The Monster and God

*just a sneak peak at the piece I’m working on for the Heroes/Villains competition that Eileen emailed us all about. The piece will focus on a confession-like scene between the recently re-exiled Napoleon on St. Helena and his real life confessor, Abbe Vignali. Not sure if I want to keep it as a script or turn it into short story form. Maybe I will experiment with both and see which you all prefer. Let me know what you think so far!

Napoleon: what am I, Vignali? 

Vignali: you are a man, sire. 

Napoleon: Is that all? Tell me, Abbè, did God not instruct that all of us are to become like Himself? Did He not intend that we fashion ourselves into his likeness? 

Vignali: He did indeed, sire. 

Napoleon: There was a time when I believed I had achieved such a feat. There was a time when I believed I alone had managed to become the very image of God on earth, endowed with the ability to create and destroy as is the nature of gods. In five years time I had far exceeded the ambitions of Alexander and in two turned the dreams of Caesar to childish whims to be chortled at. Yet they see it fit to call me a monster! I who was their father, their savior, their maker! I made all things new by my own blood, took on their virtues and sins and created a temple to prosperity, to the glory of all France. And how did they repay this sacrifice? Well…I suppose the repayment is obvious to your eyes. Now I sit here, with God and the spirits of all his antecedent monsters….waiting. Caesar, Alexander, Augustus, Trajan and Charlemagne hover at my shoulder, anxious that I should join them in their immortal deficit. They are wearisome in death, whispering in my ear of their former greatness like scorned lovers who cannot accept rejection. They seem to wish that I too should share in these whispers when my time arrives, rather sooner than later, I gather. These great men, these fellow monsters, who were themselves like Zeus and Hercules to me in my youth, I now find myself renouncing, the mere mention or thought of them turning my stomach to worms. The desire to be the equal of gods is perhaps the greatest monotony, the most common deformity in all men who draw breath. Perhaps there are no great men but only great fools, for those who call themselves great or are given the title are swiftly reminded of their mortality not long after their anointing.