The Minds' Jailer

Long ago, you became frustrated with your fellow humans. It had started off as a nagging almost-thought in the back of your overworked brain. It grew. It became a regular thought, a constant thought, an obsession. You would lay awake at nights, listing undefined things that you hated about mankind. Your job ceased to apply. You became unemployed, hungry and impoverished. You never noticed. Too many people were suffering. There was too much wrong with the world for you to notice your own problems.
Death was not far off. You became a mess of bones contained by taut, colorless, rubbery skin, nearly robbed of life by your own brain.
One day it all stopped. The fog cleared. The self-induced cataracts melted away. You were not happy. You knew you could never be happy again, but you felt that there was too much pain in the world for you simply sit at home and feel sorry for yourself and others. You elected to find the source of all evil and destroy it. With no more evil in the world, no one could ever suffer, and no one could be as completely overwhelmed as you had been.
You traveled for weeks, months, years. You lost track of time quickly. In all of your travels and conversations, you never once found anything that could help you achieve your goal. There were dead and dying people of all ages littering the streets, deserts and tundras. You felt pity, but you knew that to help one, or two, a thousand, would not be doing justice to the rest of them. So you passed them by, in search of the thing that could help all of them… and help you.

One day, in the far north, at the very center of a blizzard, you found a cave in a snow-covered hillside, with a man patrolling in front of it. As you approached, you saw that the man was larger than average. He was perhaps three meters tall, with a big fur-lined greatcoat, a big furry cap, steel-toed boots and an appropriately sized rifle slung over his shoulder. As you approached, he leveled the gun at you. He said nothing. And now you stand in front of him, listening to the harsh wind and trying to shrug off the sharp snowflakes.
“Why are you here?” he asks, gun still on you. His voice cuts through the whipping wind and resonates through your entire body.
“I wish to cure the world of evil,” you shout, barely able to hear yourself. He lowers his gun and steps aside, and gestures for you to enter the cave. You start shouting questions at him.
“Who are you? What is this? Where is this…?”
He shows no intention to respond. You hesitate for a moment before entering the dark of the cave.
The world falls away around you. Light seems to be devoured away as soon as you enter, like an animal being skeletonized by carnivorous fish. All that is left is calm, clear, silent darkness. Despite the complete lack of anything tangible, you seem to have remained standing on solid ground. You take a careful step forward in the abyss, and another. The solid ground remains. As you continue, the floor begins to slant down. The slant increases as you go until it seems almost vertical.
Eventually you begin to feel the floor level out. You think that you must be very far underground. As you go farther, a ghostly green light sculpts a square corridor out of the gloom. You cast no shadow.
Vaguely rhythmic clacking, echoing down the grey-green corridor. It gets louder. The sound of decaying percussion, played by a senile drummer, underlain by the drone of a quivering shaker. You shiver under your skin. You take an unconscious step back. The light gets brighter. A hunched, grey creature comes around the corner. It wears a torn shirt, pants, cap and the remnants of shoes. With every step, the knees clack together, sending echoing percussive sounds towards you, always a little bit off the beat. It gets closer, yellowed eyes bulging.
“Leave,” it croaks. “Go back.”
You can’t move. You are paralyzed with fear. It limps past, into the shadows behind you. You want to leave, but you know that this could be your break-through. You press on down the tunnel.
Around a corner, down another corridor, around more corners and down more corridors. The light gets brighter. Eventually you round a corner and see a door at the end, guarded by a man very much like the one outside of the cave, but significantly closer to your size. He may even be shorter. No sooner has he spotted you than he aims his gun at you and orders you to stop. You instinctively obey. He tells you to walk up to him slowly, with your hands on your head. Again, you obey.
“What do you seek?” he barks in a high, nasal voice.
“I wish to cure the world of evil,” you reply, shaking with nerves. He laughs a cold, high, heartless laugh, stepping aside and opening the door.
“Go nuts!” he says through body-wracking guffaws.
Slightly unnerved, you continue through and onto the ledge. The door slams behind you.
Below you is an elaborate prison complex, or something like that. On the same level as you, but across the prison, you see a large palace, vividly colorful in contrast with everything you have seen so far. Something in your mind clicks at the sight of that extravagant structure. Something you’ve been looking for. It’s a thing that can be described, only known.
