“Good morning class. My name is Alan, Alan Sharpton. I’ll be your philosophy teacher today.”

Alan paused for a moment as he collected his thoughts.

He wore his square-framed glasses as well as they could be worn. A pocket protector was featured prominently on his quilted grey sweater. His brown-flecked hair was parted in the middle; his thin form radiated nervous energy as he paced the front of the classroom.

“Today I want to study the darkness in the human heart as we evidenced in history. Specifically, I want to focus on man’s tendency to use religion as a lever to achieve his own goals. The simple fact is that some of the bloodiest massacres in history have been initiated by religion. Ultimately, we will discuss ways that this could happen today and how we can prevent it. I know this is a heavy topic for summer school but it is an important one. Now please turn to page thirty-four in your textbooks.”

Travis watched Alan from the back of the classroom.

Travis still wore the same orange shirt and tattered blue jeans that he had worn all week. His eyes were wild and bloodshot. Due to the hit of crystal meth he had taken the night before he was feeling more than a little paranoid.

It was very strange.

His wooden idol had spoken to him.

It had only said two sentences.

“Alan has the money you need for Dwayne.”

“Perhaps it would be best if Alan disappeared.”

What if the idol was right?

That was the question Travis was asking himself as he sat in class.

***

Later that day…

***

Frankly, ya look like you’re ready for a funeral…your own.” Dwayne sighed heavily as he walked to the shelf where the idol stood. “I warned ya about meth, didn’t I?”

“You warned me and then left me a syringe with one premixed dosage. Just like you always have…ever since you got me hooked.”

“I got ya hooked? Ya got yourself hooked is more like it. I just gave ya an opportunity to choose between temptation and salvation. You chose damnation! Is that my fault? Ya still have an opportunity ta find salvation…all ya gotta do is give me the money ya owe me.”

“I told ya I’d get it. I gotta plan…ya just gotta be patient.”

Dwayne pulled a pistol from the pocket of his expensive blue jeans and then fired a shot into the ceiling.

A haze of dust slowly filled the room.

Travis toyed with the plastic eye hanging from a chain around his neck. It was a constant, obsessive motion.

Maybe the idol had been wrong…what if he killed Dwayne instead?

Maybe that would fix this situation…

“Don’t even think of it, Travis. If ya try anythin funny…the next shot will be for you! Listen, man, I long ta grant ya mercy, I really do…but ya know the law around here is that judgment must always fall on the disobedient. Come on now…We were friends once…weren‘t we?”

“You know very well what we were.” Travis trailed off as he stared at the debris dribbling from the bullet hole in the ceiling.

His hand fell into his pocket and grasped the knife he had hidden there.

Dwayne continued to preach. “The thing is…I’ve been given this island to run and I just can’t have people like you slackin’ off and weighin’ everybody down. Everybody’s gotta contribute…that’s only fair ain’t it?”

Travis felt hatred well up within him as he attacked.

At that moment, everything seemed to shift into slow motion.

Dwayne’s black cowboy boots began to ripple as if seen from underwater. Travis felt like lead had been strapped to his arms yet he continued to move. Like a fragmented dream, he saw his gleaming knife slashing slowly toward Dwayne’s fat belly.

Then, Dwayne’s surreal form snapped just out of reach. Beneath his cowboy hat, Dwayne’s perfect teeth were spreading into a charming smile.

Travis felt his pulse rate explode. He knew if he didn’t finish it now he never would. He prepared to strike the final blow into the heart of his enemy.

Dwayne’s round, wholesome face was twisting and roiling as if under extreme pressure. His smooth teeth were morphing into knife-like fangs. His eyes went white as they rolled back in their sockets.

Closer…closer…Dwayne’s snakelike tongue extended, reaching for Travis’s bare neck and the blood running like rivers beneath the sweat-soaked skin.

Travis ducked and barely avoided the gaping mouth coming toward him.

“Get your contribution together or next time I won’t let ya off that easy.” With those slurred words…the vision of Dwayne vanished.

Travis dropped his knife and then wiped the beads of sweat from his brow.

His living room was empty.

