness. But knowing what he did and keeping it in, it was never easy to sleep at night.

…gradually, painfully, he learned to control the darkness. But knowing what he did and keeping it in, it was never easy to sleep at night.

The man flushed those dead pieces of himself and rose to his feet. He looked in the mirror. A muted, undeserving man stood before him. He almost spat at him. Then he grabbed his medicine bottle and his hand trembled as he opened it. He dipped into the pills and held one, and his eyes tried to crush it with their hate. And then, for whatever reason — perhaps it was catching his neighbor’s beautiful wife in his mirror’s reflection, running out in her bathrobe to get the day’s paper, or the gentle breeze blowing through the window whispering the word of God — whatever it was, the man put the pill back into the bottle and replaced the cap. For some unknown reason, on that day this man closed that bottle without taking his medicine.

It was a bright spring day and the smells of the world weren’t hiding. As the man opened his car door, he took a large breath and wondered if this oxygen business weren’t all just a fabulously convenient lie to keep him in the atmosphere.

In his office, he printed papers, checked them thoroughly, licked envelopes, placed the papers in the envelopes. Print, check, lick, place. He listened closely for one of his co-workers to fart loudly, but no one ever did. Fears were multiplying within him, and he had to do something to break the monotony or surely he would have gone mad. The man made paper airplanes and began sending them across his office, carefully ducking behind his cubicle as each met its intended target. At first he heard surprised noises, alarmed noises, disapproving groans from his co-workers, but these soon subsided as they learned to accept the onslaught of airplanes as yet another inexplicable oddity in their day-to-day reality. They continued typing, or counting, or charting, or doing whatever it is they did, and the man smiled to himself and thought, the fools.

One unfortunate plane had veered into the Boss’ toupee, and a three-hundred-fifty-pound hulk of a man stood — not without difficulty — demanding the identity of the perpetrator. Six fingers betrayed the man, and the Boss stomped his way through the maze of cubicles and loomed over him. His fat shadow created an impressive light-killing radius. Not without effort, he spoke.

“What the hell is this?” The Boss removed the paper plane from his head. “You think this is funny? That you have time to make this junk on my clo —”

And then the words just blended together, and the imaginary air and the imaginary sounds coming out of his Boss’ mouth made the man think of pop-up books in another tongue. The man rose and stared into his Boss’ reddening face, and he watched the muscles around his jaw tense up and then release, tighten and then let go, fabulous theatrics crafting the illusion of communication. The man watched how the ever-thickening drops of moisture flying from the Boss’ mouth changed the geometry of the office. There were so many thoughts racing through his head; he wanted to do so much to this angry fat man that the world would never allow.

And all at once he was on the Boss’ back giving him the meanest noogie you ever did see. The Boss was spinning, too shocked to form words into obscenities but certainly trying. The co-workers stopped whatever it was they were doing and watched the birth of a hero.

It was quite a strange thing that had happened, and no one — least of all the man — could put what they had just witnessed into words.

The man had taken the Boss’ toupee and thrown it across the room. He was now giving his superior a mean wet-willy, still clinging as tightly to the Boss’ back as if he were hugging the wing of a 747. Holding the fat skull in his hands, the man whispered, “Deviance,” and what little blood remained in the rest of the Boss’ body rushed to his head. Purple-faced, he fell to the ground, curled up into a fetal position, and with a soft whimper, he disappeared.

It was quite a strange thing that had happened, and no one — least of all the man — could put what they had just witnessed into words. Everyone stood silent for an extremely awkward length of time, staring at that place on the floor which their Boss’ hulking mass had once occupied. The man had made some sort of earth-shattering discovery that put humanity’s previous benchmarks — fire, the world is round, breast implants — in serious jeopardy. Everyone in the office came to this same realization at precisely the same moment, and the room exploded into applause for their man, this man. He watched them clap for a moment, then mooned them all and jumped out the window.

