Newborn

Chapter 105: Wherefore Art Thou Petrus?

Anne Halton

Jess has been tied up for more than twenty-four hours.  She hasn’t eaten in all that time.  She’s been trapped, lying on the same bed.

Petrus comes back inside the apartment.  He enters through the window as a ball of light.

“Hello Tink,” Jess says.  “Do you think you might let me out soon?”

Petrus returns to his human form.  “Why do you call me that name?”

“What name?”

“Tink,” he says.  “My name is Petrus.”

“When you travel like a ball of light, you look more like a Tinkerbell,” She wants to get some reaction out of her captor.  Right now Jess is powerless, she wants to feel like she can do something to affect her captor.

Petrus looks at her with a blank gaze.  “My name is Petrus,” he says again in a flat voice.

“Why?” Jess asks.

Petrus goes around the room, picking out some clothes.

“Because it’s the name I choose to go by.”

“But why did you choose it?”

Petrus has stopped answering.  Jess can hear him going through stuff, but she can’t see what he’s doing.

“When I was younger my parents sent me to Catholic school.  There was once another man named Petrus.  At least they used to call him Petrus.  Today we call him Peter.  Saint Peter actually.  Are you named after him or was he named after you?”  After a moment of silence Jess goes on.  “Let’s say you took his name.  He’s the one who stands outside Heaven deciding whether a person gets to go to Heaven or not right?  He’s kind of like Heaven’s bouncer.  I can see you liking that.  You see yourself as a judge.  But I don’t think it’s that simple.  This isn’t just about power for you is it?”

“No,” Petrus says.  “It’s not.”

Jess smiles.  She has him talking now.  She has her foot in the door.  He wants to talk.  He wants her to know him.  She’s afraid, of course, that he’s the one playing the games.  Jess knows that her questions may lead to her death, but she has to try to do something.  She can’t stand the idea of dying in silence.

“So, Peter stands by the gates of Heaven with his list,” Jess says.  She’s mostly just talking to hear her own voice.  She already knows where she’s going.  “So, I figure, he’s also a kind of gatekeeper.  Sort of the Christian equivalent of Cerberus guarding the gates to the afterlife.  You see yourself as the guardian of Heaven.  I’m right aren’t I?  You’re Heaven’s protector.  But the thing about guards is that they need to stand outside of the gates to keep the kingdom safe.  That’s why you’re Petrus.  You serve and protect Heaven, but you can never go in.  There’s too much blood on your hands.  In your hunt for demons you’ve become as warped as they are.  You can never achieve the peace you force on others.  You have to die before you can truly restore Heaven.”  Jess laughs.  “Why even bother?”

“Because it’s right,” Petrus says.  “The universe is fading to nothingness.  The chaos is tearing everything apart.  Eventually, everything will drift so far apart that all of existence will just be dark and cold and empty.  Your species is young.  You never knew the true warmth of Heaven, but surely even you can feel the cold.  Can you not feel it at the edge of your consciousness, closing in on you as you approach the end of your days?  You are impermanent.  That you exist only to know your oncoming oblivion is perhaps the greatest proof of the perversion of the universe.  I ask that you surrender to the light.  Stop fighting me.  I don’t wish you harm.  I offer salvation.  Don’t you understand that?”

“Many people’ve offered me salvation, but the price is always too high.  How can I be a saint when sinning is so much fun?  What’s it that you’re looking for anyways?  Do you want me to click my heals together three times and say I wish I was dead?  I don’t want your light, I want to live.”

“No,” Petrus says.  “You don’t just want to live, you want to live forever.  But that isn’t possible.  You will die.  Your only choice is what you want your death to mean.  Will you just be another soul feeding the chaos, fuelling the universe’s plunge into oblivion?  Or will you join the light and help to restore existence to the infinite bliss that was?”

Jess is silent.  “I just don’t believe Santa Clause exists,” she says at last.  “No matter how you wrap it up, I just don’t believe in anything you’re saying.  I’ve seen things I’ve always thought impossible, but I still don’t believe in Heaven.”

Petrus is fascinated with Jess, almost obsessed.  Somehow, she can understand things so few others ever could.  “I’ll have to show you then,” Petrus says.  Soon Jess will understand everything about Petrus.  Soon she’ll embrace the light.  She just needs to answer one question.

Petrus hovers over Jess.  Jess struggles with all of her strength to get free, but all of her strength isn’t enough or she would have escaped hours ago.

Jess sees what Petrus was searching the apartment for.  In his hand, he has a dagger.

He takes the dagger and plunges it into Jess, just below her rib cage.  The dagger pierces her lungs.  She feels like she’s drowning as blood pores through her lungs.  She can’t breathe.  She struggles, but that only speeds up her suffocation.  Within seconds, Jess feels herself losing consciousness.  She can feel her very being starting to fade.  Petrus pulls the dagger out of Jess and places his hand on the wound.

Jess can’t stay awake anymore.  She closes her eyes.  As the body that held her being together ceases to be, Jess’s soul starts to disintegrate.  All the energy that had once been her soul is starting to escape.  It’s being released into infinity to be circulated into new things.  But Petrus has no intention of letting Jess die so easily.  He reaches out with the light.  Petrus uses his own being to bind Jess’s soul back together so that he can ask her one last question.

“Do you want to die?” Petrus asks.

Jess begins to draw upon Petrus’s light to give him her answer.  “No,” she says.  And, with a single word, her soul is forever changed.