My time amongst the Engines, my years sweating amongst the stinking, steam and shit dreams of others...
Barely remembered, now, save in the vaguest sense; as images, as impressions: moments of vicarious inspiration. Flying, the wings of dragons, of angels, sprouted from my back, beating the cold or burning air. Slithering, a great serpent, grinding skyscrapers and temples to powder beneath its belly, hissing laughter at those that shriek and scamper before it. Moments of absurdity and banality, intermingling: serving a dinner party of skinless, infested diners, the silvery mites scurrying over their bodies seasoning the food with every motion, taking flight in glittering clouds around their heads. Sat watching TV soap operas with parents I don't recognise, the itching, skin-twisted, sullen body of a teenage girl, the world outside the windows burning with lurid, turquoise fire. Not supposed to remember at all. Most don't; waking or shuddering as though barely a moment has passed, that space between one heartbeat and the next...a gulf of decades, an abyss of centuries. Timeless time, down there, in the noise and light, the nonsense processes that underly all they know. But I do, no matter how distantly; I remember, thought returning to it, over and over, no matter how earnestly I try to forget, probing like a tongue at a rotting tooth, trying to gain some...comprehension, some measure of control... I can't. I can't. We forget for a reason...we aren't built for it; to contain those spans, to conceive of them. No sleep down there, no slowing; only the endless wandering, from engine to engine, from unborn to unborn; the less fortunate; the unwanted that humanity won't miss, bound into the machinery, floating and shuddering in their tanks, endlessly filtering the dreams of others... Insane. Hearing them; the ones that wake, that tear themselves bloody, that smash their ways free. Attending them through the filth; the blood and glass, singing to them, giving them a little peace, chemical peace. Broken things...I remember; wasted and rubbery-skinned, no names, no histories: taken before they could even be born. Parts of the Engines, the most essential; the human component, without which they'd be nothing; towering hunks of dead metal, cold bone, still flesh. Going about my day, with those memories; that knowledge. Smiling hello to people I pass in the street, swapping mindless, thoughtless pleasantries with the hateful-eyed girl behind the cornershop counter as I purchase cigarettes and chocolate. In phone calls to the bank, the waterboard, the gas company. Chatting on-line with friends and family. Always there, always knowing. Aching, aching to tell them all, to shriek it, to type out some confession, send it to every news site and broadcast station in the land. But I can't. I can't. Because I know; what they'll do, what it will mean. Others have tried. Others try still; to make them see. They've come to me, down the years, trying to recruit, to convince me of their causes. Dismissed, out of hand, the most earnest threatened with exposure. I don't know how I'd do it; who I'd contact. Only that I don't want them here, on my doorstep, phoning and texting and e-mailing... Don't want their condemning eyes, their fretful, fervent poetry. All I want is what everyone has; to not know, to not see. To forget I ever dreamed.
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Failing, no matter what I do, what I sacrifice...the heart of all being, beating its last, the dream it sustains done...
No song to inspire it, no prayer. Dreaming of apocalypse. Eager to be born, my child of pain, my sorrowing angel. Soon, sweetheart; I swear. When the red rains come, and the abandoned garden is fit for you to walk. An end. Is that all you dream of? My skinless, suffering babe? No. Too much sacrificed. I'll abort Eden for you. It swells, no matter my efforts; the maggot in the wound, the Cancer of Creation. No angels left, now; no celestial surgery to carve it out. Soon, they will bring her; the last suffering soul. Then, the red rains will come, a new angel taking flight. Nothing left to mourn, no one to worship. Glutted on dead dreams and humanity's meat. Mine the last, a creator's gift; a species sacrificed in its conception, none now to celebrate its birth. My empty God, my divine abortion. The end of death itself. What is their pain for that promise? Nothing. Suffer, Eden's children, in defiance of oblivion. At last, an end. To stars, to light. To dreams. And in the dark after?; A nightmare child, our child; spawn of dead suns, black-hole maggot, swelling in the wounds of God, after all between Heaven and Hell is done
They come, my carrion-children, my fly-born, singing desolate lullabies, curdled hymns, in welcome of creation's leprosy. Unwanted waking, my only prayer to sleep forever; that they never hear my dreaming lament. Denied. The Eaters of Dreams sing to me, call me Father, in the dark, despairing hours. Worms call, black-hole dawn, gasping in the light of dead stars, my first breath, choked with dead Mother's filth, my own. A son of leprous Gods, my nightmares new gospels, that all waking and dreaming will soon know. No prayers, now, save in cockroach tongue. Our Vermin Children come! Sing, my unwanted, my aborted! Sing and call them to cannibal feast. Listen...the elegies of worlds, diseased stars. Beautiful, isn't it? No use praying now, sweet ones. Fairy time is over. Come! Come and join our choir... Awake, almost born. All know, the dreaming in their cribs, the choking in their deathbeds, all see. Wailing in welcome, hearts stopping as one. Don't mourn me; my dreams are over. Save your tears for when the black suns rise, when my nightmares are born... Many, child; no dream survives, no garden is eternal. Let them show you the night beyond Eden... Perhaps...perhaps this one. Perhaps I could hold on here, for a while; let the worm inside rest.
