The Mark of the Beast

A short story about guilt

Photo by Jacques Dillies on Unsplash (edited by me)

Sorry for the delay everyone. As all but the most recent readers know I’ve resolved to be more regular with this, but sometimes a lot of things get in the way at once and the wise decision is waiting to write and edit till I have more breathing room. But these gaps won’t last months like some of the gaps of old.

In other news, finally sorted out the Stripe stuff and enabled payments! Thanks to

Camille Dawnier

for her kind pledge that got the ball rolling. So, for the first time:

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Man 15B entered the Hall of Justice. The clerks scattered around the dark, dusty room looked up from their pockmarked wooden desks without interest, almost instantly turning back to their sheafs of files. The man moved down the length of this longest of rooms until he was standing at the base of the raised platform containing the Official, his head just about visible over the top of his oak desk, the rangy Judge a little behind him, perched by his black lectern, and the Wise Woman, sitting cross-legged with her papers in her wicker chair by the window, the noonday light contouring her withered features. The three administrators stopped what they were doing and peered down at him.

The man addressed himself to the Official. ‘I would like to receive the Mark of the Beast.’

The clerks, as one, stopped their work. The whole room sat in silence, staring at him.

The Official was the first to recover. He leaned forward a little. ‘I’m not quite sure what you mean, citizen…receive it? You mean you’d like to apply it to someone else? You must know that’s not up to you, no matter how badly you’ve been wronged. The process is strictly — ’

‘No, I’d like to receive it myself.’

The Official’s practiced impassivity wavered a little further. The Judge frowned more deeply than usual. He shifted in his seat. ‘It’s not a tattoo, you know. I know some of the younger generation have been making those cheap knockoffs as some kind of nihilistic fashion accessory, but the real thing is reserved for those who’ve genuinely done something to be ashamed of, not people who enjoy feeling like little rebels because their parents won’t let them stay out late. It’s a purely automatic procedure and it’s got nothing to do with everyday citizens like you and me. Now get out of here and stop wasting our time.’

The man stood his ground. ‘I have done something I’m ashamed of, and I’m not leaving until I receive the Mark of the Beast.’

The Official put his monolens down and rubbed his head in a performative gesture of weariness. ‘15B — if I’m reading your tag correctly — we really are quite busy here. Look, we’ve all done things we’re not 100% proud of, that’s what your local cleric is for — ’

The man cut him off. ‘I’ll ask you not to patronise me, sir. I’ve done something to be very ashamed of indeed, something that more than qualifies me to receive the Mark. I’m well aware that usually you’ve no sooner woken up the next morning than you’ve been branded, no matter how fast or how far you’ve run, but I have to assume even the Furies can’t be everywhere at once. There’s clearly been an administrative oversight, and I haven’t received the classification I’m due.’

The Judge finally lost the last of his limited supply of patience. ‘15B, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that this isn’t an obnoxious practical joke and you’re simply very stupid. Because as you know, or should know, our open door policy goes hand in hand with extremely severe penalties for anything we judge to be a malicious misuse of court time. Now I’ll humour you just long enough to make a few things very clear.

‘Firstly, the gods don’t make mistakes, and if you’re not doing the time that means you haven’t done the crime. Secondly, the Mark of the Beast is burned into the flesh of trespassers by an invisible hand — or don’t you know what branding is? — and the pain doesn’t diminish over time. Thirdly, Sinners’ Island isn’t some spa. It’s a hellhole where the lowest of the low are met with the most fitting punishment they could get: each other’s company. If you’ve ever even fantasised about going there you’re clearly deeply mentally ill, which is also the only reason you could possibly have thought that coming here today was a good idea. Now would you please leave?’

15B had stood motionless during the Judge’s monologue, making an effort to look impassive. But he couldn’t entirely keep a look of apprehension out of his eyes — those sad eyes perpetually framed by mascara-like dark circles — as he came to terms with what he had to do next.

He turned to the clerk nearest him, a hunched-over blankface who looked fifty but was probably much younger. ‘I was hoping this wouldn’t have to go further than this room, mainly for the victim’s sake. But I can see I’m going to need to make an official ad bonum publicum statement and put it on the record. So I demand to testify. I’ve amassed the requisite amount of social credit over the last ten years of public service and my papers are in order.’

ABP statements were part of the lifeblood of civic order. Retribution is the province of the gods, but mortals are free to shame each other all they like.

15B placed a pile of documentation on the public servant’s desk. ‘Please fetch me the most infallible of your lie detectors.’ The clerk reluctantly leafed through the paperwork and shuffled away to fetch the detector, looking back resentfully over their shoulder.

The Official now looked genuinely tired. ‘Testify against whom? There’s no-one else here, for gods’ sake.’

