A Devil by Any Other Name: Chapter 2 - Of the Spiritual

 “Because my spirit is immortal, why should I care about my rotting flesh? Because all is vain, why should I care for my actions? Because all will turn to dust, why should I care for my possessions?”

-motto of the worshippers of the Brown Serpent

Chapter 2 – Of the Spiritual

Jared was one of the richest and most influential people, so he naturally had a large target on his back. While he is out in the seeming middle of nowhere with his family on vacation, a large truck barrels toward him on the narrow road. He tries to drive out of the way, but the truck keeps aiming for him until it eventually hits his car so violently that the impact tosses it down the nearby cliff and through the many trees along the way. Somehow, Jared manages to survive the crash, however, his family doesn’t. When he tries to call for help, he finds that his phone is damaged and that there’s hardly a signal out here anyway so there’s no use in trying.

Now injured and with no way to get help, Jared limps his way in the direction that he thinks help might be. He travels far on foot and screams and waves at every car that passes him. No one stops to help him, not even the hikers who travel these paths and call the hill country their home. The only attention he draws is from criminals in the forest who steal whatever valuables he has left with him. Still not wanting to give up, Jared reaches an inn, but they refuse to help him unless he can pay them, which he cannot. With nothing more to do, he reluctantly accepts that he cannot get his dead family any proper help and so he resorts to stealing food from the inn. In the process of raiding the kitchen and eating his fill, he is arrested and taken to jail for his crimes of thievery and assaulting those who got in his way of satiating his hunger and frustration.

During his time in jail, he is given a call by his employers who let him know that he is fired and take his house they gave him along with all the possessions within it as they don’t want to associate with a criminal and want their stuff back to be given to the newest higher up. Besides the singular call, no friend of his pays him a visit nor gives him a call or letter, which forces him to spend his sentence in utter misery. After getting out, Jared searches for any kind of job that will help him get by. Not many jobs pay well for the hard work that they ask for and it doesn’t help that Jared has two crimes to his public record. He gives up at this moment and wants to end his life until he hears the words of the worshippers of the maggot, the Brown Serpent.

“Life is suffering! Life is meaningless. Nothing we do matters nor does the notion of good or evil. Join us in our worship of the maggot to shun the false goods of this world and attain true enlightenment,” the evangelist says.

With nothing better to do and mostly agreeing with what’s said, Jared goes up to the evangelist and joins their cause by taking part in their ceremony that involves ingesting maggots and taking an oath to dedicate himself to the maggot. After some time of being with them, he forgets all his world woes. He spends most of his days whipping himself, fasting, evangelizing, and doing mediations that strengthen his connection to the maggot. On three days out of the month, he joins with the other worshippers in their indulgence in sin to sustain and have a reason to punish themselves. Jared has his fill of prostitutes, drinking, and drugs to satisfy him, which are common vices for worshippers like him to indulge in. Time feels meaningless to him as he puts himself in a cycle of sin and penance while strangely being at peace with it.

Today is different however as the man with scaly skin hidden by dirty bandages and ragged clothes enters the sanctuary where Jared is meditating. At first, Jared thinks this is another convert to their religion until he hears the voice of the maggot tell him who the man is and what he’s done.

“Are you back to finish what you started?” Jared asks.

“What are you talking about?” the man says.

“Don’t act like you don’t know. I know who you are. The maggot has revealed it to me. You were the one who hired a hitman to kill me.”

“I was and I regret that I did that to you, Jared. I regret that I didn’t care if your family or anyone else got in the way because I wanted to overtake your position for my own goals and family. I…I’m sorry. I’m sorry a thousand times over.”

“You’re sorry? I don’t care too much about what you did to me anymore. In fact, I ought to thank you for showing me the folly of living the life I had because I know it was all for nothing. The maggot has enlightened my mind to the worthlessness of my existence, of good and of evil, and I am at peace with that truth.” The maggot then tells Jared why the man is here. “Now another revelation tells me that you are here to take that away from me. Do you hate me so much that you were not satisfied in taking everything away from me and now must take my nothing or rather my lack of anything away too?”

“I’m here to deliver a message to the maggot.”

“And what message would that be?”

“It’s a message containing the truth.”

“Ha! What value does the truth have when all is meaningless and worthless?”