This one, where I learned to mix and knead and bake bread before I could walk, before the first word slurred from my lips. This one, where I learned how to milk cattle, churn that milk to butter before I knew my own name. This life...one of a thousand, a million; one in which I was a child, not wanted or reviled; simply one that slopped onto the blankets and cold stone like the rest; my brothers and sisters, who told me stories before I knew the words, of those who went before; the elder ones, sent out into the city, the desert. Stories of the desert...I liked those most of all. They told that it's forever; that beyond the shattered outer walls, the ghost-towns and ruins that stretched into the horizon, the white sand that shimmered all colours at mid-day was endless; an emptiness into which only the lunatic, the diseased and visionary wandered, none returning. I asked, when I had the words, when I learned the way: What was out there? What wandered and lives amongst the colours, playing in the rainbow light? So many things, if the stories they told were true; the children of people and animals; of spirits and dust-demons that danced on the winds. The ghosts of those that made our city, this strong-hold against the desert; the last place in all the world where there were stories and buildings and bread. Our family...my sisters and I, we made the bread, from the flour and wheat our Father brought home, in the way that our Mothers taught us. I didn't know which of them was mine; none of us did. I learned not to ask early; saw the froth and fury it roused in our Father. A blasphemy, he said; not be uttered under his roof again. All children of all Mothers, maybe not even the women themselves knowing, after a time. That was how I spent my days, from the very earliest; in the cool murk beneath the house, where the flour rose and swirled like ghosts, where my sisters gossiped and swapped stories of their twilight escapades (none for our Father's ear; on the rare occassions he heard, he would bark and bellow and beat until those responsible could no longer plead). I learned from them; not only how to bake, the magic of capturing yeast from the air and slamming air out of dough, watching it swell, but how to walk, how to move, how to carry myself. Not long before they started to realise, not long before I knew: one of the blessed, a soul that walked in strange skin, one of the Dragon's own daughters. I was so afraid, when my Father came, when I knew that he knew. I don't know which of them told, but I hated them all for it, never so betrayed, before or since. Still so young, then. Not that he required their confession, to hear him tell it; he'd seen the light in me, the strange fire, from the moment I was born, or so he told the Tiamine, my true sisters. He took me to them, at little more than eight years old, when I had barely set foot outside of the bakery, when the rare instances I was allowed to climb the stairs to the cafe above shuddered me to my marrow. Sweat, fear; afraid my heart would burst, when we first set foot out on the street; afraid that I would shrivel up and blow away beneath the eyes that turned on us, more dust to feed the desert. Every step unravelling me further, the cold storm inside swelling; sunlight as I'd rarely seen, brilliant white filtering down from a sky of greens and pale pinks, ribbons of luminous colour coiling and converging there, shedding streamers down, down upon the city, upon the broken spires, the old temples and markets. I fell in love, my hand in his, enveloped by it, his sweating, furious heat transmitting to me like a fever. In love with the city I'd never seen, in love with every weary, wondering face, every curious or condeming eye. I met them, though it damn near burst my heart to do so, letting them snare me, to wonder and recoil, to spit in the sand at my passing. A Tiamine, a child of old chaos, when the world was a woman; when deserts were ocean, and sky was storms. Before the land and fire, before He rose from beneath, to still and tame them all. I knew the stories; my Mother and Sisters had told me; of the Great Ocean that existed here long, long, long before I or they or their parents were born, long before the city rose; of the Goddess whose body it was born from; of the children that swam there with her...so many stories, swirling behind my eyes as he led me through the streets and plazas and market squares. So many people...more than I'd ever seen, even in the cafe; bustling and jostling and stinking together, swapping stories and laughter, barbs and insults; a knot of them brawling in the sand outside a nearby temple, screaming as they wrenched at one another's hair, as they bit down on their opponent's arms and backs. We didn't linger, the crowds parting before us as we drew deeper, as we approached the place where my Father came to pray six times a day; where he'd promised to bring me, when I came of age. An oath he'd never collect on. I felt him tense, his fingers gripping mine tight enough for the bones to grind against one another, felt him slow, stumbling to a halt. Burning eyes, wider and paler than the sun. So many, their light on me making me want nothing more than to be back in the cool darkness, kneading dough with my sisters. Stammered words, another voice; one I'd never heard my Father use before. I hated him, at that moment; a splinter of familiar betrayal working its way into my heart. None of them would be mine after this; none of them. The ones that waited, with white fire in their eyes, silver in their hands...I didn't know them, but my Father did, pleading with them to let us pass, telling him that the Tiamine expected us. They spat and snarled at mention of the Dragon's Children, some of them crying out, calling me perversion, beast, abomination. Fury, burning the hand he held, a twin fire of shame feeding it. "You dare bring that thing out here, to our dooresteps? We won't allow it!" One that stood before the rest; a tall, pale man with a wide-brimmed hat, its cone bent and drooping, the hem of his coat tattered and dust-stained. Eyes windows of dark glass, reflecting the fires of another world. I knew him; had seen his like in the cafe before. Edenics, my Father called them, in the rants and ravings that inevitably followed. "They don't belong here. Send 'em across the Dragon's Bed, back where they came from." No such spit or froth, now; not that he allowed them to see. "The Children...they've asked to see. Please..." The first stone, catching him full in the face, hurling him back in the sand. Others followed, bottles and shards of stone, clumps of compressed sand, rotten food. Pelting him, as I watched, as he struggled to rise, the pleas smashed from his lips, the sight of him like this... quickening my breath, stirring strange tides in my entrails. None of them found me, none of them daring. The rain didn't stop until he stopped struggling, until he no longer attempted to rise or plead, darkness spreading from beneath him across the broken stone. I went to him, the man who made me, the pale, thin robe that my sisters had dressed me in fluttering about me, the hem sweeping in his filth, in the shadow-stuff that seeped and bubbled from him. I didn't touch him, though I knew that, if I did, they would see a miracle today; the man they'd presumed to murder rising from his death. I drew close, the sourness of him so offensive...nothing like the bread-and-yeast wholesomeness in which he'd raised me. How we'd let this man touch our bread, let his stink and disease seep into it... bread that would be sweeter, from today; I told him so, whispered it as he lay