...BEFORE HERO...

Before there could be a hero, there had to be a victim. It was a tragic truth that he did not want to face. He especially didn't want to face it now, but the witch was more than insistent; she demanded it. It was all so long ago, so distant, and oddly enough, it seemed just like yesterday at the same time. But why go digging up old past when what he needed right now was help with his current situation. Crazy old witch! But he needed her magic, so it had to be done.

"Alright, witch. I'll give you what you ask, but your magic better be worth it." the hero spoke in a gravely, hushed mumble that was clear but hesitant.

The witch smiled with darkened eyes that squinted behind her innocent eyelashes. Her cheeks contoured as she smiled, and even though her smile was somewhat menacing and wicked, her smile lit up the room and the hero couldn't help but feel a spark of allurement towards her. She spun around and her hair trailed behind her in a tangled web of silken strands. Beads made from bone clicked in hidden places on her head and bells lightly tinkled as they dangled from miscellaneous dreaded strands.

He watched her with intent as she rifled through cabinets and drawers grabbing various plants, oils, and crystals and laid them out before him at his feet on a white cloth made of linen. She paused for a moment and looked at her objects then jumped up with an exclamation of "Ahhh!..." and ran over to the window sill where she snatched a spider from the corner that was busy spinning his web. She was careful not to harm it and only encased it slightly in her palm with her fingers cage-like around it. She brought it back over to where the hero sat and gently blew her breath on the spider, then released it at his feet.

The hero's first reaction was to move so that the spider would not crawl on him, but the witch stopped him with a look. She slowly shook her head in disapproval and waved a silver and gold ringed finger at him to indicate he should not do that. "If the spider does not touch you, the tapestry of your history will not unravel for you to see it and you will be left only in confusion. The spider is the one who keeps track of all the stories in the world. It carefully weaves the history of man in each thread of its web and guards it from decay. If you seek to see into your past, you must listen to the vibrations of the spider who holds your truths."

He determined to sit still and simply observe the witch until given further instruction. He marveled at her while she mixed a potion with the ingredients she had dug out and poured them all into a bowl that looked like Tiger's Eye but was the color of Turquoise. She lit a dry leaf on fire and dropped it into the bowl. It hissed and smouldered and suddenly a flash of green erupted from it. The spider jumped with the flash and scurried up the hero's leg and ran up to his shoulder. There, the spider slowed to a crawl, placing one leg in front of the other methodically and with exaggerated movements. It crept up the side of his neck slowly and made it's way to his ear. He shivered from the tickly legs of the spider, then shuddered at the fact that a spider was now resting on his ear.

The witch began to utter secret phrases in a language that the hero did not recognize. She whispered and hissed incantations and finally, leaned over the hero and in his ear that the spider rested over, she echoed a single word in an ethereal voice that only she and the spider understood. Instantly, the hero's head fell forward dropping his chin to his chest and his arms fell to his sides. He could still hear the world around him, and he still was in his right mind, but he was paralyzed and could not move on his own accord.

"Looooook....." The witch's deep voice rumbled softly in the distance, but he could feel her breath on his ear. The spider vibrated in synchronization with her voice and encouraged him to follow her direction. He looked around in his mind to his new and mysterious surroundings and found that it was dark and misty. There was a dankness in the air and he could just make out tiny pin sized lights floating down from somewhere above. As they fell, they seemed to be making out patterns, almost as if they were wrapping around something that was already there.

"Tell me hero- what do you see?" the witch chimed.

Hero was about to speak to the witch when suddenly he felt her presence inside his mind. He could not see her when he looked around, but he could feel her spirit there in him somehow. He doubted the extent of her magic until now.

"I will follow you and I will guide you, hero, but this is your epiphany, your awakening. Let the spider reveal to you all that you seek to know and all that you seek to share with me as you have agreed to do." The witch elegantly pontificated her commands and accentuated her authority with seductive charm causing the hero to fall into complete submission to her in this moment.

"...Chains. I am in chains. I am in bondage. I don't want to be here."

As the pins of light drifted, they solidified into a tangible atmosphere around the hero and he saw himself shackled, arms behind his back, head down, sitting and facing judgement or punishment. It was hard to tell. Then, the restrained version of him looked directly into his own eyes, and in the reflection of the shackled man's eyes, he saw deeper... He saw himself again, inside the shackled him's eyes. But he was different. How many versions of him were there? How many lives had he lived? How many dimensions held a copy of him? How many realities existed where he wandered?

The spider vibrated on his ear again and the hero saw deep into his past through the eyes of the prisoner. He saw a small boy; a young boy with curiosity and wonder in his mind. The boy sat on the floor of a living room and played with hand held cars. He zoomed one this way and another that way and all the while making sounds to mimic automotive noises and crashes. Tiny pieces of spittle spurted out of his mouth as he made two cars crash together while he improvised the explosion sound. He flung one car across the room in all his imaginary excitement as if it was hot coal. It crashed into the wall and fell on the table where his step-father had left his favorite beer mug. It came to a halt in slow motion after it had knocked over and chipped the cherished drinking vessel.

