A Bitter Cup

Part One

I am the personification of wrath. I will tear out the hearts and minds
of humanity.

"No, you mustn't." She whispers to me across the stars.

I feel my hands clenching, death accumulating in my eyes. I want the
world's destruction, I want to see it burn. Consumed, and all humanity
burnt up into one big final end. All things released by chaos, let the
world be consumed by fire and volcanoes; wipe the slate clean so things
can start again.

"No, you mustn't. You mustn't listen to that."

Still she speaks to me in my mind. She believes there is good in me;
but I am like the walking dead, have been for as long as I can
remember; my life feels so far away from me in some distant hazy place.
But her voice connects me back to it, and I feel my hands unclench and
my eyes open.

"Yes, you mustn't listen to evil. You have to stay balanced." She
says.

My shadow retreats back to the ground, and for now I keep my powers
under control. I am balanced again. I wish I didn't have them, these
abilities. With power comes awesome responsibility. If you're not
careful, power can corrupt, change you, send you crazy. It's too
tempting to hurt or heal another, to alter their life in some way. This
place I walk in day to day, the twilight between good and evil.
Somedays the shadow in me becomes unbearable and I unleash a terror and
fury onto the people of this world: storms, plagues, earthquakes,
floods and nightmares. On other days, I am happy and the goodness in me
shines like pure light and I am a healer, a miracle worker, life blooms
all around me, the sun shines and the rain falls.

I am dangerous. I am someone who can manipulate reality and cause
unnatural things to happen. I can bend people and the world to my will.
Somedays I contemplate suicide to escape this. But I can't do that,
I've tried, but always I know that if I do, something lonely and
terrifying waits for me on the otherside. I have to die in the right
frame of mind before I can go there. I have to make peace with myself
and with the truth. If I die empty and confused then that's the kind of
reality I'll see in the afterlife.. a bleak lonely landscape. Lord
knows I've seen enough bleak lonely landscapes, to not want to spend an
eternity walking one.

I am learning now to keep the balance between good and evil.. but it is
hard. The temptation to destroy, to interfere with this world is great
within me. It is like playing a wacky sort of videogame, only it's
real.. it's me.

Who Am I?

Nobody will believe this: but I escaped from an institution, I was a
clone of Jesus. I know it sounds absurd, but it's true. Some crazy
religous scientists cloned me, using DNA they found in a holy artifact.
I'm the only clone that survived the experiment, the others didn't make
it, they all died. They all had abnormalities, mutations, it was
horrific. They wanted to keep me locked up in their labs, awaiting the
time when they would unveil me to the world; but I saw into their
hearts and realised they cared more for money than for love and truth.
The reason they had resurrected me by this dark scientific alchemy was
to fulfill a prophecy in the bible - but for their own sinister
purposes. You know how insane and fanatical some religous cults get;
wanting to prove their faith to the world. This was a con, a big money
making plea. They were hoping I would be like a puppet on their string,
bring in the followers, bring in the cash; they were treing to discover
ways in which they could control my mind, so they could achieve
this.

Fools, they're all dead now.. I murdered them all, burnt down their
secret laboratory. It wasn't a hard thing to do, all I have to do is
say the words and the things I speak happen in reality. They were fools
to resurrect me, stupid fools.

Murder is not something Jesus would have done perhaps, a dark thing to
do, yes; but you have to remember I'm not Jesus. I have the same body
cells, DNA as he did, the same powers, intelligence.. yes.. but I'm his
clone, I'm not him. My mind is different, my spirit is different - I
think differently to him. I've often wondered if I'm the anti-christ. I
can do all the things Jesus could. I could rule the world if I wanted
to. I can do and be anything I like. I can manipulate reality,
manipulate everything, bend it all to my will. I have also wondered if
I'm the second coming: Jesus returning. Have thought about this long
and hard, about what he meant by his words; wondered if he meant he
would return when mankind finally had the technology to clone him in
the future; and that is the reason why some of the churches have kept
part of his body and blood stored in Holy artifacts for so long, they
were perhaps waiting for the technology to bring him back.