It was convenient that the office was only on the second floor, for the man had not yet learned how to conquer pain. Blood from his forehead fell into his eyes, glass shards peppered his arms, and his left leg might as well have been broken. For a time he lay there quivering with pain, and the doubts set in: he had a beautiful, fruitful life; what was he sacrificing? What was he running from or running towards? And would he have the courage or the insanity to do all that was necessary? He remembered Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and thought what a well-crafted plan it all was, to separate the gods and the men. The glass fell slowly from the man’s arms as if they were cellophane. The man stood up on two healthy legs and he was no longer bleeding.

The man was now moving without thought, doing without consideration, freely succumbing to every perverse or divergent instinct that came his way. It was glorious liberation.

He was walking towards the center of town now and his co-workers were following him. An old man with a cane passed him and tipped his hat to the man, saying, “Good morning.” The man punched him in the face, and the old man fell to the ground, his glasses broken and his dentures hanging. The Old Man stood and watched the man with admiration, for he knew his actions did not come from any kind of malice but out of a purity he had never witnessed. The Old Man joined the people following him.

The man came to a pay phone. He called his beautiful wife and loudly denounced their marriage, dissolving their vows “just” – as an onlooker explained to a curious passerby — “for the hell of it.” There was loud cheering in the streets. The man was now moving without thought, doing without consideration, freely succumbing to every perverse or divergent instinct that came his way. It was glorious liberation.

He was defecating on the street at the intersection of 3rd and Main when a police officer approached him. A member of the crowd tried to delay the Officer, but the man chastised his overzealous follower by biting off his ear. The Officer paused in amazement and then raised his firearm.

“Put your hands where I can see them! You’re under arrest!”

The man spat the ear out on the ground and walked slowly towards the Officer.

“I’m serious now! Get those hands raised!”

The man continued walking.

“I’ll open fire! Don’t let it come to this!”

The man was a few feet away from the Officer now.

“This is your final warning! Drop to the ground RIGHT NOW —”

But it was too late. The man had the Officer’s gun and was pointing it at the desperately confused public defender. The man raised the gun to the Officer’s temple and held it there. The Officer’s sweat had mixed with his tears to make his whole face glisten with fear. His softly-spoken prayers were the only sounds in a sea of people and cars and buildings. The world was watching what the man would do.

He pulled the trigger. The sound was less a gunshot and more like the sound a Jack-in-the-Box makes. The Officer fell to the ground, grasping at what should have been the remains of his skull. But his head was fully intact. After a moment of grateful disbelief, he looked up at the gun and saw the last bit of confetti feathering towards the ground. At the tip of the gun was a small flag with “Deviance” written in clown letters. The Officer buried his head in shame, curled up into a fetal position, and disappeared. One of the older townspeople later said they saw a boy running through the crowd, laughing and carefree, tying the onlookers’ shoelaces together, and that the boy bore a striking resemblance to the Officer when he was a child.

At last, he spoke with such a strength of voice that all the townspeople could hear him and the echoes in the valley may have even carried over to the next town.

The man was moving toward the mountain. News of his exploits had traveled throughout the town in no time at all, as these things tend to do, and there was a general exodus from the office buildings; everyone was taking lunch at the same time. But the restaurants were closing, and the schools as well. All the parents were calling in to pick up their children anyway. And soon, the whole town was following this man up the side of the mountain to witness the things he would do.

The man had become ravenous. He had long ago abandoned all traces of human clothing, but he had just recently forsaken language. Grumblings and mumblings of odd animal contortions came from his mouth, but they seemed far more natural than English or French and the meaning of his sounds were clear not only to the people, but to the squirrels darting by, the birds perched on every branch, and even the pebbles vibrating on the ground as he passed. His posture had caved in on itself and he was making full use of the four limbs God or evolution had gifted him with. He was primal and pure. All looked towards him and shook their heads at the ignorance of their ancestors; thousands of years confusing deities with images of gold-clad, muscular bodies wearing satin robes and holding silver tridents, when this — this monstrosity of a man, with bloody foam around his mouth and a halo of swarming flies — was a true divinity.

The man was scaling trees with the dexterity of an over-caffeinated orangutan, charting the quickest path up the mountain. After a few miles, the man turned around and approached his followers. He said something in his otherworldly tongue that all the people understood. It was something to the effect of: “Follow me no further or I’ll eat your face.” He then continued up the mountain alone.

