F R A N K E N B O O K

So, you think I am nuts for polishing my silverware day and 
night do you?  Well, i was once sane and pretty like you.  
And a royal church goer myself...

So, you like crucifixes do you?  Enjoy doing the Stations
of the Cross do you?  Nice...  Feeling Holy are we?

Well, let me tell you one night, what happened... and why i 
have become the laughing stock of all creation and the 
laughing stock of the Heavens as well as a failure both in 
the eyes of the earth and in the Eyes of God...

Dracula came and visited me one year for a night; offering 
eternal life if I serve him.  He made a rather compelling 
argument...  a somewhat socially forceful person.  if you
think for a second that WE are the source of God and that
the Creation is the Creator...

Scared, I waved a crucifix at Him, trying to scare him off.
But he just laughed, pulled it out of my hand with 
irresistible force, looked at it, smiled, examined it 
closely, and then he kissed it.

"Aghh! How can you kiss the Holy Cross?", I exclaimed.
"Aghh! How can you kiss the Unholy Earth?", he mocked back.

Dismissively, looking at the cross, he remarked, somewhat 
sardonically, 

"The Roman message, 'Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews' 
is not on this cross?"  

"You must have the sacramental cross of the good thief and
not of Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews!", he said 
mockingly, 

"You waved the wrong cross, you dope."

"Well, at least there is somebody on it and not just a
sacramental of the bare dead and dry wood upon which they
are affixed."

"Look at this! (sweeping his arms around, the cross with it) 

"goldenware and siverware and brassware and the ivoryware 
and the tinware, and the waxware, and the ware, ware, ware!"  

He took a deep breath to smell the burning candles and the 
burning incense...  then in  mock coughing, "Are you sure 
you really have enough holyware scattered around here?"

"It's still a nice work", he said, referring to the cross 
again.

"It was on my father's coffin", I replied.

"Yes, I know", he said, and returned it back to me gently.
"I had it made myself", he said with a grimace... part of 
the deal...

Then he said,
"Youngster... The Cross and the Stations are not wall paper 
or wall decorations... they represent a reality that you 
must live if you are to avoid the eternal condition of 
darkness to your soul to which you are being invisibly drawn."

"You must live the Stations."

"You must live the Cross."

"Where there is no Good Friday for you...
There will be no Easter Sunday for you..."

"You would like an Easter Sunday wouldn't you?"

"You would like eternal life, wouldn't you?"

Then louder and somewhat more menacingly,
"All those on the side of the road are MINE!
I can give you your eternal life, 
I can give you your holiness!  
you ambitious frog!"

"EVERY event in Christ's Life must be an event in yours
if you want to be safe from me your Patheticness."

"Your perfect justification is your only barrier against me
that I recognize.  Waving these silly, pious sacramentals
at me to be safe...  Ha-ha-ha-ha!...  has never worked..."

"Remember, my master was once a good friend of God.  And 
with all this rubbish strewn about I am not saying, 'your 
God'.
 
All the earth has been handed over to me and is mine!
All the borders etched in sand.
All the greed in all the land.
All the hate in every hand
that throws a stone against
the suffering Man.  
They are all mine.

And all below are committed to sustain what has been given
me.  I can't tell you the number of your priests that have
waved their stupid sacramental crucifixes at me. 

Most are just picked up bodily and pitched headlong into my 
master's flames along with their pathetic appurtenances made 
by human hands for human purposes.  You must not wave the 
sacramental, you must live what it represents.

And those who just love their incense will get enough of 
their smoke at the proper time.

Why, you are still pigging out on all this, this, dog food, 
and haven't even had your Last Supper yet, not that any 
Roman soldiers will ever come for the likes of you.

Why even the institution of the Iscariot thinks you are a 
fraud, and not even a pious one at that.  Of course, he 
thinks almost the same thing of those who are in the as yet 
unresurrected Christ on earth here too...

Notice how his judas neck is getting longer with the 
centuries?  He never really understood Justice.

For shame...

Go back now, your parents and I will wait for you until you 
are finished polishing your, your, silverware and golden and 
holy things.

Ease up on the wax candles, there is a better light you 
know.  As if you could ever follow it.  Now get this 
'silverfish food' out of my sight."

"But i am trying to be Just", i cried out.

"You pathetic imbecile, you know nothing of Justice and less 
of God!  

You believe the darkness, but you are too stupid and
blind to see the light even though you are steeped in it!

Like some fool afloat in the ocean while denying its existence!
  
You don't believe in God!"

"w-w-well...i...", stammering. 

"I don't think that EVEN I will ever fully comprehend the 
defectiveness of the human mind.  Such cretin things... 
so indifferent to God's creation of their own soul...  
utterly incomprehensible."

With that he vanished.  Nevermore to be seen, but always 
forevermore heard.

So that is why now i continually polish my silverware day
and night and never stop.