Another one of my attempts at a fiction novel - Writers Forum

whoamI · 10-17-2007, 01:59 PM

Jailbird

In the book Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky, there is a character known as Rodya, short for Raskolnikov. Rodya is a former student who is a destitute philosopher. In the book, Rodya had written a paper about a law of the world. The law says that there are two classes of people in life. In his article, all men are divided into ‘ordinary’ and ‘extraordinary.’ Ordinary men have to live in compliance and have no right to lapse in the following of the laws, because they are ordinary. Whereas the “extraordinary” are allowed to transgress the laws of the current society, in order to bring on the progression of society. In the book, he is explaining his beliefs to another man. He explains them as this:

“…I don’t contend that extraordinary people are always bound to commit breaches of morals, as you call it. In fact, I doubt whether such an argument could be published. I simply hinted that an ‘extraordinary’ man has the right . . . that is not an official right, but an inner right to decide in his own conscience to overstep . . . certain obstacles, and only in case it is essential for the practical fulfillment of his idea (sometimes, perhaps, of benefit to the whole of humanity). …I maintain that if the discoveries of Kepler and Newton could not have been made known except by sacrificing the lives of one, a dozen, a hundred, or more men, Newton would have had the right, would indeed have been in duty bound . . . to eliminate the dozen or the hundred men for the sake of making his discoveries known to the whole of humanity. But it does not follow from that that Newton had a right to murder people right and left and to steal everyday in the market.”

He goes on to explain that all of the legislators and leaders of men are criminal, in that they had to violate the old system in order to replace it with a fresh and more precise one. In order to fulfill their destiny they had to, on occasion, depending on their own conscience and judgment, break the laws.

Herein lays my own problem. You must have heard the suggestion that some persons are born with a gift. The gift can be anything. Moreover, in those people whose gift is powerful, the gift strongly influences their life. The gift that lays claim to me is a mastery of the basis of all humanity. Everyone is born, to some extent or another, with one tool necessary to survive in this world. One that allows one to finds one’s place on the spectrum of society, one that allows one to become mature . . . one that introduces us to the life of a criminal. All true criminals possess some minor piece of this power. Or should I say that it possess them. Some use it against others. Others use it as a defense. The best are the neutral ones. The ones who use it to react to their environs in order to do what must be done. There is a saying about a double-edged sword. A sword that is a curse, but a blessing. The gift? It is known as . . . illusion.

The woman who turns her nose at the barest glimpse of anything deemed disgusting. The confidant young man who holds sway over all the young women. The college boy who has his shit together. These are all examples of illusion. They are all the exact opposite on the inside as on the outside. They seem so confidant, almost superior on the outside. Yet on the inside, they are frail and insecure. They can be manipulated and twisted like a thin piece of metal. Those of us humans, dare I call us that, who are like me, are masters of manipulating this illusion. Both their illusions and our illusions. We read humans like a piece of paper. We see deep within you and pry out the secrets of your inner self. Then we play these secrets to our own needs. Our own purposes. We match the illusions and the walls of ourselves to become an attraction to those we manipulate. That is another word for us. Manipulators. We manipulate illusions. I bet that I almost seem cocky and proud to you, as I talk about my profession. However, the ironic thing is that I am just like them. I am so powerful on the outside. Yet on the inside, I am so insecure. Or am I. My gift, or curse is so powerful that I can make myself believe that I am what I am not. Now I do not know what is what. I do know one thing, though. I have to be confidant and almost cocky when I am working. The human subconscious is an incredible thing. It can notice the littlest thing. The slightest dent in the illusion caused by the tiniest bit of doubt can reveal a secret deadly enough to bring down a whole country, if not the whole of humanity. If people were made aware of how fragile their own existence is, their stability would crumble instantly, unable to withstand the powerful rays of stark reality. For this reason, I cannot let myself believe anything other than what I must be at the time. However, when the job is done and I come back, and the need for almost all illusions drops, the doubts assault at incredible speed. I have been crippled, paralyzed by the force of them. Is a master criminal who has no loyalties but his own, who has no love for anything but himself, who has no agendas but his own, is this a person who is extraordinary. Or am I just another wannabe extraordinary, another ordinary man yearning to be something he is not? Were Napoleon or Washington corroded with feelings of narcissism? Were they corrupted by a yearning for their own ultimate and incredible power? Or am I just another common criminal, who happens to be decent enough to evade the punishment designed for him. Nevertheless, if there is any sense of justice out there, an answer must show soon. For If it does not I may be condemned to hell with no chance of pardon or forgiveness. In short, the problem that prepossesses me day after day, night after night, is if you have a gift, one that you know is “bad”, especially in the hands of one such as yourself, but is a gift nonetheless, is the use of it “evil”. Would god give you a gift that was “bad”? Is there such a thing as “bad, or a “bad” gift? I the use of a gift to any negative purpose, a use that will condemn you to a hell worse than life, a hell spoken about from church pulpits by fire and brimstone prophets.

This was an attempt at writing a story but as usual i didnt have the determination to finsh it.