Mercy
In the Kingdom of Not, a man on his knees begs Brother Massive, Exemplar of the Three Corners, for mercy. The man’s mother named him Illness, for her husband had left her a widow scarce three months before, and Illness’s first year was the plague-year. Like his mother, Illness has buried a spouse.
Brother Massive today incarnated as a long fish, an eel of salty cunning, who with solemnity glides across the ceiling of the audience chamber. At His right hand, as always, is his majordomo and appointments secretary Vela. Her index fingers have been replaced by a notebook (left) and a blue ink pen (right). Blue Brother Massive named His favorite color. The waters of Threecorner Lake are blue.
The blue ink slowly fills the notebook, which never quite runs out of pages, as Vela silently transcribes everything the supplicant says. Her notebook is opened to a page marked with the date, and the name of the supplicant, and the supplicant’s misdeed, and the supplicant’s eventual punishment.
The man on his knees married a girl whose mother named her Lucky Blue Swan. Lucky Blue Swan’s mother at the time had been heavily drugged, and afterwards everyone pretended Lucky Blue Swan was really named Beth. But Brother Massive knows her name was Lucky Blue Swan.
This is Brother Massive’s authority: He knows names.
Illness is weeping. His tears run down his face to the middle of his cheeks, where they drip. Where the tears land, the white carpet that lines the audience chamber becomes damp. In his heart he knows that he has done wrong, but he cannot admit it. A thousand mitigating factors, excuses, and rationalizations have flitted through his head. Now he babbles half-coherent the few that another might, just might, accept and agree with.
This performance (it can scarcely be called anything else) bores Brother Massive, who knew before Illness came into His audience chamber all Illness’s misdeeds, and their just punishment. As He so often does, Brother Massive passes the time by writing poetry in one of His heads. Vela’s notebook is now open to another page, and she is recording the poetry her master the Exemplar composes.
As Illness spins out his remaining time, he begins to dissolve into the puddle of tears he has made on the carpet. First to go are his feet and calves, which soak up the wet and in doing so are softened. When they collapse, he falls backwards, as the dissolution travels up his knees and begins anew at the small of his back. His arms crack at the joints and separate well before the upward seepage reaches them; his body has lost all pretense towards structural integrity. Ragged flaps of skin decay rapidly. The last to go is his face, which persists for almost a minute atop a loose mound of wet gray goo. He still mouths words of guilt and penance, but his voice is lost somewhere in the pile. Finally the face fades, and there is nothing but mud in the audience chamber. Then there is only dust, and soon enough the white carpet is again clean.