Godsmack

I just killed a man. (I won't say whom, as some gentle readers have expressed a desire not to be given any more spoilers.)

I always feel rotten when I have to kill a character (unless they're deserving of it, as discussed in Invoking Kali), as if I've personally set them up for a fall and betrayed them. Well, because I have.

I also feel a certain weird sense of exhilaration, or at least satisfaction. Is it simply the act of playing god? It's an interesting question, since one of the themes of Devil's is the nature of deity. My gods possess magic, they create by speaking, but I've always intended for readers to infer that this is not what sets them above ordinary people. It is their capacity for sacrifice.

No matter how much I try to avoid the brainwashing of my fundie upbringing, the Christ archetype finds its way into my writing. But then I remember that he is only another story, built from even earlier stories, and that this theme of sacrifice goes back to the first human awareness that other things feel. (Though we are not necessarily the only creatures with that awareness, as evidenced by the odd story one reads in the news about animals sheltering children. The animist in me likes to believe the sacred lives in all things.)

Ultimately, it is the divinity of human beings—the inherent divinity so elusive to us—that I am trying to invoke through the stories of Anamnesis. We are the gods and the devils. This is hell, and it is also heaven. And someday, maybe, we'll remember that.