I don't know, and I don't really care. I like to think I'm unique, not
part of any prophecy. It does my head in when I think that I don't have
a family, I don't have a mum or dad, brother or sisters. I'm just some
freak scientific experiment. I try not to think about that, it's not an
easy thought to live with. You understand, I don't want to be this, but
I have no choice, it's the cup that was given to me, forced on me. I
didn't asked to be cloned.

"I know, and a lot of people don't ask for the lives they are given,
the hurts and the wrongs which inflict them - each one of us are
victims of circumstance. We are each of us given a bit of land to till,
and some ground is harder and rockier than others; but in order to find
peace, we have to work that bit of land, make something out of it. Work
it till it produces crops for us." She says, her voice this time like
the wind.

I wish I knew who she was? The one who calls out to me, she keeps me
balanced with her spirit voice. But for all my knowledge, powers and
understanding, I do not know who this person is; only she is powerful.
If anything more powerful than me. I wonder if she is a Christ too,
someone who can do the same things as I can. Only her spiritual growth
was more natural, not artificial like mine; so she has learnt to
understand her powers better, has more maturity, more self-control than
I do. She is someone who was meant to be here now, someone who had a
proper family, lived a normal life - not like me. I am man-made, the
result of scientific experimentation. I am a plastic messiah - a fake.
Perhaps why I don't know who she is, why I cannot find her; because
she's the real thing. For all my power I cannot find her. She can mask
herself, hide her presence perfectly from me; yet I cannot mask my
presence from her, she always seems to know where I am, and what I am
doing. I can't explain the ache I feel within when I think about her,
she's always on my mind. I think I love her, I really have to find her.
She must know this. I'm afraid of myself, of the things I might do to
this world. I know I'm unstable, a side-effect of cloning, I can't tell
if my mind is deteriorating or not. I'm not sure how much longer I have
got before I completely lose control.

She is strong though I can feel it, and I sense a profound sadness in
her voice. She is weeping, this much I know. Weeping for humanity and
all creation. And I understand why she is weeping, this earth is a sad
place. I too hear the lost voices, the many many cries of anguish that
come from the people in this world. But I have learnt to switch it off
now, I can't bear to listen to it anymore. So much suffering, so much
heartache, all for nothing. That's why I want to destroy it, to stop
this suffering, silence these voices, stop this madness once and for
all. But she doesn't want to destroy it, she wants to save it. Which
makes her pain more of a torment. Her path is one of sorrow. I can't
bear to hear her cry anymore, to know she is suffering like this - I
want to take away her tears.

I must find her. I need to redeem this monster that I am, to know I am
not forever cursed, to know that there is a place for me. That I can go
to heaven too. She brings me hope when she speaks to me with her voice.
She knows this.

Oneday I know I will find her. And when that time comes, I vow to end
her suffering.. to silence her sorrow, to put an end to all of their
voices, including my own.

Part Two

He is searching for me. He is insane, it is a side effect of cloning -
he suspects this, but doesn't really know the full extent of his mind's
deterioration. He is dangerous, I know this; but I know he isn't a bad
person. I feel for him, and his circumstance; that is why I let him
continue to live, why I help him. But I cannot let him find me, no not
yet. The time is not right; but oneday I shall let him find me. I know
he means to kill me, not out of cold blood you understand, but out of
love. As bizarre as that may sound.

But I have planned it, so that he shall redeem himself, by helping me
to fulfill my destiny. And when that happens - then peace shall come to
all creation, but it will mean a sacrifice on my part. I don't want
this cup, I don't want it, but if I don't drink from it then who else
will? None are worthy, and only I can do it. I am the creator of this
mess, the one who started it all, and only I can end it. That is why
oneday I will let him find me, he will help me to drink from this cup..
for I am afraid of it, afraid of the pain - I know I cannot do it
alone. And when I drink from it, all voices shall become silent, all
suffering shall cease, for when my body dies, this world also dies. I
am the earth, the people are my body and blood. I am the universe, I am
the one true God, the Goddess. The one who made all things. I am the
alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. I am male and female, I
am everything. I have learnt much from watching my creation. And my
death shall be the beginning, for I shall rise again, and this world
too will also rise again, and behold when that time comes - I will make
all things new.