4. Honor thy Father and thy Mother.
"My father was dead, and my mother was insane. I was on my own. Even if that weren't the case, respect was something that had to be earned. Obedience shouldn’t be given blindly to anyone."
5. Thou shalt not kill.
The weight of these words struck her. She circled them.
6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
7. Thou shalt not steal.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
"They were good ideas and I would abide by them under normal circumstances, but I needed these tools of deception. They came in handy when fighting monsters. Villains didn't play fair so I couldn't afford to be bound by one-sided rules. They needed to be broken from time to time for the greater good."
"I assumed that number eight included lying, which I was inclined to do. Stealing from thieves didn’t feel like stealing. Wasn’t that a double negative becoming a positive? Or was it two wrongs don’t make a right?"
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods.
"I'm a woman on a farm in the middle of nowhere and I’m not concerned with material things beyond survival. These didn't seem to apply to me."
The killing commandment was the one that resonated with her.
From one of her schoolbooks, she wrote out the seven deadly sins.
Pride
Envy
Gluttony
Lust
Wrath
Greed
Sloth
She circled greed. Then she added their countering virtues.
Faith
Hope
Charity
Fortitude
Justice
Prudence
Temperance
She circled hope, and crossed out temperance. She could afford to be restrained.
Then she filled in the sin list with a few more that landed people in one of the nine rings of hell, according to Dante.
The people who refused to take a stand in life were punished at the gates of hell. They were stung by wasps for all eternity.
Ring one was a limbo for those of unfulfilled desire and hopelessness.
Ring four was for the prodigal and the miserly and punished hoarders and wasters.
Ring five was for the wrathful and the sullen. She laughed to herself. "This was my daily state."
Ring six burned the heretics.
Ring seven soaked the violent, the suicides, blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers in a river of boiling blood. She circled the usurers.
Ring eight punished the frauds.
Ring nine was for the treacherous, betrayers, traitors against country, and cannibals. She circled the entire ninth ring. These were her prime targets, although she didn't expect to ever run into any cannibals.
She continued to introduce ideas into the tangled chalk words.
She added:
Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself.
Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
She connected concepts from list to list, from source to source. Some concepts clearly added up like: Greed + Usury + It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God = Monster.
Other things didn't. Honor thy Father and thy Mother + If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, he cannot be my disciple = What?
Then there was some stuff was just plain weird.
Don't cut your hair nor shave.
People who have flat noses, or is blind or lame, cannot go to an altar of God
Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you. “So it was amoral to eat lobster?”
From the Greeks she added.
Know thyself
Nothing to excess
Finally, she curled up with a book of Aesop’s fables, in a big chair. As she read each story, their morals were taken to the board and the long since dead Greek's words of advice lived again.
Look before you leap.
Never trust your enemy.
In serving the wicked, expect no reward, and be thankful if you escape injury for your pains.
Whatever you do, do with all your might.
A man is known by the company he keeps.
She added: "And I fight alone."
Self-help is the best help.
Attempt not impossibilities.
When she stopped writing, she had an amalgam of ideas, but no clear answers. The bottom line was, she had to do something. She squeezed her head between her arms like she was trying to pop an answer out, but it didn't work. She needed a break. She stretched like a cat, and then took a walk around her property. The sky cleared of clouds and the ground was drying.
The ideas on the chalkboard didn't match what was inside her. There was less overlap than she expected. There didn’t seem to be any absolute truths. The only one she could think of was, "We all die."
She wondered if death was actually death if we continued on forever in heaven. There was no turning back from that one, at least not for us mortals. It seemed that life was precious and worth preserving.
She sighed, then started talking to herself.
“Everyone knew the difference between right and wrong. It’s like an instinct within us all. Even the monsters knew the difference because they hid their bad deeds. Then when they were caught they lied to get out of trouble, because they knew they were doing wrong.”
“People made excuses to justify things they wanted to do. As long as they could escape consequences, they would keep doing it.”
“Did everyone just do whatever they wanted to make themselves feel good? What made people feel good, could be radically different from person to person. Good people did good things because they felt better. Bad people did bad things because the outcome of the deed benefited them in some way. It wasn’t because they didn't know it was wrong. They just didn’t care.”
“I had to stop the monsters from hurting the least fortunate, the people who couldn't stand up for themselves. I could represent them, be their voice and their fists, if necessary. I would have to dwell somewhere in the middle, between the shadows and the light to make the game fair for the rest of us.”
She wandered back into the barn and to a dressing area where she plopped down in front of a makeup mirror. She stared into her dark eyes. She asked her reflection, "God works through you…?"
"The morality was already within me? Maybe it was just in my heart not my brain?"
She stood up and returned to the chalkboard. She scanned the lists again. She collected pieces and reworded them to suit her. She also added some of her own.
At the top she wrote, "Be generous."
She wrote the word 'greed', and circled it again. It seemed like the primary problem. Then she made her own list of miseries she'd witnessed in the Citadel.
Lack of respect for life
Persecution
Prejudice
Ignorance
Racism
Apathy
Despair
Selfishness
Stop hurting each other
Play fair — Cheating
Usury
Taking advantage of others who were less fortunate
Exploitation
She stepped back with arms akimbo to review her work. "The monsters were infected by these miseries. We needed protection from them. They needed to be removed from the community. It seemed like the fundamental way to save our society.”
She turned the list back on herself, to see how the monster hunter compared to the monsters. “To fight them I would have to be like them, but how far could I go? Was there anything I wouldn't be willing to do for my mission?"
She went back and forth in her imagination. She could think of an exception for nearly all the rules. She narrowed it down to one she didn't think she could break.