A Fig for All the Devils

by C.S. Fritz

Happiness is a fickle lover; if loved too tightly, she often grows weary and finds a way to end herself in search of a new host. But, if happiness is not one’s center and merely a product of one’s venture, then she can be found seemingly everywhere you look, like fresh flowers perched at the tips of weeds.

Sonny, I am not evil. I am the reaction to your world’s evil. I exist, because your sin exists.”

“Don’t be fooled, dude. Death isn’t macabre like your films. What I do is not the destruction of this life, but the dance partner to one’s own becoming. It’s like I told Oscar Wilde, death is like an insomniac’s desire to sleep. His desire for permanent sleep. How beautiful would it be to close your eyes and sleep till eternity in the soft grass under that cool shady tree until you dissolve in the soil.”

“Sonny, if there is one thing I know above all else, it’s the toxin that is grief. I don’t want you to get over your Dad’s passing, I want you to learn to exist within it. The one who would become Death cannot function if they cannot grieve rightly. You must learn to mourn, to confront loss. Where you can certainly say that your father is no more, but also say that at least he was.

You, your false identities, your unmet wishes, your wrath, your insecurities-all must die or you can never become what you are most meant to be.”

“Hope punctures holes into our black sky to tell us that this ever present darkness is only for a short while. There is a light Sonny, and it’s breaking in piece by piece. I have given you darkness, but in time you will see its stars. In time, light will break through, but for now, the killing in you has begun. I know it hurts, I know its voice too, but what I know more is that all of your dying will lead to life. What feels like death to you is the side of you that needs to die.”

“Don’t waste your terror.”

“It means you can and you should hate this process. It shows you’re real. You must be bothered by what goes bump in the night. But, that doesn’t mean it has to beat you. Hating a process should never equate to hating yourself. Victim or victor. It’s for you to decide: you either eat the fig or give a fig to all the devils,”

“Well…When my dad died, I became afraid of everything. My mom, myself…this world. But, then I realized fear is good. Like a police siren, it warns you when you have to step up. It’s when we run from fear that it becomes bad. Fear makes us value life. That’s all you’re doing Pastor Abraham, valuing life.”

“Yes, if it’s made you better than you are. If your situation is better, your hope purer, your gratitude deeper, your fear weaker, your love richer…then yes, it’s real. If it hasn’t, then it’s a hallucination.”

Sonny remembered what he heard years ago, that children lose respect for their parents the moment they realize they would make a wiser decision than their parent would.

“What we have here is a prophet’s deliverance from death, as the once misguided prophet is discharged from his purgatory and given a new chance at a new life. Something all of us wish to have, but rarely wish to go through the process of receiving. But, if you claim to place your faith in the hands of Jonah’s God, you too, will be swallowed up by your own death, to be born again, resurrected and delivered like Jonah, who has vomited into the land of the living from the belly of his monster. Yet what many don’t realize is at this moment, nothing has changed. The fish is the same, the call is the same, the land is the same, the sea is the same…The only thing different is what Jonah will do with this newfound life.”