Hate and Hawk

H is for Hate and for Hawk: Once long ago in a fairly awful place, a young girl came into the possession of Hate. Hate is not normally the sort of individual who goes in for adoption, but he had been walking through the fields of ruin and had been in a reflective mood when he heard someone calling his name.

Hate moved through the various ways and means such folk as he travel by and came to a place not too far from here to find the person who had called him. He came into a dusty farmyard beneath a beautiful sky and even Hate, (who has been to a number of ugly places), found the place interesting.

The yard was a place of slaughter and death, (Death, of course had already been and gone, for he is a quick bastard), soaked in blood and the wrecked and torn ruin of life. First there were the animals, lying in heaps in their coops and pens. Horses, chickens, cows, and pigs lay where they had been shot, for no other apparent reason than to provide the flies a feast. Scattered about the yard itself were the family that had lived here, a father, mother, various children, all the usual stuff. Someone had been interested in making some sort of point, Hate guessed, for the farmer and his family had died hard and in pieces. It was difficult to say who had been in greater agony, the women and young boys who had provided sweet entertainment for their killers, or the farmer and the older boys who had died castrated and blind.

Ho hum.

It was the soldiers that interested Hate. They lay in the center of the yard, almost in a pile. There were half a dozen of them and they were obviously the perpetrators of the first bit of fun in this place, (some of them still had their pants off). Some were shot, some were stabbed, (one of them had a pitchfork embedded in his face), and one was still alive but on his way out. This last was at the bottom of the pile, trapped by the weight of his dead companions and his own growing weakness. It was this one that still screamed though his voice had long since gone to a gurgling croak. He every right to scream, of course, the large knife that was slowly being rotated in his stomach must be quite painful.

The girl held the knife. And she was beautiful.

She was dressed in blood and a dozen gaping wounds marred her flesh. One eye was gone, blown from her head by a bullet or a blow. One hand was a crippled ruin, the fingers mangled and the nails torn out. What remained of her clothing was shredded mass of bloody fragments. He age was impossible to tell as she had passed beyond such things and gone into the realm of the warhag. And it was she that spoke to Hate though her lips never moved from the frothing snarl and her eye never twitched away from the face of the dying soldier. And what she said was nothing but Hate's name, over and over again. A prayer to the one thing her mind could still recognize. The only thing she wanted or would ever want again.

Hate.

When the soldier finally died, (a few hours later), Hate thought that the girl would give up and die. She should have been dead long since, for her injuries were grave. But she had turned to Hate and Hate was here, so she kept living. She began to mutilate the bodies of the corpses, and when that failed to satisfy she began to eat them taking the things they valued in life, (eyes, tongues, fingers, penis), to make shit of them. Such were the dark, insane thoughts that cracked through her head like gunshots.

Hate was quite impressed so he told her a story.

"There are four kinds of Hate," Hate said while the girl crawled back and forth over the corpses, stabbing and cutting, "The first is the least worthy and while it is the most common I find it very unsatisfying. It is the anonymous Hate of the mass. There is no art it in. It is simply the hatred of the anonymous whole. Racism is the most typical example. You hate someone for the color of his skin, what he believes, or whether or not his ancestors committed some wrong against your ancestors. You hate because someone TELLS you to hate. It is an empty hate, ultimately it without any passion save the squealing monkey rage of the idiot."

"The second kind of Hate is the Hate of the Wronged. Someone has done you a wrong, (or you think they have), and as a result you hate the individual or group that did it to you. It is a directed hate. It has focus and meaning. But is still a simple and brute thing. An axe instead of rock but still primitive." Hate looked as the girl as she began to disembowel one of the soldiers, "That is where you started, but you're beyond that now I think."

"The Third kind of Hate is the Personal hate. It frequently begins as the Hatred of the Wronged, but it changes into something different as one realizes that the destruction of the object of your Hate is too simple a thing. Torture usually comes into play here. The desire that the object of your hatred live a long life, so you can have that much more time to drag them through Hell. You wish them joy so you can steal it, happiness so you can poison it, and love so you can kill it. I think this is where you are now. You killed too quickly, your Hate has nowhere to go, and so you play silly games with corpses."

"But there is the fourth kind."

Had anyone been watching this exchange, they would have thought the girl completely lost in her own world of blood and knife. But Hate did not speak with words, and what he said was heard by the girl, heard down in a place beyond daylight thoughts, night time dreams and midnight nightmares. The girl heard Hate down in the places where the reptiles sleep, though her serpents were now awake and screaming. So she looked at Hate. She looked at herself. And she wanted to know where to go, though she could only walk that way for a short time before Death took her, (the quick bastard).

"The fourth kind of hate, dear child," Hate said in a soothing voice that sounded vaguely of drunken shouting and hysterical screaming, "can be summed up rather simply; Everything must go." Hate cocked his head and looked at the girl, "Do you understand that?"

A second passes.

The girl nods.

"Good." said Hate, "Now I believe your mother managed to hide your baby sister in the basement before the soldiers got into the house. Why don't you take that knife and find something better to do with it than mangling the dead? What point in hating the dead? Might as well hate mud."

And so Hate and the young girl made their way down to the basement and they spent a long time there. And then the girl crawled back up into the yard and lay in the blood of her family, now dry and stinking in the burning sun. She was very weak now, he mangled body burning out in the fires of a Hate that would never fade. Even Death would not end it, for she would take it with her wherever she went. Her Hate would be a dark candle which would still be burning when the universe died.

And Hate was pleased.

"I am pleased," Hate said, looking down at the girl, "Your hate is a rare and precious thing. A diamond on the beach, a pearl lodged in a baby's throat. I have rarely come across its kind and have seen nothing like it for over a century", (actually it had been far longer than that, but Hate had a hazy notion of Time, since he did not exist in it). "I would be a poor connoisseur if I allowed something so precious to fade from this sorry Earth. So arise Hawk. Arise and Hate the world as it deserves for as long as there is life to Hate. Arise Hawk, blessed of Hate"

And so Hawk stood up. For Hawk was now of Hate, and Hate will never be weak while life still walks on this earth.

"Go out into the world", Hate told Hawk, "Go out and Hate as you desire and as you must for Hate has two names now; Hate and Hawk. Kill Love, hunt Hope, and slaughter Joy wherever you might find it. Burn the world Hawk. Burn it but let it live to feel the pain of its burning. Hate is a gift. May you be very generous."

And Hawk left.

She has been very good at her job