"On What Is True," part 17

Countless great prophets of various eras and places tell one or another version of the following. Unable to rise, the man, lying on the cracked floor, saw a red light above him. It was the red Eye of God, staring down at the supernaturally broken man. He saw that the Eye, although a pure homogeneous red, was not solid at all. As he looked deeply into It, he could see that God's Eye was composed of raw nerves. But there were infinitely many, packed with infinite density so only to seem like a solid mineral. The man could see that God being so composed was capable of infinite pain and infinite pleasure. From an unseen mouth God said, "still you go on. But why? Tell me now, as surely you by now have learned: what is the true?"

The man replied: "pain."

"Yes. And what is the false?"

"Nothing is false."

"And what is really the case?"

"What is the case is that to any pain is the increase it beckons."

Of all the man's thoughts, feelings, and experiences thus far, this realization was easily the most painful, for it is the knowledge that under the right conditions, pain can continuously multiply without end, and he knew he in fact existed under those very conditions and could expect his pain only to increase unfathomably. With that thought, his pain at last was too much to bear. Paradise was closed off, so his self-erasure now would redeem nothing for him. But by necessity's force, under this most painful realization, the man, né Corry Shores, being resolved and yet pushed involuntarily by the boundless depths of his pain, jumped on his block for the last time, finding himself not there. The prophets all finish this account with some variation of: "This is no end just as much as this is all true."

"On What Is True," part 16

Despite the excruciating pain of moving his body composed of raw nerve-cluster, the man pushed himself forward to the only refuge he knows, his home. But upon arriving at its location he saw a structure unrecognizable to him, with bright light beaming out of every new window. He entered and was horrified to see the numerous corpses all with gleeful faces. Many were embracing as if having the time of their lives. "What could have caused all this gleeful death?" he wondered. The man then heard some groans come from a woman, doubled over and lifeless. He brought his ear to her mouth and she whispered in her last breaths: "You killed us, you killed us with your supernatural foolishness." As her life finally gave way, the man's attention was caught by the display-case spotlight. "That's me!" he thought, but what he saw first were the statues of his most shameful moments, oh the horror! These things he thought he had forgotten, now so regretfully he sees them played out one by one. He understood now why the crowd must have laughed, oh the humility, no the shame, the pure shame to know how so many saw these statues, and worse still, some depicted disgraceful moments that he thought no one knew about but here revealed that there in fact were unseen observers, oh to think at those moments he was spied upon by such sniggering witnesses, in many cases people he respected and admired! The spotlight then moved to his fears, "oh what a coward am I, afraid of such harmless things, no wonder I failed in faith to God's Will! What a pathetic fearful incurable nothing I am." All the while the man's mind ached with mental and emotional agony. He realized that his brain had also grown countless new emotionally and psychologically sensitive raw nerves like how his body grew its clusters too. Too many times in his life had the man suffered the worst disappointments, self-hatreds, depressions, heartaches, urges for self destruction, but never ever at this extraordinary level which his raw nerve-brain now made him feel. Then as the light moved to the statues depicting what he wanted to be and could have become but failed to be, he felt such self-disgust and self-hateful rage throughout his nerve-dense body and brain. He was on fire, head to toe. How dare he be such a failure! With what right did he do such things, have such fears, be so cowardly, choose to be his lesser, more despicable self? Then the light moved to the final statue depicting what he could have been. There was God, holding open the gates to paradise, and the man had made it inside, having so much pleasure and true mental and emotional happiness that the man could not even recognize it as himself, but all the signs were here that it indeed was he. That sight struck him down so hard he cracked the floor nearly open below him. It hurts me even to say it, but yes, my sweet, dear child, yes, it really happened so.

"On What Is True," part 15

An expert with a lifetime of experience in these matters assured me that all the main elements of the following can be trusted. The dogs having had their fill left the man in his painful condition. He arose despite the unbearable pain of the millions of raw nerve endings grinding upon one another with every slight movement of his body. At the same time, the man left his dismantled house after the display case of shame killed the funeral-goers by laughter. The man then by happenstance crossed paths with the man. Recognizing him, the man said, 

"I buried you." 

"Did you? How dare you leave the job unfinished?" 

"How dare you leave your suicide unfinished?" 

"I hate you. You are what I refused to become." 

"I hate you more. You are what I refuse to turn back into." 

The man then punched the man in the densest, rawest part of his nerve-bundled body, a clump bulging out slightly at his gut.

"Good, the man said, good, keeping punching yourself. And why is that? Why are you hitting yourself?" 

"I cannot stop it, the man said to the man, but why can you not stop it either?" 

"Because neither one of us has power over necessity and even less so over the case." 

