Moses

Moses wasn’t some saintly hero. He was a tired, bitter old bastard when he dragged himself up that mountain. Glory wasn't what pushed him; it was that itch—the raw, relentless stubbornness that had burned in him his whole life. His bones creaked, his feet bled, but the demon in his gut kept whispering, "Keep climbing."

So, he climbed.

At the summit, there was no fanfare, no heavenly choir. Just dead silence, thick enough to choke on. Then, out of nowhere, came the voice. Smooth, deep, something ancient dragging itself up from the depths. "Moses," it drawled, "you ready to hear the truth?"

Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn’t. But he was there, standing like some ragged monument, staring into the void. The voice didn’t mince words. It laid it out—laws, rules, but not for bowing down. For standing tall, chest out, chin high. A code to live by where you didn’t kneel to anyone, least of all to some idea of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ cooked up by someone else.

“Thou shalt indulge,” the voice began. “You’re born with teeth, so use ‘em. Sink ‘em into life. Feel the juice on your chin. Don’t waste it.”

And something in Moses cracked. That old itch crawled up his spine. He looked around, chisel in hand, and a dark smile spread across his face. He knew exactly what he was about to do.

He started writing—but not what he was told. Nah. The people wanted rules? He’d give them rules.

The voice said, “Stand up for yourself.” Moses wrote, “Turn the other cheek.” The voice said, “Live without shame.” Moses carved, “Honour thy father and mother.” He hacked at the stone, twisting every word into obedience and guilt. Each swing of the chisel brought a dark thrill, the satisfaction of spitting in the face of sense and order. His weathered face cracked into a smile. This was what he lived for.

By the time he finished, his fingers were raw, his back bent like a question mark. But he didn’t care. He carried those stones down the mountain, grinning like a madman. And when he reached the bottom, he held them high, thinking, “Here, this’ll keep you busy. A lifetime of rules, restrictions, and shame. Chew on that.”

The people ate it up. They lapped it up like starving dogs. They kneeled. They wept. They bound themselves to the words Moses had twisted into stone. And all the while, he watched. Watched them turn those inverted laws into prisons, watched them bow and scrape, each lash of guilt one he’d handed them. Deep down, he knew—this wasn’t freedom, but it was power. A sour, twisted power he’d buried into the bones of humanity.

Years later, when the high had worn off and he was just an old man, Moses thought about that voice again. The promise of living free. But the demon in him chuckled, leaning back in the shadows of his mind, whispering, “Nah, old man, the thrill is in the ruin.”

And so Moses, saint of self-sabotage, godfather of contrariness, left this world as bitter as he’d come into it. He left the people shackled to a set of rules he’d made up, rules no one would ever escape.

Because what’s freedom, anyway, but another kind of prison?