Before anyone could respond, tears welled up in his young eyes and spilled down his plump cheeks. He already knew what was going to happen. The same thing that always happened. He braced himself. He was not very old, but he was sharp. He remembered what he had learned from past experiences about how to tuck and protect himself. He hoped this beating wouldn't be as bad as the last one.

An angry man with heated eyes slowly emerged from out of the kitchen doorway, a can of beer in hand, unopened. He didn't speak. He didn't question what had happened and he didn't ask if the boy was hurt. He just sauntered over to the boy and with a single motion pulled his belt out of his pant's loops and brought it down across the child's face. He growled as he raised it over his head, and while he did, the boy tucked into a defensive fetal position and put his cubby hands up over his head and face. The sinister creature exhaled like a beast as he used all his strength to crack his belt over the boy's back and legs. Over and over he lashed at the boy. Blood began to seep from his clothes and his flesh peeked out from places where the belt had slashed the fabric open. Squeaks and yelps escaped from the miniature lips of the young boy, but he refused to cry out. Maybe he couldn't help the reflexes of some of the noises that naturally escaped him, but he was not going to willingly give any satisfaction to this monster; he would not cry out!

When the brute had sufficiently terrorized the boy, he sat back down in his reclining chair and cracked open his beer that he had held onto for the duration of the beating. He wiped some of the blood that had spattered on him onto his stained t-shirt and belched like an ogre.

Impulsively, Hero tried to approach the boy to help him and to comfort him, but as soon as he did, he snapped back to being in front of the version of himself that was in chains. It was as if he was going backwards through a tunnel and came out looking at himself in the eyes. As soon as he made eye contact, the shackled him lurched forward and let out a disturbing wail causing Hero to tumble backwards. He quickly realized that someone had just whipped the chained him in the back and he noticed that a single tear escaped both his eye and the shackled him's eye at the same moment.

"That is only one moment in your past, Hero. Are you sure that you can endure this further?" The witch chimed in behind him with an almost antagonistic surge in her tone. "Most cannot handle the truths of their lives. Most do not want to face themselves." She snorted a small giggle and then began to whisper and snicker simultaneously.

"You're in my way, witch." Hero responded to her with no amusement whatsoever in his voice and his eyes were steely and as serious as they had ever been. He was determined to get through this and continue with his quest at hand. This seemed to be a waste of his time, but he had to try. He stood up and pushed past the witch and gazed again into his own eyes; the imprisoned eyes of the haunted being before him.

He felt himself getting sucked into the mystic eyes looking back at him and this time he ended up standing in a room watching his fiance from ages ago while she undressed another man and embraced his naked body. The detrimental emotions he experienced and the tremendous pain that welled up in his chest almost consumed him. No words exist to portray this kind of suffering. He conjured up all the self-restraint he could and determined to move on to the next past truth. Again, he fell out of the deepest part of the trance and faced his own chained self receive a single whip on the back.

He re-entered the eyes and faced his past in progression from countless beatings from family members to bullies. He suffered women who tantalized him and flashed him eyes of innocence while behind his back betrayed him and made a fool of him. He fell victim to allies who worked their lives into his life just to turn around and back-stab him. Friends and allies and family, one after the next after the next would come to him and use him for whatever purpose they had conceived in their scheming minds. Each time, Hero would slide backwards and his eyes would confront the shackled man's eyes just in time to witness him receive a single lash on his back.

Hero went back in again and saw his wife steal away in the night with his children and run into the arms of another man. Hero fell to his knees and bellowed out a roar of agony in his helplessness. Why?! He demanded himself to answer his wonderings. Why would she so this to him? How could she?! How could she take his own children away from him?! What had he done to deserve this treachery?! This time when Hero fell backwards, he did not get up to look himself in the eyes while he received his lash. This time, Hero lay there on the floor and sobbed in his heartache. For the longest time, no sound could even escape from his lips until the pain had sufficiently swelled up in him so thick that he had to gasp for air.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH....!!!!!!" Hero roared as loud as he could, but there was not enough volume, not enough force, not enough air to push up through his lungs to make his howl accurately reflect his emotion. Just when he felt like he would faint from the fatigue that this challenge encroached upon him, he heard the shackled him yelp in excruciating agony. This time he had received his single whip from something much bigger and stronger than the previous whips. He flung himself over onto his face and pushed himself up forcefully and leapt at the shackled man. As he neared him, he fell again into his eyes mysteriously, but this time, there was a heaviness in the air and it was almost like moving through gel or something thick.