Was this too only a paranoid delusion?

The idol was in his hands now. How had it gotten there? Who cared? The enemy was gone now, that was all that mattered.

He didn’t have any idea how he would get Alan’s money but in his addled state, he didn’t care in the slightest. Despite what the idol had said, Travis would prefer to get the money without any violence.

The only person on this island who deserved violence was Dwayne.

When Dwayne least expected it, Travis would get him. Yes indeed, someday soon he would escape his cruel master.

Travis padded through his living room…carrying the idol carefully as if it were a child. The smiling face that had been carved on the cherry wood was always comforting. Some thought it was foolishness to place so much importance on the idol…Yet, Travis thought it was one of the best gifts that Dwayne had ever given to him.

He could never let it go.

He stopped.

There was a syringe on the floor.

Travis licked his lips as the craving whispered, then demanded the obvious.

He placed the idol back on its shelf. He eyed it for a moment, ensuring that it could not fall from its perch. Assured that the idol was safe, he turned back to the gaze upon the syringe there by the door.

He knew he shouldn’t touch it.

It was wicked.

He would give up everything to be free from it.

Still, it was only a moment before his hand extended toward his pleasure.

***

The next day…

***

Of all his students, Alan Sharpton had noticed Travis most of all.

Not that he was exceptionally bright, he wasn’t. However, Travis made up for any obvious shortcomings with an almost obsessive curiosity.

Travis was obviously an addict. He had lost so much weight in the past few months that he had literally become a walking skeleton. For a while, he had even quit attending class.

Why had Travis started attending again?

Alan felt the pinprick of fear. Could Travis be the one who had killed Dwayne’s wife Marsha? The suspicion had crossed his mind a few times.

Travis raised his hand. “Umm, I have a question. You mentioned religious violence…doesn’t religion itself teach that God himself is the author of the ultimate violence? That is, of sending people to Hell? If God is good, how could he send anyone to Hell?”

Alan pursed his lips. “Good question. I’ll ask you this…How could God be a good God if he never punished beings who practice evil? If God allowed evil to reign over the world without ever punishing it…would God not be unjust? If God were unjust how could God be good? Something to think about, isn’t it? Now…does anyone else have a question?” Allan scanned his classroom for upraised hands but found none. “Alright, if there are no other questions I suppose I’ll carry on. Turn to page 39 in your textbooks please…”

Alan shivered as he felt Travis’s gaze piercing through him.

There was something very weird about Travis.

Travis stared at his teacher…he hadn’t expected an answer like that.

It was like a drop of sanity had been injected into his drug-crazed brain.

Perhaps it would be better to leave Alan alone.

Although, how would he deal with Dwayne the next time he came to visit?

What to do?

***

Later that day…

***

“Alan has the money you need for Dwayne.”

“Alan needs to disappear.”

Travis shivered as he stared at the statue. The idol had been insistent tonight, demanding that he go over to Alan’s house immediately.

He had tried to argue with it. He tried to explain how good of a teacher Alan was…how it should be Dwayne who was killed but the idol simply kept repeating the same two sentences.

It wanted action!

Sadly, over the past few hours, Travis had lost faith in his old friend. Yet, he didn’t know what to do. He knew that evil was rampant on the island. He knew that Dwayne was behind it all. Still, the question remained.

What to do?

It was time for a decision.

Travis turned his back on the idol that brooded over his living room.

The idol was not good…therefore it could not be a true God.

He had decided to forsake it and follow the truth.

Travis shuffled toward the stairway to the basement. His hand flicked a light switch at the head of the stairs. He then descended the steps necessary to enter the damp darkness that was his basement. Earlier in his life, Travis had smashed out all the windows and then filled in the empty spaces with cement.

Bats fluttered and flickered throughout the shadows. Their mouths were stretching open as they flew ever closer. Even their small fangs would be enough to drain the blood from his body.

The naked light bulb on the wall behind him threw his silhouette forward over the wooden floor.

Tempest, his once loved cat, rubbed against his legs.

Travis ignored her and forced his feet forward. Finally, he reached the appropriate spot on the wooden floor. He pressed the plastic eyeball that hung around his neck.

