In the terrible silence of the night,as all heavenly things disappeared behind the grasping veil of thick cloads,I walked loely and afraid in the Valley of the Phantoms of Death.As midnight came,and the spectres leaped about me with thier horrible,ribbed wings,I observed a giant ghost standing before me,fascinating mewith his hypnotic ghasliness.In a thunering voice he said,"your fear is two fold!You fear being in fear of me! you cannot conceal it,for you are weaker than the thin thread of a spider.What is your earthly name?" I leaned against a rock,gathered myself from this sudden shock,and in a sickly,trembling voice replied,"my name is Abdalla,wich meansslave of god."For a few moments he remained silentwith a frightening silence.I grew accustomed to his appearance,but was again shaken by his wierd thoughts and words,his strange beliefs and contemplations.He rumbled,:numerous are the slaves of God,and great are God's woes with his slaves.Why did not your father call youMaster of demons instead,adding one more disaster to the huge calamity of earth?You cling with terror to the small circle of gifts from your ancestors,and your affliction is caused by your parents bequest,and you will remain a slave of death untill you become one of the dead.:Your vocations are wasteful and deserted,and your lives are hollow.Real life has never visited you nor will it:neither will your decietful self realize your living death.Your illusioned eyes see the people quivering before the tempest of life and you believe them to be alive, while in truth they have been dead since the day they were born.There were none who would bury them,and the one good career for you is that of grave digger,and as such you may rid the the few living corpses heaped about the homes,the paths,and churshes.:I proteted ,I cannot pursue this vocation.My wife and children require my support and companionship."He leaned toward me,showing his braided mucles that seemed as the roots of a strong oak tree,abounding with life and energy,and he bellowed,"give to each a spade and teach them to dig graves;your life is naught but black misery hidden behind walls of white plaster.Join us for we genii are the only possesors of reality! The digging of graves brings a slow but positive benefit wich causes the vanishing of dead creatures who tremble with the storm and never walk with iut." He mused and then iquired ," What is your religion?" Bravely I stated," I believe in god and honour His prophets;I love virtue and have faith in eternity."With remarkable wisdom and conviction he responded,"These empty words were placed on human lips by past ages and not by knowledge,and you actually believe in yourself only; and you honour none but yourself,and your faith only in the eternity of your desires.Man has worshiped his own self since the begining,calling that by self appropriate titles,untill now,when he employs the word god to mean that same self." Then the giant roared with laughter,the echoes reverbrating through the hollows of the caverns,and he taunted,"How strange are those who worship thier own selves,their real exsistance being naught but earthly carcasses!" He cpaused,and I contemplated this sayings and meditated their meanings.He possesed a knowledge stanger than life and more terrible than death,and deeper than truth.Timidly I ventured,"Do you have a religion or a God?" " My name is THE MAD GOD," he offered,"and I was born at all times, and I am the god of of my own self.I am not wise,for wisdom is a quality of the weak.I am strong, and the earth moves under the steps of my feet,and when I stop,the procession ofstars stops with me. I mock at the people...I accccompanythe giants of night...I mingle with the great kings of the genii...I am in possesion of the secerets of exsistance and nonexsistance." In the morning I blaspheme the sun...at noontide I curse humanity...at eventide I submerge nature...ay night I kneel and worship myself.I never sleep,for I am time,the sea and myself...I eat human bodies for food, drink their blood to quench my thirst, and use their dying gasps to draw my breath.Although you decieve yourself,you are my brother and you live as I do.Begone...hypocrite!Crawl back to earth and continue to worship your own self amid the living dead!" I staggered from the rocky,cavernous valley in narcotic bewilderment, scarcely believing what my ears had heard and my eyes had seen! I was torn in pain by some of the truths he has spoken,and wandered trough the fields all that night in melancholy contemplation. I procured a spade and said within myself,"Dig deeply the graves... Go, now,and wereever you find one of the living dead,bury him in the earth." Since that day I have been digging graves and burying the living dead are numerous and I am alone,having none to aid me...

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