"You are getting closer, Hero...", the witch chimed in. "Do you not feel it? You are nearing now. Your past is now almost upon you, Hero..." The witch began to laugh with uncontrolled bursts and she clapped as if she was impressed with an elaborate performance of one type or the other. The spider on his ear began to vibrate violently and it seemed now as if he could hear the vibrations, like guitar strings being tapped.

Hero looked around himself in the shackled man's eyes and could see that he was now surrounded with more of his own children. He sat on the floor of his living room in front of an inviting fire and was reading a book to three young ones. It was a book of Truths full of Answers and Wonder. The children were all very intent on what he was reading and their eyes reflected the awe in their Spirits as Hero taught them the ancient ways and ancestral history from which they came. He noted that he felt safe and complete in this moment, but it was short lived.

He felt an unrest and looked up to see a woman holding a knife out at him. She had dark smoke in her eyes and the tempest behind them indicated that the squall that was to follow would be the end of him. He was not sure what had provoked this woman to hold him in such contempt, but he knew she was quite serious. She gestured for the children to come to her with a single hand movement. As they obediently obliged her, she glared at Hero and said, "You are not my love. You are no longer my husband. You are the one I hate. Now die!" She threw the knife at him, but before it reached him, he was sucked back out yet again and found himself on the floor before the shackled man's feet.

The pain was truly unbearable at this point. He could not go on any further. He had spent so much of his time throughout his life trying to rid himself of such horror. He remembered forgetting all this pain. He remembered forgetting all the doubts of others, all the mockery, all the cruelty, all the suffering and abuse. Was there supposed to be some kind of epic ending to all this torment? Was there a reward for this affliction? Was there some kind of honor for all this distress?

He looked up at the shackled man just in time to see him receive a final lash to his back and in slow motion, Hero saw his shackled self's eyes roll up into his head, his chin fall forward onto his chest, and he crumpled over the top of his knees and fell on top of Hero, pinning him. Hero gasped at the crushing weight on him and could not breathe in. He struggled to move the shackled man off of him, but could not. Blood began to drip down from the chained man's back, around his neck, and drip onto Hero's face. With a pitter-pat, several drops of blood trickled down his cheek and rolled into his mouth while he tried in vain to free himself.

"Ahhh!!! Ha ha ha ha ha....!!!!" The witch sinisterly chuckled at him. "You have seen your own pain. You have faced your own truths. You have felt your own suffering. You have died and you have died in your own face. Now, Hero- GET UP!!!"

Hero heard the witch's words, but he was still under the spell she had cast on him. But as the witch commanded him to get up, the spider began to vibrate and suddenly ran down his neck, down his chest, onto his lap and made its way back towards the window where it had been spinning its web. As the spider left him, he steadily began to regain his strength and ability to move. He reached up and felt a flat disc-like piece of webbing covering his ear. The witch slapped his hand away and snatched up the piece of webbing, but before he could question her or knock her hand away, she was already across the room putting some kind of incantation on the piece of webbed tapestry.

"You now see that before you could be a Hero, you had to be a victim. Past pains, betrayals, hauntings, sufferings, all the losses and all the stolen, the forgotten promises and broken vows, never forgetting the heartache and brutal beatings, you now have a platform to execute righteousness. Now, Hero, you know what it's like to need a hero of your own and not have one. So for you, you must be what you have seen- fill the need, Hero. Be the true hero."

The witch turned her head and looked out the window. She shed a tear and caught it with the web disc that she still held in her mystical hand. She rolled it around so that it could touch every section of the disc, then she took the black candle that was burning next to her and whispered, "Hero..." as she lit the silken charm on fire. It immediately was consumed in green fire and when out like a flash.

"So that's it?" Hero seemed perplexed, but in a bizarre kind of way, he was satisfied. Mostly, he was just glad it was over. At least, he thought it was. He HOPED it was.

"What more do you need, Hero?" The witch smirked at him, waiting for him to complain about something, but he didn't. "I have given you what you need. You have faced your truths and now you know what it is that you need to know. You are now able to do what you need to do. Your quest is upon you, Hero. I doubt you have much time. 'Tis the way things usually are. So, then, Hero, are you ready to face your assignment?"

She was sad because she knew he would be leaving her now and she rarely got company. Not GOOD company, anyways. She enjoyed her solitude, but even a witch needs a good hero. She giggled at her own thoughts.

"Don't worry, witch. I'll be back. You know I will. I need you. I've always have needed you. You do not hold the truth from me." He paused for a moment in the open doorway and flinched from the pain he was still in. "Besides, witch- you are my Mercy, and I love Mercy." And with that, he stepped out the door and faded into the distance, determined to fulfill his quest until the next time he could wander off to visit his beloved witch, his Mercy.