No one knew about this secret.

The bats filled his vision once again. Whispering in high-pitched voices, fluttering, flickering closer. They were streaming from behind a large fuel tank sulking beside him.

They terrified him…even though he knew they were only drug-induced hallucinations…

A hatch slid open smoothly and revealed a dark passageway.

At the bottom of the hole was safety. Yes indeed, there was the room that would be his refuge for the months to come.

He had built this secret cavern to escape the fallout from the millennium bug that had been set to destroy all the world‘s computers.

It was lucky that he had gone through the effort to build this.

Rather than go through the effort of confronting the evil around him…he would hide from it.

Travis slithered into the hole and began climbing down the steel ladder. Below, everything was prepared for him. There was plenty of food and water in storage. The only part of the ventilation system that was remotely visible was a small slit in the hatch above. Books on philosophy and religion lined every available shelf. They would provide hours of useful study material.

Travis pressed the eyeball again.

Above him, the hatch slid shut.

There was no going back now.

Dwayne would search for him. He never let go of one of his citizens that easily but Travis would be well out of reach of his evil schemes.

He should have hidden away long before the meth had destroyed him with its beautiful sparkle. Already his nerves were screaming for the dosage that was now out of reach.

“Shh…Shh…Shh…” The bats were beating their wings against the hatch above. They wanted his blood.

Travis’s eyes were wild as they stared up the ladder toward the rapidly growing sound.

“Stay away!” He screamed, tearing out his lungs.

Then his feet hit the floor.

He had made it.

A soft breathing sound grated on Travis’s ears. He turned, frantically searching the room for signs of life.

All that could be seen was the veil of dust that had settled over everything that Travis had prepared.

Everything was okay.

Travis sighed with relief as he rubbed his sunken eyes.

A cold, snakelike hand reached over his shoulder and caressed his throat.

“Ta think ya almost got away…” Dwayne’s overweight form glided around Travis’s wasted body. Sweat glistened on the top of Dwayne’s bald head. A drop of moisture dribbled down and then splashed onto Travis’s nose.

“God won’t let you get away with this.” Travis heard himself gasping…

The point of Dwayne’s knife met Travis’s Adam’s apple.

“You’re right Trav…God is good…God may even be raisin up judgment on me even as we’re talkin…”

Travis felt a faint breeze of hope against his sweat-covered skin. Then the crowbar slammed into his ribs, snapping bones and forcing him to his knees.

Dwayne held the crowbar before Travis’s face.

“But I ain’t followin God, am I? I’m followin my own rules, unbendin and unchangin. I just wish that ya had got that into your head before it was too late. I loved ya as a friend and brother…I really did.”

With that, Dwayne swung the crowbar toward Travis’s head.

In that instant…Travis went to be with God…and strangely enough, when he saw the beauty of Heaven, Travis realized that God is actually good…

***

A conversation as Dwayne’s deputies investigate the aftermath…

***

“What’s this?”

“Oh, that? Dwayne said Travis worshiped that ugly thing.”

“Sounds pretty whack to me.”

“He was a meth head…you know how out of touch with reality addicts can get…Dwayne said Travis thought this idol was talking to him.”

“Telepathy?”

“I don’t know. It’s all a little too weird for me.”

“Funny you should mention that. I read somewhere, I don’t know where it was…maybe in one of those tabloids you see in the checkout line at the supermarket…Anyway, it said that some evil beings can implant thoughts into the minds of humans. They couldn’t control humans outright…but somehow they were able to manipulate them.”

“Whatever. The big question on my mind is, how does Dwayne always know as soon as somebody gets killed around here?”

“How do you know Travis was killed? We haven’t found a body yet.”

“That’s just it. We haven’t found a body but Dwayne was sure that Travis had been killed. That’s why he sent us down here, remember?”

“Bruce, take my advice. Don’t think, you’ll be happier that way.”

“I hear what you’re saying Vance…but still, I can’t help but wonder about Dwayne sometimes…”

“Well, stop wondering, you’ll be safer that way…”