‘Myself, of course. There’s no law against that, is there?’

The Official sighed. ‘No, technically not.’

‘Might be worth looking into closing that loophole,’ said one of the other clerks under their breath, glaring up at the man who was so intent on disrupting the team’s productivity this chilly morning.

The Wise Woman, who had been meditatively rocking back and forth during most of the preceding drama, finally applied her now-diagnostic-now-curious gaze to 15B. ‘You haven’t said yet why you’re so keen to undergo all this torture and deprivation, young man?’

The man turned to face her. ‘Because I deserve it. Why else?’

The clerk returned with a little lectern in one hand and a fist-sized triangular glass object in the other. Smoky wisps of black and orange weaved in and out of each other across the triangle’s surface, rendering it opaque. The clerk set the glass object on the lectern and placed the latter in front of 15B in as spiteful a manner as they could manage, then shuffled back to their desk.

15B put his hand on the triangle. He knew what everyone present knew: that if he now went on to tell the truth the triangle’s colours wouldn’t change, but if he said anything even slightly untrue, whether about an action or a motivation, himself or anyone else, space or time, the whole object would become suffused with a brilliant accusatory white light.

The Official, his every movement slow and unwilling, moved some papers around and turned on the recording device in front of him. He sighed, half for effect and half out of unfeigned weariness. ‘You are now on the record, young man. Proceed.’

Over the next twenty minutes, the man proceeded to relay the particulars of his offence, down to the smallest detail. As he had promised, the act was really bad. Purely selfish, thoughtless, potentially catastrophic in impact. The fact that no-one had been significantly hurt was a mere technicality, a lucky chance. Not everyone who sins greatly is discovered, even by their own victims.

All the while, the triangle remained opaque, lazily shifting from black to orange, offering no encouragement or judgement, accepting everything without commentary.

The man finished his account. The Judge now looked at him with a contempt bordering on hatred. The Wise Woman looked sad. The Official simply looked very, very tired.

Nevertheless, the consummate bureaucrat was again the first to recover. ‘This is — well, I never like to use the word unprecedented, but…nothing like it has happened in my time, anyway. Yours, madam?’ He turned to the oldest of the three, who shook her head. ‘You’ve, eh, sort of fallen through the legal cracks here a bit, 15B…what you’ve just told us…well, it absolutely is the kind of thing people have been branded for. Honestly, people have been branded for much less. We’ve all taken pity on the occasional Jean Valjean who steals a loaf of bread for a noble reason, but what you’ve done is worse and you don’t seem to have any excuse for it.’

‘I don’t,’ affirmed 15B. He was still touching the triangle, and it didn’t change colour.

‘I…well, I’m not sure what to do.’ The Official looked behind him for support, now left, now right. The Judge just kept glaring at 15B. The Wise Woman sat a little further back in her seat.

‘The gods don’t make mistakes,’ she said.

‘No, they don’t,’ the Judge added almost inaudibly.

The Official, feeling borderline helpless now, turned back to the man in front of him. ‘Well the gods may not make mistakes, but perhaps their devices do…15B, can you please put your hand on the triangle again and tell us something we all know to be untrue? “The sky is green”, that kind of thing.’

The man placed his hand back on the object and said, ‘Everything I have been telling you is a lie.’

The triangle shot out beams of piercing white light in every direction, causing everyone present to turn away or throw their hands up to shield their eyes. There were several rustles and thuds as some of the surrounding clerks knocked their work to the floor in their haste to protect themselves from the all-knowing glare.

‘That’s enough!’ barked the Judge. ‘Reset, reset!’

‘I retract my previous statement,’ 15B quickly said, covering his eyes with one hand while keeping the other firmly in position. The triangle instantly went back to the way it was before. All around the room, clerks started picking up their things and resuming their work, muttering and throwing him dirty looks.

The Official collected himself and peered back down at the self-accused. ‘Citizen, we can’t brand you because, as you must know, we don’t have a branding iron. We’re not savages. Punishment is the Furies’ job. And it’s absolutely impossible for you to go to Sinners’ Island if you haven’t been branded — the boat would sink as soon as you stepped onto it. The only exception to the rule is the Boatman, and even he doesn’t set foot on the island itself.’

One of the younger clerks nearby, who had stopped even pretending to work since 15B had started his story, thrust themselves into the conversation. ‘We honestly don’t know what they get up to out there. I mean, who cares what happens to those people right — maybe they all eat each other. Or maybe they’ve figured out some kind of honour-among-thieves social contract. Probably something in between. But whatever system they’ve worked out for themselves, there’s no getting away from how much that Mark’s got to hurt.’

Another clerk piped up, ‘Those things glow!’