After the man's nerves were pounded down to mashed tissues, the man departed from the man forever. Although the expert is recently deceased and can no longer attest personally to its veracity, he entrusted his son in his last will and testament to defend this account at all costs.

"On What Is True," part 14

The following comes from a credible witness. We have excluded details the witness was not entirely certain about. The man now covered head to toe and through and through with vile cancers, moving under their compulsion, journeyed through odd passages until finally arriving at the gates of paradise. The sight of them filled him with anguish as he was forced to recall vividly the two times God opened the gates and willed the man to enter, asking only that he destroy everything absolutely of himself first. Failing to do so both times and having to watch those gates crash closed haunted him nightmarishly now. From outside the perimeter where he stood he could hear squeals and grunts of utter delight made by the paradisians inside. But all he himself could feel was the sickness and unbearable discomfort that his cancerous composition made him suffer each moment without distraction. Just then a pack of hounds surrounded him. They too were cancerous creatures, hungering for a cancerous meal. Growling and drooling they closed in on him. He fell pathetically to the ground, covering his eyes so not to see the horror to come. With sharp snaps the dogs bit off chunks of his cancerous tissue, as he writhed in unbelievable agony and shock. Soon he was chewed down in most places to bare bone. But by some strange cause all this missing tissue regenerated, but not as cancers, not as normal flesh, but as extraordinarily dense clusters of raw exposed nerves, bundled together, making among one another painful mutual contact, sending signals of excruciating pain into his brain-stem. The hounds, now spying this new delicacy hesitated not the least to begin chowing on the man's new nerve-bundle flesh. With just one bite alone, a dog would compress and mangle and soon rip off millions of raw nerve endings, sending a short circuit charge into the man's brain, while inside his head he felt like a thousand lightning bolts from a tornado had struck down upon his cerebral tissues. What word can be found to describe this much pain? The man thought of Dante's inferno and how no circle of hell rendered pain anywhere as severe as this. Oh how he envied the damned in the lowest circles of hell. How fortunate to be one of them, to suffer pain that was at least comprehensible even if unbearable. But this was not the end. As the dogs kept voraciously consuming his ever regenerating raw nerve-bundle flesh, his head was pushed and pinned to the side, placing before him a glimpse into paradise. He saw such exquisite healthy bodies of the paradisians, running to one another and making unbelievably satisfying love, so indiscreetly and shamelessly, in all the ways one could desire. He could even see well enough to make out their love organs, which although taking the normal shape, seemed composed differently than human anatomy. The same nerve regenerative forces must have acted on the paradisians' love organs, because they had come to be densely riddled with raw nerves, as if being made mostly if not entirely of nerve endings. But when the organs made lustful contact, it gave them pleasure as extreme as the man's chewed nerve flesh gave him pain. Oh what unbelievable delight he saw them have as they copulated furiously. Such expressions on their faces the man never saw anything like. How divine and extraordinary their pleasure was. He saw it all! And heard it too! Such sweet, sweet music of love and ecstasy like nothing ever dreamed of on earth. That was to be his eternal ecstasy! God willed it! Twice no less, God willed him to have it! But he failed the Will of God and himself and his world. He failed. All this time the dogs never ceased chewing the man's nerves, while the paradisians gave incredible pleasure to each other. At that moment the man realized just how limited Dante's vision of hell was. None of the damned really suffered supremely, not even close, not at all. For none suffered their painful torment while being forced to observe the inconceivable pleasures of those in paradise while knowing unmistakably that this pleasure was meant for themselves to have instead of their excruciating torture. Now, who will dare to deny that this is certainly true? What? Not even you, O Žižek!?! Not even you!?!

"On What Is True," part 13

We have documentation that after burying his corpse the man under his duties as executor went to his home to dismantle his life completely. Everything that the man cherished or even recognized as his own was smashed to bits. A display was than constructed. All the things the man was afraid of most deathly were cruelly put on display with bright and attractive illumination. Statues were then sculpted and displayed there as well, depicting the man at his most shameful, embarrassing moments. Other elaborate statues portrayed the man in all the ways he was not but wished so much he could be. Seeking lunch, the funeral-goers happened upon the man's house and heard the cheerful and busy construction noise. Walking in and noticing the display, they broke out in an uproar of hearty laughter as they came to see how the man was just so ridiculously full of naught. The display lighting was rigged for show. One item after another took the spotlight in turn. With each new revealed item, the crowd's laughter grew more uproarious. Getting no more than a third through the display, the attendees had been laughing so hard and for so long that they were lacking for air. The spotlight, being mechanical, ceased not its show, and the crowd soon self-suffocated, dying, prematurely, but willingly so, for this was their most joyous moment. These documents have been certified by our highest courts of law.