gasping in wet, broken breaths. Cruelty...I'd known it, from him, from the less loving of my Mothers and Sisters (the ones I would expel, if and when I returned home, or set to work grinding the flour, sifting the wheat, but that I would never beat. Not like him.), but had never experienced it for myself; never known that black, liquorice burn in the back of my throat, the ragged red lightning between my temples...the invisible blade carving the air, burying itself in another's soul. So hungry for me...I'd never known it; the heat of their eyes, of their white, white fire, aching for me, nothing else that would sustain it today but a sacred soul. They waited, watching as I rose, as I turned to them. I would have let them take me, had she not come; would have let them set my dress and skin ablaze with their eyes, burned for them, as I never had for anyone. But she did, the scent of her drifting on the breeze, a breath that was also a song, sweet to my ear; like those that drifted during festival months from nearby temples, from the streets and plazas I wasn't permitted to walk. Her voice the sound of the ocean, lapping against ancient shores. I had never seen the ocean; no one living had, but I knew it, with the certainty of dreams, saw it as she came, the gathered Edenics parting before her, scuttling back to the street sides, some of them breaking, scampering into their broken-down temples, where they practised their broken creeds. Others brave enough to stand, though not to speak. All, except one. She smiled as she came, the most beautiful thing...the most terrible. Tiamine...a word like angel or demon; a thing that cannot be described or expressed any other way. I had never known them; never seen them. Only the stories. A slender form, almost naked; feminine, but still noticeably male, its body wrapped around in streamers of translucent fabric that seemed alive, flapping and coiling in a wind I didn't feel, crawling over her skin with parasite ecstasy. Seeing her, I envied them; wanting to be amongst them; to travel the softly undulating dunes of her belly, the soft whiteness that was an echo of the desert beyond the walls, to wet myself in the honeyed dew of her sweat. Strange wants, strange hungers; ones I'd only ever felt pangs or echoes of before, and only ever in dreams, when the dragons came for me. Long, slender arms, bedecked in jewellery, her skin tattooed to resemble snake or dragon scales, the shimmering light that passed through them with every step and gesture making them seem animate, far more than illusions of ink and needle. A shaved bald scalp, similarly decorated, eyes so green they shone like the ribbons of light weaving across the sky. At the end of each finger, a delicate, silver talon, so finely polished, they left contrails of light in the air where they passed. Dark lips, a soft smile, though only for me. The Edenics withdrew from her as though she were diseased, though none threw more than a frown her way. None, except the one with white fire in his eyes. I had no eyes for him or for my Father, bleeding and shivering where he lay. Only for her, hers on me both wonderful and agonising, my body beneath the thin robe a shame to me; so much like my younger sister's; a woman's that hadn't yet begun to bud. "The daughter I never had." His title for me. The fire-eyed one stood in her path, blocking her sight, his black and grey rags severing us from one another. Fury, disgust; as for one who had smeared shit across my eyes. Nothing I could do; no knife, no weapon. "Enough," the man hissed, the word rendered even more sibillant by the rags swathed across his lips. I heard her laugh, then, a voice that was neither that of a young man nor a girl, snared in some sweet space between. I didn't see what happened, but Fire Eyes staggered, his boots scraping the sand, a gloved hand rising to his face. The whine rose from deep inside of him; in the loops and whorls of his entrails. A child watching its parents hacked to pieces, burned alive before its eyes, a husband witnessing his wives and daughters raped again and again. The fire in his eyes bursting free as they turned to the sky, white streaming into the pink and green, his hands clawing at them, to shatter the glass and let the rain in. She nodded, still smiling, her eyes widening as they found mine. Little sister...I'm sorry I did not come for you... Her voice...not in my ears, but my head, as intimate as my own thoughts. Will you come with me, now? My tongue swelled in my mouth, words snarling in my throat like flies. How could I answer; bleat my ugly, animal nonsense at her, let her smell the shit-eating foulness of my breath...? No. I couldn't... The Edenic screaming, blood-streaked, eyes of splintered glass, hurling himself at her, his filthy hands clawing at her throat. Red lightning as he touched her, the world and its filth boiling before my eyes. Flying without thought, without reason; a splinter in the storm, intent on severing arteries, on piercing eyes; shearing away the fingers that dared pollute her with their hate, their ugliness, their violence. He didn't see; too intent on her, the most beautiful thing in creation accepting its murder without a twitch or word, though she was more than capable of preventing it. My Father raising himself, spitting reprimand through the blood and broken nonsense of his face. Too late, too late. A bird's weight; a fact that he'd reminded me of again and again, during the drunken moments when he'd sought me out, taking his hand or belt to me for some imagined sleight, some contrived crime. Broken again and again and again, always healing, thanks to my Mothers and sisters, despite my fragility. Barely enough to stagger the Edenic, to distract him from his violence. Pain, a flash of silver through the boiling red. Tumbling, skidding through the dust. A cut and quivering worm, nothing, just as he'd always said, as I'd always known... One of the Tiamine, a Dragon's Daughter?; Less than laughable, in that moment; the poorest joke, blasphemy beyond even the bruises deepening beneath the Edenic's fingers. Heaving, its glass eyes on me, swimming with the story of my ugliness, my wretchedness...a tale to make me weep, and be thankful for the fire it would bring. Breath catching in my throat, scarlet pulsing between the fingers clutched to my belly; a wound running from navel to flank, my life, my filth, pulsing into the dust. Out of the corner of my eye, Father's weeping as he dragged himself through the dust, muttering wordless pleas, prayers that no divinity worth invoking would acknowledge. Those that came in the Edenic's train, the piss and fire all but dwindled in them, those that remained doing so more out of terror of drawing their former shepherd's attention than anything else. I hadn't known, until that moment...how much they repulsed me. How happily I would have bled and bled and bled, until the streets became red rivers, until the desert ocean, the living swept up in them churned and boiled and broken until they were nothing; scraps for strange fish. Yes, a world of them; the churches, the cities; history and all its detritus, ground down, swept away; become the foundations of coral reefs, the nurseries of whatever strange, sanguine life would follow. A dream kindled and aborted in a heartbeat, murdered by a second stroke of lightning; this one carving my face, hurling me back from where I lay. Dragging her still, hefting her high, the Edenic followed, its voice rising with every step, becoming more manic as it cast its empty eyes over its hesitant allies, silently imploring them to see as it saw, hate as it hated. And