Another: ‘I saw a boatful of the dregs leaving the dock a week ago. You should have heard the moans out of them. A couple of the more violent-minded ones were poking other convicts’ Marks, just for the fun of watching them scream.’ They flinched a little at their own anecdote. ‘They deserve each other.’

The Official glared over at the clerks. ‘This is private business, and you’re not paid to chat.’

‘You heard him, back to work,’ snapped the Judge.

They obliged, although one could be heard to mutter ‘Ad bonum privatum now, is it?’ under their breath.

The Judge glanced over at the Wise Woman. ‘We haven’t heard much out of you,’ he said. The two had never got along very well, and by now the Official was a little tired of his perennial position both literally and figuratively between them.

‘I think in this case the rulebook has failed us. Which doesn’t mean justice has failed us,’ said the Woman, speaking even more slowly than usual. ‘I think we need to get a little philosophical on this.’ Her colleagues looked uncomfortable, but it was essential to harmonious governance that the three present a united front at all times. As the constitution said, if any element of the established order breaks down, the whole system breaks down.

‘I’m out of ideas myself, so philosophy it is,’ said the Official.

The Judge turned back around and addressed himself to 15B. ‘Hand back on the triangle, citizen.’

The Official sat up a little straighter and visibly relaxed. Philosophy wouldn’t have been his first choice, but he was always more comfortable when following some kind of plan.

He briefly considered opening his interrogation with a foray into consequentialism, but decided against it. True, the damage in this case happened to be minimal, but in the circumstances as described that wasn’t to the accused’s credit. Everyone knew that the law gives a significant amount of weight to intent and reasonably expectable consequences, not just actual outcomes, governed as those are by the whims of chance. Hence all the cases of attempted murder that had ended in the Mark and the Island.

‘15B, were you in your right mind when you did the things you’ve told us?’

‘Yes.’

‘Temporary insanity wasn’t a factor, then?’

‘No.’

‘Did you mean to do what you did?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you know it was wrong at the time?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then why did you do it?’

‘Because I wanted to.’

‘Any history of prior bad behaviour that we don’t know about? Mark-order bad?’

‘No.’

‘So this was uncharacteristic behaviour on your part.’

‘Yes.’

The clerk who’d interrupted proceedings earlier had left their desk during this exchange and gone over to glance through the paperwork 15B had brought. ‘Actually, his social history and credit score aren’t just adequate, they’re exemplary,’ they said. ‘Hardworking, honest, universally popular, respected in business, involved in local betterment schemes, a Temple regular, gives generously to the needy.’

The Judge grimaced. ‘We’ve had such cases before. Well-liked model citizens who did everything just so for the first 30 to 40 years of their lives, hiding a raging inner demon the whole time. They’d snap under the pressure of a hard day and go on a killing spree, or turn out to have been planning something heinous for years, something they thought they could get away with if they were careful enough. All caught by the all-knowing Furies, all rightly banished to Sinners’ Island.’

The Official regarded 15B thoughtfully. ‘Are you hiding a “raging inner demon”, citizen? In your own view? Or would you say you’re a fundamentally decent person most of the time? What I’m trying to say is — are you a good person who just happened to do a bad thing?’

The man sighed and looked at his shoes. ‘I don’t know any more. All I can say is that I felt like a good person before I did everything I’ve just said, and I don’t feel like a “demon” now. I just feel like I did an unforgivable thing and deserve to be punished.’

‘On that we agree,’ said the Judge. To the Official he said, ‘Surely none of this is for him to say. Everyone thinks they’re a good person, even the most hardened of murderers. I’m not sure asking the man for his views on his own moral status is the most productive line of questioning.’

‘Don’t forget that a lot of well-meaning people think they’re bad,’ said the Wise Woman. ‘Faulty self-perception goes both ways.’

‘But he is bad! Didn’t you hear the testimony? You can’t do those things and not be bad!’

‘That’s the thought that’s been going through my head ever since,’ said the accused, still looking at the floor. ‘“You can’t do those things and not be bad”. I don’t feel bad, but at the same time I do. And all the evidence says I am bad. I just don’t understand it. I’m confused all the time. Just…’ His head lowered further. ‘Horrified at myself.’

A tiny speck of hope came into the Official’s eyes. ‘You’re sorry for what you’ve done, it seems. Very sorry. We don’t know why you did it, you don’t know why you did it, but if you had the chance you’d take it all back. Hence, no Mark of the Beast.’

The Judge shook his head. ‘No dice.’

‘He’s right,’ said The Wise Woman. ‘Our system being what it is, I’ve seen many poor souls bundled off to Sinners’ Island who were beyond sorry for their actions — sorry above and beyond the fact of being punished. You could see that they’d have given anything to make everything unhappen, to wipe away their victims’ tears. Not everyone who rots away in that godsforsaken place is a confirmed villain.’