You must get there. That you know. With no other options in sight, you descend a stone staircase into the prison. One side of your path is lined by cells containing more of that same greyed, hunched being you had seen. They simply wander in circles and lines around their claustrophobic cages. On the other side is row upon row of cages imprisoning small, translucent humanoids with large heads and lab coats. They hold chalk and doodle and write on their floors. You stop outside of a cell containing one of the latter.
“Excuse me, sir. What is this place?”
It looks up from its sketches.
“Evolution is fact, not a hypothesis!” It screams. “Wake up! Wake up! We need to all wake up and see just how ignorant all of our actions are!” It leaps to its feet, small pale arms flailing above its head. “Religion is dissolving our society from the inside out! Humans have rights! Rights, I say! These rights deserve observation by the tyrannical leaders we select by process of elimination for idiotic reasons!
“Life!
“Liberty!
“Happiness!
“We deserve these things, what they entail should not be dictated by the religious and political fanatics that run our lives!”
You step back as it begins running around in circles, arms flailing even more violently. The words get higher and faster, until completely they become unintelligible. You mutter a quiet “Nevermind,” before sidling off, towards the palace. The being was quite obviously insane. Was it the product or the reason of his imprisonment? You wonder to yourself. Perhaps both?
You get to opposite end. A gated spiral staircase leads up a stone pillar that disappears into mist above. You notice that the staircase goes farther up than the palace, but there is a bridge that seems to connect the two. You hesitate for a moment at the gate, before reaching through the bars and lifting the basic lock. You have come too far to be stopped by a simple, unguarded gate.
The ascension is slightly dizzying, but not difficult, and you eventually get to the palace. You wonder what is above the line of mist and if the pillar has a top at all. Your perceptions have been severely thrown off by this day. You simply cannot imagine what could be up there.
However, you feel that this blindingly colorful palace contains something you have been seeking, so you walk up to the crimson door and knock. In time, a tall, grey-bearded man in a plaid bathrobe opens the door and wordlessly welcomes you inside. He motions for you to follow him into a cozy, colorful sitting room. You both sit. He snaps his fingers and a bald young man in a suit appears.
“Tea,” the bearded man says to the bald.. His voice is deep and resonating. The bald man bows and exits. The bearded man turns to you.
“Who are you?” he asks.
“I wish to cure the world of evil,” you reply.
“I see…”
“Who are you, and what is this place?”
“I am God.”
“Really?”
“Most certainly.”
“Then this must be Heaven.”
“You would think so, but no, it’s not.”
“Then what is this place?”
“This is the collective human consciousness. The self-created world of the human psyche.”
The tea appears. God pours a cup for the both of you. He sips his contemplatively. You ignore yours, allowing it to calmly steam in silence.
“Why are you here and not in Heaven?”
“I’ve always existed here. I can’t go anywhere else. This is my job, and I’ve done it for thousands of years.”
“If you’re not in Heaven, what exactly is your job?”
“I’m the jailer of the human psyche. Come with me.” God rises, still holding his tea, and walks outside with you in tow. He walks to the edge of the cliff that overlooks his prison. Cells stretch out forever right and left.
“You see this? My job is to imprison these inhabitants of your minds.”
“What have they done?”
“You see the sad, mostly-dead, colorless creatures? They want to be here. They are my followers and always will be. They have forgotten why they chose to step into the cells, but they have chosen to do so, and they will never leave.”
God sips his tea.
“The others: they are the convicted inmates under my care. They are the reasonable parts of so very many minds. All that I have tried and judged have been found guilty. I am working towards trying every single one.”
You are surprised by his brutal honesty, but as you think it over, it makes sense. It makes sense that this would be God’s job. You grimace.
On God’s belt is a large wrought iron key loop, with a single iron key hanging from it. You snatch it. God looks at you calmly. The surprise only registers when you embrace him and leap off of the cliff. The only sound is the whistling wind in your ears for a few moments before an abrupt, painful, and loud stop. Your last thought is that you have cured the world of evil. The last sound you hear is the tinkling of breaking china beside you.