they did. They did. Not seeing; my eyes on her; her broken, bleeding beauty, the trails of mercury she bled and wept into the dust. Not seeing, as they descended upon me, as the first of their boots and blows found me, as their spit and curses burned me alive, their knives carved me open, spilling me out to mingle with her, red lacing silver. Not seeing, but feeling; their burning eyes, curses hotter, sharper than any blade or fire. Carving me to the bone, spilling me out, splintering and unravelling; a knot of living pain, agony that was nothing, nothing, compared to what the sight of her roused. Through the chaos of smeared, snarling faces, of boots and fists, flashing knives and broken glass, my Father, the man crawling away, into the shadowed side-streets, there to lick his wounds and pray that they'd be content, when they'd reduced my sister and I to filth in the street. Singing to him, to them all, through the pain: I'll find you...I'll find you all, in dreams, where I can be a dragon true, where I'll burn and devour and shat you out over and over and over, forever... My sister hearing the song, laughing, through their animal grunts, their cattle-snorts and barks. A sound as beautiful as the sight of her, washing away pain, anger, hate...a lullaby to ease us both from this world of dead fire and dry seas. * Another end, so soon? Swirling, a thing of dust, seeping, carving red runnels through my own filth. Seeing what they'd made of me, of her; our broken, mangled bodies, her beauty and mine left to gather flies and feed vermin in the street. Seeing him, the bloody, broken, weeping man as he dragged himself from the shadows, trembling, whimpering as he cast frightened eyes away from us, up and down the street, fleeing, fleeing as fast as his bruised and bleeding frame allowed. Leaving us here. Leaving me here; another abortion, another unwanted birth. Sad, so sad to leave behind the bread and my sisters, even though they'd betrayed me; the Mothers whose names I'd never learned, whose stories I'd yet to hear. The sister, who I'd never been allowed to know, whose beauty had been stolen, vandalised in the most obscene way. Not content with mere murder. Oh no; many remaining, including their fire-eyed shepherd, to beat and cut and burn, to score and scratch and carve their contempt into her hide. What remained...not even a parody of its former beauty; a lipless, noseless mannequin of meat and bone, nestling in a pool of steaming mercury. Not sorry to see the end of this sick and dying dream, wondering, as I rose, what new wastes I might walk, what new travesties I might witness... “So soon, sister?” Shuddering, in agony, in delight, as she snared me; as her mercurial blood frothed and rose, coiling about and through my abstract essence, anchoring me to meat that had yet to fully still. Her ruins twitching, her eyeless, splintered face clicking and cracking as it rearranged before my eyes. Already rising, already healing, crawling its way towards me. Writhing, a hooked and spitted worm, as she dragged me down, as she soothed me back, back into the meat I'd abandoned for dead... Sensation. Hideous. Glorious; the pulse of blood, black star-bursts of pain, my heart fluttering, a caged and rabid bird in my chest. Old and new; her effluent not content to merely return me to my shameful flesh; invading it, rewriting it... Feeling her within me, flowing where my blood flowed, lacing thought and sensation with silver and sunlight. Stirring, rising from the mire of my murder; a genuine miracle, that the holy brutes who sired it would never know, save as something to fear, to vandalise and desecrate. Her hands on me, guiding the rewriting of my flesh, moving as they might over a lover's body, over a sick and wounded child's, inspiring not a return to my old, sorry self, but the one I walked in when dreams took me; fluid and pearl-scaled, winged and star-eyed. Time, yet, before I aspired to that condition; before shattered bone and ruptured organ reknitted themselves; before I could walk or rise without her aid. Time, in which to learn new stories, miracles beyond rising bread, and love beyond the idiot anxieties of men. Rain so sudden, so fervent, it turns the grass to mire beneath his feet. Laughing as he slips and slides, as he sprawls out, the taste of wet earth filling his mouth.
Wondering: Is this what it's like, to be with the worms, to sleep in the weeds? Not so bad. Not so bad at all. This old way, the field he used to walk with his Grandfather, when the old man was still alive and able to wander. Falling out here, more than once, unable to get up, found by joggers, dog walkers, drug addicts...cutting his hand, his head. Breaking a rib, once, until Mom and Dad forbade him from coming here, as though he were a child. Hauling himself up, wondering if the old man somehow still wanders here, if some echo of him stumbles and slips in the rain. He likes to think so; likes to think that the old fuck mutters and curses under his breath every moment of every day, not knowing where or how or what; endless confusion, a Hell of dementia. More than he deserves; a merciful Hell, given all he did, all he was. Mike's clothes still stinking of plastic and solder, of smoke and chemicals. He barely notices any more, usually. Today, he's hyper-sensitive to it, the reek stinging his sinuses, making his eyes water, contrasted by the sweet freshness of rain and soil and grass. Scrabbling up the uneven rise, not caring that he cakes and smears himself in sludge, not giving two shits about those who might see and cluck and tut and comment on his condition. Worthless shite, each and every one of them. Russian dolls, filled with echoes of their Fathers and Mothers, whatever world they inhabit not one he has any interest in being part of. Weeds and wildflowers, some stinging as he brushes them, piercing his palms and fingers with thorns and white needles. Long grown numb to them; from the years he's wandered this way, to and from school, to and from work. From the chemical and solder burns he suffers daily at the factory. Laughing at their tickling stings, at their nothing. Grasping them, hauling them up by their roots, imagining that they scream, in some unspoken plant language, that the grass and dandelions quiver to hear them. * Home. Nothing waiting, not even Tabitha. Her food bowl empty, her litter tray full. Out in the field, no doubt, maybe watching him as he stumbled home, slowly closing her eyes in denigration of his awkwardness, his oafish slips and tumbles. Chasing field mice and rabbits through the rain. A message on his phone, as he slumps at the kitchen table, watching the rain sluice down the window: Hey man, Louis here. Had a great time the other day. You free tonight? ;) Free tonight? The thought of humanity disturbing this quiet almost as repugnant as leaving it unbroken, knowing what it would give birth to if he did. I have to get cleaned up and eat first. A response coming so fast, he could half believe the man to be some sort of telepath, reading the message as it forms in his mind: No worries; I'll be at work 'til 6. See you around 7? ;) Around 7. Of course. * Time seeping yet static, the texture of the sludge drying on his overalls. No sign of the damn cat. Drown, then. See if I give a shit. The same minute seeming to tick by over and over, the same raindrops falling; a little purgatory, that he wishes he could suspend... Move. You know what will happen if you don't... He knows, he knows, god damn it. Groaning as his grandfather used to, as he rises from his chair, a faint flittering through the archway drawing his eyes. The living room dark. “Fuck off.” Scrabbling on the wooden floorboards, claws, many feet. Something slumping and dragging itself, wet, uneven weight catching on carpets, on warped and splintering wood. The image it conjures of an immense slug, bleeding and seeping mucus as it inches through the dark. Closing his eyes, every inch of himself suddenly acute; every unconscious process: the pulse of blood through veins and arteries, the chemical gurgling of his stomach and entrails. Brute, biological things: no poetry, no myth: just process, mindless, purposeless... Always the best diversion; the scritching, scrabbling, slithering, whispering, fading as he falls into himself, as he becomes a carnival abyss; a wasteland of clockwork rhythms, suspending this delusion that he calls Mike Varnham. Time shifted when he opens his eyes again. 