The Official resumed looking uneasy and faintly unwell. He was firmly out of his comfort zone thinking about these things. It wasn’t his job to question the gods; his job was pushing stacks of paper around.

OK. One more try.

‘Citizen,’ the bureaucrat said, raising his voice and doing his best to sound as official as his title, ‘I know you haven’t had much time to reoffend since the events you’ve described, but as I look at you now I genuinely get the impression that you don’t want to. That you will never sin again.’ The man nodded without looking up.

The Official looked back at the others. ‘And he has done a lot of good, and will surely continue to. Is it possible our system has room in it for restorative justice? That the gods, in their wisdom, afford some criminals a second chance?’

The Wise Woman slowly shook her head. ‘I wish that were the case, but no — the law is strictly deontological. It doesn’t make any exceptions for doing-bad-but-being-good, or being-contrite, or changing-your-ways, or atoning-by-giving-back. If you do wrong, you’ve bent the moral fabric of the universe, and the only thing that allows reality to resume its proper shape is the instant and eternal punishment of that wrong.’

She gazed down at 15B. ‘Citizen, I can see that you’re not merely sorry for what you’ve done; you’re going to spend the rest of your life going out of of your way to be extra good so as to avoid even the slightest chance that you could ever be bad again. You’re going to make it your life’s work to be better than other people. And rightly so — you’ve been given an opportunity here, for a reason only the gods know, and you’ve got to make the most of it. I just worry that you’ll be so busy avoiding actively harming others that you’ll never be much benefit to them.’

The Judge made no attempt to conceal his irritation. ‘You’re not saying we should just let him go, are you? Someone who’s done those things? He’s a threat to public safety! There must be some punishment we can mete out within the confines of the law.’

The Official removed his monolens and rubbed his sleep-deprived eyes. ‘You know there isn’t, colleague.’

The accused set his face into a stubborn, hardened expression. ‘If you all refuse to punish me, I can organise some kind of mob justice against myself — ’

The Wise Woman cut across him. ‘We’re not savages here.’

‘Then I’ll have to punish myself.’

‘And presume to know better than the gods themselves about what’s to be done with you? No, that would only compound your offence.’

‘Then I’ll have to kill myself.’

‘You’re not capable of that and I think you know it.’

The man’s anguish and self-loathing finally got the better of him, and he dropped his faux-stoicism completely. Taking his eyes from the floor, he took a step towards the desk and put his hands together, turning a pleading look from face to face. ‘You have to help me. I can’t live with myself. You can’t just make me go back out there and pretend nothing has happened. Don’t you understand what you’re asking me to do?’

The three administrators just looked at him in silence.

He took a step closer. ‘Seriously, what do you want me to do?’

Another long pause. Dust hovering in the air. Functionaries click-clacking away. The faint sound of birds outside.

Finally, the Wise Woman said, ‘Just do what you were doing before, citizen. Live well.’

‘There’s no atonement ritual I can perform?’

‘What good would that do anybody? Live well.’

The man was close to tears now. ‘I’ll never be happy again, I promise you that…’

‘If you’re never happy, what good will you ever do? Live well.’

‘I’ll always be mindful of what I’ve done…’

‘You’ll do better to focus on the good you can do now. Live well.’

The man opened his mouth again, but no sound came out. After standing in silence for a full twenty seconds, he turned around and walked away without looking back. The administrators faintly heard the door opening and closing in the distance.

The Judge looked sour; the Official rubbed his eyes some more; the Wise Woman ruminated. After a brief interval, she said, ‘May I listen back to the man’s recording?’

‘If you must,’ said the Official in the most resigned tone he could manage, taking the device and handing it to her with slow, careful movements.

She took the instrument and tapped away at its interface for a few seconds. An electronic voice said ‘Are you sure?’ She pressed the screen a final time. The voice said, ‘Deleted.’

The Official, who had already resumed his work, turned around sharply. ‘What did you do that for?’

She smiled and shrugged. ‘The gods kept no record of the offence; why should we?’

‘But…an ad bonum publicum statement…this is…well, I’ll say it! This is unprecedented.’

‘It’s been a bit of an unprecedented day all round, don’t you think? What’s one more breach of protocol?’

The Official sat staring at her for seven long seconds before summoning every ounce of bureaucratic self-regulation in his system, amassed over a lifetime of assigning the correct adjudication to the relevant individual in a perfectly even tone of voice. Without a word, he picked a bit of lint from his robe and turned back to his work. There’d been entirely too much excitement for one day without two of the administrators falling out. After all, if any element of the established order breaks down, the whole system breaks down.

15B emerged from the close, stifling atmosphere of the Hall into the open air. He pulled his coat tighter around him, rubbed his hands together, and raised his head to look at the wild geese as they circled overhead.