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Report for
 the Defense

I

II

III

IV
Report for the Defense
Nick Zentor

I

It has been said by philosophers and religious people many times in the past, that Heaven and Hell are not simply the highest and lowest states imaginable, but they are also spiritual states of mind that are not necessarily subject to physical conditions. Given this semantic aspect, it has also been said therefore, that a man with no material wealth can be perfectly happy in spirit, while a man who has millions in material wealth can be completely unhappy in spirit.

  This analogy may also support the state in which Able Blank found himself. In the case of Mr. Blank, he was neither poor nor wealthy to any extreme, but one could say he was more poor than wealthy, even if he was not starving. But even though he was not starving, at least not for food, and he had enough money to pay the rent and keep his used car on the road for another 6 months, he was without a doubt in a constant state of discontentment and suffering in depression.

  Nobody understood just how much he was suffering, because lower-class people tended to think anyone with a car and money was lucky to be alive and had no right to complain, especially after the hard times everyone’s grandparents and parents had. It was like that; if one complained when was not starving, then one was judged to be a spoiled brat, rather than someone who was actually suffering.

  But the truth was Blank was really suffering. His state was not caused by a lack of food or lack of housing, it was caused by his failure to reach his goals in life and the loss of his girlfriend several years ago, a girl he loved so deeply he would have married her, if things had not gone wrong as they did.

  Whether or not anyone else realized it, he was trapped in a state of suffering depression which was so constant and unchanging, it had long since ceased to be a life, and was much more resembling to a state of purgatorial limbo. Whether or not anyone else realized it, Able Blank was in Hell.

  He had suspected this possibility for some time, ever since he attempted suicide a year after he lost Lisa. Then one night, while he sat in his small, low- rent, roach-infested apartment, something very strange occurred. He was recording his thoughts in a paper notebook; a habit he had taken to while tolerating his hopeless, mundane existence, a spiritual entity visited him, and confirmed his suspicions after all.

  The entity appeared as a demon in the out-fittings of an old western gunfighter, black leather with silver buttons. It stood in the dark corner of the small apartment, across the room, just beyond the dim light of the lamp on the table by Able’s side, looked at Able and shook its head in something like disgust.

  “What a poor foolish excuse for a man you are,” it said to him. “What a lowly thing, a waste of space and time. What are we going to do with you?”

  “You forgot victim,” Blank corrected him, and drank a spot of rum, suppressing the pain in the only way he could. He was drunk and mistook the demon’s presence for his own wild imagination, or perhaps a reflection of his burdensome conscience.

  “Victim, of course,” the demon agreed, “a victim of circumstances, so you claim. But if that were exact, you would not be kept under such a cloud of miserable dis.”
  “But it is true, I swear to it,” Able said, drunk but still quite depressed. Then he realized what he was doing, conversing with a strange demon, across the darkness of the small room, barely noticeable in the dim light of the lamp.

  “How did you get in here?” he said, setting the bottle aside and staring with surprise at the demon.
  “Never mind me,” the demon said, “The real question seems to be ‘how’ did you get here, and for that matter, why?”

  Blank blinked several times quickly, expecting the entity to disappear at any time, but it did not.
  “You’re not human,” Blank said, “Who are you?”

  “At the moment,” the demon said, “I appear to reflect your troubled conscience. As that is the case, perhaps you should tell me how you got here, so that I may figure out the ‘why’.”

  Blank explained it all as concisely and to the point as possible, about his mistakes and failures with life. The demon was not too impressed, and still quite uncertain.

  “Hmm...,” the demon said, “that’s quite a story, if it is true.”
  “It is, I swear to it!” Blank said, with extreme conviction.

  “Perhaps,” the demon said, and paused in momentary thought. “But if your story is true, and you are not hiding anything, I do not think you belong in this place.”

  “No, damn right, I don’t!” Blank said. “I deserve better. It’s not fair that I have to live in such conditions. I deserve an apartment on the eastern side, at the very least. I deserve a job that pays 10 dollars an hour, not a mere 5.”

  “Oh, but that’s irrelevant, Mr. Blank,” the demon said. “Money or wealth cannot save your kind."
  “You sound like a priest,” Blank said, and drank another spot of rum, then shortly laughed. “If I had just 10 thousand dollars, I could get myself out of this hole.”

  “No, that is not so,” the demon said, “As I said before, wealth cannot save you.”
  Blank stared at the demon in perplexion, and began to object.

  “You don’t understand, Mr. Blank,” the demon said. “You appear to be suffering from a dislocated sense of perspective. What I am trying to say Mr. Blank, is that you are dead and presently reside in a state of Purgatory referred to as ‘Limbo’.”

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Copyright 4/2007 by Nick Zentor