The Freemason & The Boy

Chapter one

'A candle?'

'Yes, a candle. It burned its height to liquid white and back to solid white wax again - it solidified.'

'That's interesting. What else?'

'Its fire could not illuminate the dark. The room was dark. It emanated a beautiful and tiny smoke.'

'Smoke? Wait, did you say smoke? Did the smoke make romantic gestures to the darkness?''Yes, it did. It twisted its waist amorously in front of the dark like a dangerous stripper on her pole. And danced to heaven. It wasted the candle off. It didn't mind. I mean the candle, the smoke didn't care about it. I watched it die. It was sad to know what a romantic smoke could do to a gigantic candle which stood perfectly erected and lighted, though its light was just not enough for the dark.' the boy whispered.

'but at least, it had a second chance to be a solid again'

'but not as it was. it didn't stand erected again.'

'Hmm! Go back to sleep son, when next you have such a strange dream, pray and forget about it all, for where the name of God is invoked, we trust no danger can ensue.'

Though the boy retired to his side of the bed, sleep was not an option to consider. His eyes were fixed on the ceiling all night. He had seen more in the dream than he had narrated to his father. He saw his dead mother and the Freemason also.

In what could not be clearly defined as a dialogue, he listened to the Freemason preach to his mother about salvation and baptism for the dead.

In the dream, the Freemason told his mother that the Apostle Paul spoke about the baptism for the dead in the Bible at the chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians. That Baptism was a requirement for the soul to enter into Heaven. But not all people had the chance to be baptised while alive. It was for them that God in his merciful wisdom designed the baptism for the dead. For what you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.

He abruptly recollected his personal encounter with the Freemason the previous day. It was in the twilight of the day. When the sun was fast nearing its rest in the west. It was strangely windy, but there were no signs of possible rainfall. It was usual of the boy to sit under a mango tree on the other side of the road, opposite the Freemason's house. He thought about his loving mother, about how he missed her warmth and how life could have been with her. He sometimes thought he would have been in the university if his mother existed. The boy planted his jaw in his palm and unconsciously stared into the sky. Thoughts were playing a hard game on his mind. He was awakened from his stargaze by the horn of the Freemason's car.

The Freemason drove the latest 4 × 4 Fortuner, a 1999 model. The man had blown the horn as an alarm for his entry into his house. His son, Karl, came to open the black painted metallic gate. When Karl spotted the boy, he beckoned; his own way of greeting the boy whom he has known all his life. The boy was three years older than Karl, but the boy was more skinny and smallish than Karl was. Sometimes it was jokingly said the boy didn't eat at home. Though the boy had traces that he could someday put on some flesh, hunger and poverty reduced him to something a little bigger than one.