“If everything is worthless, why care about your beliefs? If everything is meaningless, why act as if the preachings of your god are true? Please, Jared, let me show you the truth by giving me your part of the key and letting me end the maggot’s reign over you.”

“Shut up! What do you know about the reality of meaninglessness? The maggot has told me that you have stolen the other pieces of the key from my friends and I am the only person standing between you and it, and I will not give it up!”

Jared charges the man with a dagger in his hand. The man shakes his head before thrusting his fist through Jared’s chest, instantly killing him. As Jared’s body falls to the ground, maggots fall out of it and begin to consume his body.

“I’m sorry it had to come to this, Jared. Maybe I should’ve just taken your piece of the key without you noticing like the others so this wouldn’t happen. I…I just really wanted to apologize to you even though I wasn’t sure if you’d accept it,” the man says while constructing the key with all its pieces.

Once the pieces of the key are together, the man goes to a door behind the altar in the worship room and descends down the many stairs until he reaches the basement. Here, the worshippers are indulging in vices such as lust, torture, and drunkenness just to name a few. Further in, the man finds himself in the room where people dedicate themselves to the maggot. A giant maggot statue is in the center of the room and most of the room has writhing living maggots in it except for the floor. The maggots in the room sing a low droning tune that makes the man feel sick, sad, angry, and upset.

“This is pointless for you to do. I will come back again during your lifetime and after it,” a deep voice says.

“I don’t care. What matters is that I erase your influence from the earth now so that others may be saved from your corruption,” the man says.

“I offer peace. I teach wisdom. I give a purpose to those who have nowhere to go such as Jared. Is your God so different?”

“Yes, because the Message offers true peace, true wisdom, and true purpose rather than your façade of these. Observe.”

A bronze serpent comes out of the man’s bandages and crawls into the walls of maggots that begin to turn red and then begin to fall to the ground as the sanctuary shakes and crumbles. The giant statue of the maggot falls through a giant hole that forms under it and into a dark abyss. As this is happening, the man escapes the building while wading through thousands of maggots that come up from the ground and are so plentiful that the pile of them is soon past his ankles and quickly rising. The worshippers of the maggot are all decomposing and being eaten from the inside out by the maggots that were inside of their bodies including the ones that didn’t go through the same ceremony.

Maggots form to make an approximation of the bronze serpent and say, “Look at what you’ve done. So many are suffering a horrible end because of your actions, your truth. They would’ve happily spent the rest of their lives if you walked away.”

The man does his best to ignore the voices while climbing the stairs, especially since the maggots are up to his waist at this point and attempting to pull him down. He narrowly manages to climb the final steps and closes the door behind him to slow down the flow of maggots, however, he finds the upstairs part of the sanctuary filled with maggots and people being eaten from the outside by them. Taking the easiest and quickest way out, the man jumps through a nearby window that’s in Jared’s room just in time as the building collapses in on itself. Outside, the situation isn’t much better as whoever participated in worship of the maggot is dying and being eaten from the outside here as well though it isn’t as bad since the maggots aren’t flooding the streets.

“You did this, you did this, you did this,” the man can hear the maggots say on repeat.

It feels as if the maggots are in the man’s ears and writhing in his head. The man silently prays for the strength to overcome their temptations of despair while wiping away the maggots on him, offering the pain of the temptation as penance and a prayer to use against them, and making his way back to the hideout in the sewers. When he gets back, Roger tries to congratulate the man and talk to him about it but is pushed aside as the man quickly makes his way back to his shack. Roger tells the priest what is happening and the priests and Roger pray over the man to help him overcome his temptations until the man passes out.

“Will he be okay?” Roger asks.

“Yes, I think so,” the priest answers, “He seems to be mostly at peace and just needs to rest.”

After the priests and Roger leave, the man says to himself, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

As the man dreams, he feels as if he is being held down as maggots crawl on his bed and start to slowly eat him alive. A bronze serpent then comes out of the man’s bandages and sprays its blood over the man that melts the maggots and makes the rest of them go away. The serpent then grows large enough to be bigger than the man and gently wraps itself around him like a parent wrapping their arms around their child. Because of this, the man can sleep peacefully and wake up the next day healthy both in body and mind with no regrets about what he did yesterday even though he still feels a bit saddened at the loss of so many people.