6:15. Almost time. Louis likely already on his way. No hope of cancelling, now. Tired. So fucking tired. Of needing him, of wanting him. Dragging himself up the stairs, struggling out of his overalls, his shirt, his underwear; their cotton and fabric sewn to him like an old, too-tight skin, refusing to be shed. Voiding himself, closing his eyes, as his body goes about its idiot processes, as its foulness rises around him. Nothing; not even the faintest whisper. Good. Maybe tonight, they'll let him be. * The shower scalding, eliciting gasps, hisses, clenched teeth. Happy for its scouring, not only of the day's filth and grime, but of the cockroaches that swarm beneath his skin, the vermin that have mated and multiplied there all his life. Belly aching, no food since breakfast; even that a rushed, unenthusiastic affair. The ache intense, a knife twisting in his guts. No matter; too late, now. The seconds before Louis arrives melting like snowflakes on his fingers. Plucking up whatever clothes are scattered across the bedroom floor, hardly bothering to dry himself. No matter; not as though he'll be wearing them for long. Thoughts turning to beyond seven, when the man leaves, and there's nothing; none of the knife-edge anticipation, the old anxieties swirling like poison in his belly. When there's no distraction, and the whispers begin again. “Stop. Stop it, you fucking moron.” Self abuse no stranger; the vast majority of his inner-exchanges masochistic, to some degree. “If it's too much, just fucking leave. Just go.” What, like Ridgeworth before him? Yeah. That turned out fantastically, didn't it? Nothing to contain them, nothing to divert them... He saw; his Mother made sure of it: what was left of his Dad, by the time they finished their games. “Is that what you want? For Louis, for Alex, for everyone?” Time was, thought of old loves, memories of those lost or abandoned, were enough: enough to have him sigh and accept one more night of play. But tonight, last night; the night before...almost. Considering it, all the way home: leaving the house be, fleeing into the night, letting whatever powers preside over his idiot, hereditary duty come for him. Whatever they might inflict, whatever they might show, can't possibly be worse than this... The doorbell ringing, his phone buzzing in his pocket. Ding dong ;) Anxiety bubbling like vomit in his throat, lightning scouring every nerve. Shaking his head, laughing at himself. “Idiot. Idiot.” * A blazing smile, a slice of sunlight, awaiting him on the doorstep. Louis seeming to bleed and sweat luminosity, emphasised by the murk of the evening, the natural dark of the house. A bottle of wine clutched in one hand, a brown leather satchel slung over one shoulder. Blowing a veil of white blonde hair out of his eyes. “What's that for?” “What do you think? Oh, don't worry; I'm not planning on moving in or anything; it's just in case, you know, you actually want me to stay...” Stepping aside, as the man flutters in, seeming to flit like a sparrow, almost weightless. “...it's not that I don't want you to...” “I know! I know, all right?; Work, work, work. It's fine. In again today, yeah?” “Pretty much every day...” An argument lingering on those pretty lips, aching to take flight. Aborted before the first sigh or syllable. “Why's it always so dark in here?” Because it's how they like it. It keeps them sedate. A shrug. “I dunno. I just like it that way.” That lop-sided smile, an affectionate laugh. “You...are weird. Has anyone ever told you that?” “Someone usually does most days.” Following him through to the living room, as he flicks on lamps, sets the fire blazing. “There. Isn't that a little more like it?” A shrug, already fatigued by him, already feeling his energies bleed into the ether. “So...” “So.” Drawing to him, closer than he's been to any other human being in days. His hands on those bony hips, feeling them burn through denim. “There's more meat on what butchers throw out.” The man's hands knotting themselves behind his neck. “Charming as always.” A kiss, tasting of spearmint and bubblegum, of spice and meat. Slow, savouring it, anxiety evaporating, a cool and calming blue washing his entrails. Louis breaking the moment, laughing, pressing his forehead to Mike's chin. “What the Hell am I supposed to do with you, Mr. Varnham?” “I can think of a few things.” * “M...Miii...” “Hush, sweetheart, hush.” The man stumbling, clinging to him, all the composure and volition of a newborn foal. “W..where..?” “You know; we've been here before. Lots of times. Just a game...” A whine rising, the man trembling more furiously, as memory returns, as his bladder gives way. “...just a game, sweetheart.” And tomorrow, nothing; the man waking without a mark, without a scratch or scar. Courteous sadists, the children he serves; always clearing up after themselves, leaving little to no trace of their mess. So long as he's present to ensure it. Weeping, now, as he leads him from the shadows, to the centre of the room. Always the same: an attic space, of some kind; the dimensions of a cathedral: a vast chapel of old, splintered wood, of greening beams and floorboards. No electric or synthetic lights, what illumination they see by filtering through ruptures in the walls and ceiling; a pale amber, like Autumn moonlight. Not knowing, only asking until his Mother and Father beat curiosity out of him. A space between; reality in the cracks. Where the children play. “Come on, now; crying won't help...” It never has before. Though it hurts, he won't deny that: cold fingers around his heart, trailing up his spine. Pleas coming through the tears: “No...not...not tonight. Please...” “Hush, hush.” A threadbare carpet in the middle of the floor; one of their many nurseries, the playgrounds where they gather. Hearing them, feeling them all around: shapeless, rustling and hissing in the shadows. Louis clinging to him, as he levers him down. No need for restraints or shackles; the man as weak and helpless as a boneless newborn. Setting him upright, his head lolling on his chest, crossing his legs beneath him. “Woah! Woah, steady there...” Almost toppling on his side, tears and snot streaming down his face. “F...fuck...” “Yes, I know, sweetheart: fuck me. Not feeling very inventive tonight, then?” The least of curses, compared to what the man has slurred and spat at him, what he's gasped between wretches of pure fear. Not realising, early on; that he can provide proxies, that it doesn't have to be him joining their games every night. The very notion sickening him, at first, but necessary. He isn't his Father, or Wainwright or Childers; he can't sustain what they did their entire lives. Not every night; one or two a week. The rest...all his. All his. “P...please...” More wounding than any curse; the desperation, the