The disciples were left confused, cold, disappointed. Some talked of turning back, returning to work, to their homes, to their lives; they were loudly booed. After a spell, the Old Man rose from within their ranks and hobbled towards the front. He was shivering and kept opening and closing his mouth, wetting his instrument and summoning all of his feeble strength for a final expenditure of energy. At last, he spoke with such a strength of voice that all the townspeople could hear him and the echoes in the valley may have even carried over to the next town. He spoke that one word, and then he died.

The people gratefully received his message and they moved forward quickly, chastising themselves for having forgotten that disobedience was the mantra of this man. They came to a clearing, and the cliff at the mountain’s peak was visible. The man was up there, sitting on the ground and scribbling something in the dirt with his finger. He saw his disciples and bellowed something that meant, “It’s about time, idiots.” He then started moving quickly, very quickly, as if he were rebelling against the air. To the people down below, it looked as if he were training for a very big confrontation.

“That’s it! Drag Him out of hiding!” a middle-aged man said.

“Show Him who’s boss!” a little blonde girl said.

“It’s time for an accounting! The day has come for a reckoning!” an elderly woman shouted.

“Just wish it didn’t come to this,” the young boy who resembled the Officer said as he looked up from tying some large man’s shoe laces together.

The weight of the sky above him and that of the space below him had achieved an equilibrium, and he hovered there above the crowd.

The man had stopped moving quickly and was now walking backwards. The people below could no longer see him, and many wondered — to themselves — if he had lost heart. And then he was visible again, running toward the end of the cliff as fast as any man had ever moved his two legs. There were scattered murmurs wondering if he would do it, if he could do it, if he would really attempt what every man, woman, and child has dreamed about since the tragic discovery of gravity. People were clapping, cheering, crying with excitement, anticipating the moment when God would be proved a liar and man would fly. And then the man’s feet left the ground and he dove naked off the cliff. The crowd was silent.

He was falling slower than any man should. He looked down at the air molecules parting to let him pass, and then he looked up to the mass of molecules pushing him downward and denied their existence. The weight of the heavens lessened as he laughed heartily and spat at the sun. He was now moving very slowly toward the earth and it looked as if he were gliding on a lucky wave of wind. And then he stopped. The weight of the sky above him and that of the space below him had achieved an equilibrium, and he hovered there above the crowd. The man was mumbling something, dissolving his ties to the earth and to man, and preparing his ascent to meet his Maker. Perhaps he was formulating the questions he would ask Him, or loosely composing an indictment for negligence. Perhaps he was wondering if he should do anything at all.

Then he was moving upward, and all the world below him was erupting into happiness, with one exception. Looking down and bidding the world one final farewell, the man noticed one small group of people who were not clapping and screaming and joining in the general merriment. It was his deserted wife, and the beautiful family he had forsaken. The lower halves of their faces were red, worn with tears that had by now dried up; they had nothing left to give and so simply watched silently with a look of pure, desperate bewilderment that would drive any madman sane. He only looked at them for an instant, but that was all it took. By the time he had turned back and was looking up at his destination in the heavens, the sun was shrinking and he was falling. Before his fall could reverse the momentum of the people’s glee, he had landed on the ground with a sickening crash. And all were silent once more, except for a bit of laughter somewhere in the distance.

The people formed a reverent circle around his broken body. A priest started to say a prayer but then thought better of it. They all stood there without speaking for a while, but soon people in the back began to drift away. The former disciples were all filing out now, and some had begun to discuss the day’s business, how they had to get back to the office and give such-and-such files to Mr. Such-and-such by the day’s end, or how they had to get to the grocery store to prepare a nice steak dinner for the visiting in-laws, or how they had to drop their kids back off at day care, and all the like, but there would be days in the future on which these same people, perhaps gathered at a Thanksgiving dinner, or speaking to a stranger on a train, or to their grandchildren from their nursing home beds, would tell this man’s story and the crazy things that he did, and of course, no one would believe them, and then they would laugh and wonder and return to their day-to-day trifles, never knowing that — after everyone had left that day — the dead man was smiling because, for better or worse, he finally knew the big secret.