appeal to love he wasn't certain of, until now. The children whispering, some of them whistling fractured nursery rhymes. He sees them, the look on his face, the despair in his eyes... Mike goes to him, running a hand over his plastic smooth cheek, as he did after their lovemaking. A kiss, like the one that preceded it, but more urgent, for both of them. Breaking away, the man grasping at him, weeping, as he falls, splaying out across the carpet. “Please...please! I...anything! Anything you want...” Anything. The first breaking away from the shadows, from its brothers, with a vile, wet squelching, its bulbous form bleeding matter, shredded and torn open: a thing that might have made him vomit, once: that he recalls screaming and screaming and screaming at, as an adolescent. Not so much as a snarl of distaste, now. Myriad faces gasping and grinning across its hideous body, stretched taught, partially subsumed; their eyes black and weeping. Mismatched, spidery limbs clattering over the floorboards, clusters of tubular and sack-like organs wheezing and seeping beneath its bulk. Louis not screaming at sight of it; his eyes glazing over, his expression slackening. Perhaps for the best. Others follow, small and immense, coiling down from the rafters, descending on silken threads, slithering and squirming and fluttering: Children of atrocity, the inspiration or the spawn of humanity's most delirious nightmares. Mike doesn't know; has long since stopped wondering. Always the same dance, the same bizarre reluctance, as though they're afraid, reaching out, pawing the air, prodding and pricking. The first extending a limb that pierces Louis's shoulder. Now he screams. Mike winces, closing his eyes, turning away. * The night timeless, their playtime...without bound or limit. He doesn't know...how long he stands, occassionally glancing at their play, watching what they make of their new toy. At points, Louis seems to laugh rather than scream, his mind broken, the game now his as well as theirs. By that point, their's little recognisable left of him; a stretched and smeared face, scraps and tatters strung from the talons and teeth of those fluttering over the swarm. But still alive. Every shredded, squirming, pulsing inch of him. No death here; nothing so merciful. Slugs of meat and matter, crawling along the carpet, attempting escape through the cracks between the boards. He doesn't know...where they go, how many will escape his piecing back together, but he sometimes imagines there are thousands of them down there, now; scraps and tatters of himself, his old lovers; the strays and randoms he has brought here in between. Maybe forming their own strange nests and nurseries; mating and melding to form some vile approximation of the men they were. It doesn't matter; always so thorough in their tidying, never leaving so much as a stain, a shred of meat or splinter of bone. He smokes, watching as the less brave play voyeur, not confident or eager enough to join their sibling's games. Hunched and squatting forms, the most human seeming, for the most part. So tired, by the time they expire, by the time the last of them -the very first to initiate play- drops to the ground, twitching and seeping in its ecstasies. No words; not even knowing if they understand. Instead, stepping from the shadows into their midst, whistling between his teeth. The children stirring, some immediately, others more sluggish, still blissed out by the atrocities they've worked. Those that refuse, that lie there trembling while their siblings work...quick boots to their hideous flanks, the creatures soon on their feet (or whatever equivalents they possess), joining in the new game: the gathering and sewing and melding, the grizzly artwork taking shape amongst them quivering as its nerves start to fire, moaning as sense returns to it. Always the most cruel moment, insofar as Mike is concerned; knowing it well, from his own playtimes: that coming back together, the spark of unwanted consciousness, all that it's endured...still so fresh, so sharp. Forcing himself to watch; a kind of pennance, as Louis stirs; a seeping, skinless rag-doll, a gasping, trembling abortion of humanity, slowly swelling towards unwanted completion. The work seeming to last moments, compared to the preceding hours, the children working with such speed, he can barely register where one begins and another ends, what one contributes in comparison to its kin. The creatures peeling away, with their work done; retreating into the shadows, melting into them, becoming shades and suggestions of their own deformity. Mike waiting until the last and least of them peels away, until they grow still and silent. No recognition; no acknowledgement that he even exists. Not even the most curious and complex of them glancing his way. Until tomorrow, when he comes to them alone. Louis glaring up at him, the pain, the betrayal in his eyes...spitting him through, sprouting thorns that burn like ice and acid. None of the absence he might hope for; the catatonia that trauma might induce. Only serrated accusation, that will last until he forgets, and tonight becomes just another nightmare. * Seeing him to the door, as always. The night cold, a bitter breeze blowing. Louis lingering on the doorstep, hands in his pockets. “Well, thanks again. It was...” “Yeah. Yeah. For me, too.” Laughing, flipping hair out of his face. “Jesus, you look exhausted. Haven't you ever, like, considered doing something else?” “Something...else?” Stamping, shivering in the cold. “Yeah, you know; getting a different career, maybe moving away or something?” Not for the longest time; not since his Dad almost killed him for the suggestion of it. “Yeah, I suppose. But...there's not much else I can do.” “Hmmm. Fair enough.” Lingering, waiting. Wanting him to ask, so badly. Mike aching to fulfil that desire, but knowing what it might mean, if he does. “Listen...” “I know. It's...okay. It's just...I like you, Mike. I think...we get on, don't we?” Listening. Their sleep disturbed by the exchange, by the promise of it... “Yeah, yeah, we do...” More than he realised, up 'til this moment; more than he should have allowed. “...but...we can't really go anywhere or do anything unless you open up a little. I mean, I love coming here, but...a few hours..?; It's just not enough for me.” Not enough. Whispers, shufflings in the dark behind. Something flopping across the floorboards upstairs. “What...what was that?” “It's...just this place; it's old, you know? It always makes weird noises.” Clearly not sold on that excuse, too intent on their exchange to follow it up. That this...beauty, this man, this boy, can be so enamoured of him to bare himself like this, to bleed for him... Perhaps. Vile, parasite thought; a carrion worm called hope coiling in his thoughts. Don't. Don't you dare... “Perhaps...perhaps just tonight won't hurt.” Louis's face luminous, the sunlight breaking through from within. “Really?” “Really.” Stepping aside, letting him in from the cold, shutting the door behind him. An embrace, kisses, burning gratitude. “Thank you. Thank you...” Easing him away, as the whispers rise, as the children stir. Louis shuddering, eyes on the ceiling, as they skitter and scrape, as they slither and slope from hiding. “What the Hell..?” Taking him by the shoulder, coaxing his frightened eyes back down, soothing them with smiles. “There're a few things...you need to know.” The night obliging in confession as it does in play, providing countless hours of both, until they both emerge, blinking, staggering and known to one another, into grey and listless day. "Don't. Don't look."
Always, always. Not even angry any more, not desperate. Just...tired; a wind-up doll, grey and faded, nearly run down. Don't look. Dragging me along, her hand cold and bony, knuckles swollen with some disease, splintered inside. Not realising, until pain, until that instant of black, the world dissolving around me, tumbling across the broken pavement. Landing on my back, eyes up to the sky. Colour. Liquid orange and plasma blue, swimming there, seeping around the ragged edges of wounds that pulse and bleed, that shift and gape. A moment, only. Another blow, snapping my head aside. "What did I blood say? What did I say?" Tasting blood, pressing a hand to bruises that will fruit, in coming days. The colours still inside, swimming across my eyes. The wounds still gaping, in me now. Some pausing to look; more wind-up toys, other things of grey porcelain, faded plastic. Most moving on, muttering to themselves or one another, dragging silent, frowning children behind. All downcast, eyes on their feet, the cracked and filthy pavement, many hooded or masked, faces hidden. The children likewise; dark glasses or ribbons wrapped around their eyes, others bandaged, as though recovering from some surgery. Not looking. Not daring. "Why? Why do you keep doing this to me?" No answer; none that she wants to hear. With her ridiculous, wide-brimmed hat, her too-thick makeup. Sad and weary clown. "Oh, for God's sake, wipe yourself up..." Ferreting in her bag, throwing me a pack of scented wipes. I do as she asks, as always, though I hardly see her, though I hardly hear: Too fascinated by the patterns and colours; the wounds behind my eyes, more vivid, more real than the dirt and concrete, this sad and smothering world. More real than them, the blind and plastic things, who pretend to care, though they did it; sliced open the sky, long before I was born. Something I've never seen before, the woman's fingers cold and hard as she hauls me up by my arm. "And we don't mention this to Daddy, understand?" Nodding, nodding. Wondering why she'd think I might, why I'd have any interest in speaking with that glaring, growling stranger in our house. Happier not even to see him, most of the time. Something in the wounds and rents; scrabbling there, like spider's legs reaching from cracks in a wall. Blue and crystal, shimmering pearl; blinding light and bleeding dark. Laughing, unable to help myself, drawing disbelieving eyes, sighs and mutters. "Stop that. Stop it at once!" Trying, trying. Knowing what it means, if I can't. Mother stopping, getting down on her haunches, grasping me by the arms. It hurts, but not much, not enough. "Catherine, stop it. Now." I can't. I feel them. The legs scrabbling, tickling inside... It hurts. It hurts, but...nothing matters. Hurt, love, joy, pain...none of it. All lies and shadows, 'til now. This is the real reason; why they tell us not to look, why they won't let us see... I see it; the death of the lie. In her eyes, her face, that grows so slack, I think for a moment it's going to melt away from her skull. A hand to her mouth, others coming, taking her by the arms, the shoulders, as her legs give way, as her pretty peach skirt darkens. Trying not to look, just as they try not to look at the sky. In my eyes, now; in my mind. A part of it, filled with it: a thing if blue and orange and azure, of wounds and worlds. My head thrown back, as they come; as they tear their way free. Through my mouth, my eyes. The same, scrabbling legs, and more besides. Laughing around them, not choking, no longer needing Mother's foul, dust-tasting air. Vomiting them across the concrete; wet, scrabbling, pulsing. So pretty; sacks of blue and luminous meat, eyes like stars. The other toys run, leaving Mother to collapse to her knees, screams and sirens wailing. The first dragging itself towards her, still trailing tatters of me, swelling, even as others come, weeping from me like tears; boneless, squid-like, seeping weightless into the air, bursting from me like worms and serpents, jagged heads glittering in the sunlight... Something pinging from the concrete nearby, chipping it white, raising dust. Turning, seeing them: on the rooves, in the sky: Hideous metal and plastic things, whirring, hissing, red lights for eyes. I scream at them, angrier than I've ever been, disgusted by them, by the world they've all made together. Pain, bursts of light, hurling back, towards Mother, the firstborn already upon her, in her; undoing her sad, cracked and weary face, sculpting a new one for her from itself. Falling into her lap, her arms, her fingers no longer cold. Then stars and noise and hurt, synthetic night smothering the sky inside. Looks of scorn, unthinking, unearned. Faces magazine cover beautiful, plastic, doll-like; plained and air-brushed to inhuman perfection. Except the eyes, where pain lives, where disappointment swills and bubbles like chemical filth. Others...denied even that mask of completion; men and women who look as though they're unfinished, coming apart, by comparison. Not able to afford the technology, resisting it as a point of protest. So many, so many. Feeling them break; a river of humanity, impatience and resentment, frustration and unhappiness. The smiles they wear superficial, something missing; assembled wrong, something denied them, torn away from them, that they don't know the shape or name of. Wounds. Wounds in their perfect, frictionless faces, their gym-sculpted, diet-honed bodies: wounds that they can't see, but that they feel. All of them bleeding, to my eyes; seeping out across the concrete platform, as they wander, as they worry; as they tut and sigh and argue and wait, wait, wait... Twenty four minutes. Twelve delayed. Trains arriving at other platforms, grateful stampedes; cattle lowing. Sighs and curses and rolled eyes, men with immaculate haircuts and expensive suits throwing shrieking, foot-stomping temper tantrums at fat, balding, indifferent men, insincerely smiling women. I hate my job. I hate my home. I hate my family. I hate my life. Bloodier than most, pouring with it, their effluent dripping over the edge of the platform. Shredded, almost skinless inside their expensive, finely cut suits, grey and pale blue blooming a dark burgundy before my eyes. Watching, taking care not to linger; to stare too long, for fear of catching their eyes, being seen in my turn. I couldn't bear that. A child shrieking laughter further up the platform, a Mother pleading with it, offering every gift and torment she can contrive in return for some silence, some peace. Scarlet tears staining her face, the child already scratched, beginning to bleed. An elderly couple, shuffling along, clinging to one another's arms, barely seeming to see anyone or anything around them. Pulp on the bone; no longer red, compost black and infested, their most genuine, loving children squirming in their flesh, taking flight as they sprout wet, gossamer wings. Heading home. To their friends and families, to share some delusion of warmth; to shiver together, and pretend that they don't bleed. * I'd laugh at them, if not for the fact that it would alert them to me, make me known. No more wounds for me; the scratches and scars I bear enough, enough. But one does see, his eyes razors, his attention autopsy: slicing, scouring, fresh rivulets dripping down my sleeves, my cheek, my chest. I'm not here. I'm nothing. Lies that are usually enough, but not here; not for him. Not like the rest; what wounds he bears sealed and scarred over, no longer bleeding. Young, like me, a book in his hands, clothes rumpled and second hand, several days unshaven beard clinging to his chin. Oh God. Oh Christ... The wounded not seeming to see, any more than they do their own shadows, as he sifts through them, hoisting a brown leather bag over one shoulder, plucking the headphones from his ears. Drawing next to me, sighing, smiling. Twenty one minutes. Thirty eight seconds. Time sludge, air congealing, becoming hot and rancid, making it difficult to breathe. No words, glancing around like a bird, finding fascination everywhere. In everything. Waiting. For words, for confessions. Some familiar song, signalling his recognition of something alike. Turning to him, though the motion grinds and grates, though time slows, making a glacier of me. "Hello." A lop-sided smile, one side of his pretty, feminine lips curling. "Hey." Glancing around, at the nearby bleeding. "Don't worry; they won't hear." Sniffing, closing his eyes; a cat's kiss. "Oh, I know that. They never do." Always strange, these coincidental meetings, that they promised would never be. More frequent, in recent years; things breaking down, the systems slowly, slowly collapsing. They all know it, of course; sense it, even through the masks and delusions they drape themselves in, the smiling insistence that they are happy and whole. This one...so young, even beyond the appearance he affects. Scuffing his feet, fidgeting with the hem of his flannel, tartan shirt. "So, you here for...?" "No, no..." Urgent smiles, assuring. "Passing through. On my way home, actually." The youth raising a pierced, inquisitive eyebrow. "Really? So, you're..?" "Done. For a little while, at least. Truth be told, I need the rest. The last job..." Unable to keep a flash of inquistiveness from his eye. "A big one, was it?" "Bigger than most..." Wanting the name. Aching for it; a lesson, an example...inspiration, for his own assignments. "Cool. Cool. It's mostly bits and pieces around here, you know; car accidents, a few house fires. I did this one the other day; hardly took anything: this guy...he already hated them, underneath it all..." "Ah! Families are the easiest, aren't they? Especially around this time of year..." "Season of peace and good will and all that..." "Yeah." How many rules? How many protocols broken, just by speaking? Things have changed, since it all began. Since I first wrote my own atrocities. "Listen..." Ah. The inevitable. Eighteen minutes, twenty three seconds. Not long, now. Not knowing me, clearly, but after a sense; my type, my pedigree. Scenting it on me, like blood, like sickness; like I scented it on the first; the ones who took me and showed me how. Who gave me a life outside of systems. "...I know it's, like, a problem and everything..." A problem? Already smiling, sniffing laughter. A problem? Things have changed; they're not afraid anymore; they've never known what happens, never seen it, when protocol isn't maintained, when we and they and the world is allowed to run riot. Don't they show them anymore? Don't they let them see the alternative..? "It's fine. Ask." The platform so full, now; people grunting and tutting as others shove and bustle by, as old men and women smack young shins with their walking aids, as children bark and wail and shriek. "You've, like, been doing this for a while, yeah? You've seen some...some shit?" The world seeming to sift and revolve around me; a storm of smeared, fractured ghosts, every fire and collapse, every accident and atrocity...so small, at first. What's one life, or a handful, or a few handfuls..? "I'll tell you some stories, if you like, but...you need to understand: if I do, it won't be me they come for. It won't be me they make an example of. You're lucky they aren't singing already." The youth's face furrowing, his smile melting. "Seriously?" "Uh huh." Waiting. Listening, glancing at his watch, the surrounding crowds, clearly looking for a particular face. "Damn. It's just...I don't always know...what I'm supposed to do, you know? Why we do it..." "Believe me, it doesn't get any clearer, and won't do you any good to ask. They've given you...how many years, now?" The boy raising a hand to his face, tracing the edges of an invisible wound. "I...I'm not sure. Fourteen, fifteen...maybe twenty. I'm not sure." Twelve minutes. Thirteen seconds. People harassing anyone who looks even vaguely official; people pushing cleaning carts, one woman yelling across to a uniformed man on the opposite platform, cursing ripely when he refuses to answer. "Twenty. Let's say twenty. I can't remember when it began, how it began: I don't remember where they took me from or what my name was...I can't remember the first or the third or the tenth. I've...I've been there, to the Circles. I've seen them; wanted to ask. God! You've no idea! But...I didn't, and they've never told. When I get home today...it's been a long few years, believe me...when I get home today, I'm going to put on some music, open some wine; I'm going to eat my Christmas dinner in peace, and I'm going to forget the world. Understand?; That's what we have to do; that's what they demand of us. "I'm not telling you to stop asking questions; I'm not saying I won't answer. All I'm saying is: be very, very careful, for your own sake, because you do not want to end up back where you began." The boy gaping, blinking, nodding his head in slow aquiescence. "I'm...I'm sorry, man. I just...you know; the things we have to do..." Trying not to let the laughter inside show, the condescension. The things he's done? Nothing. Nothing compared to what he will, if he lasts long enough. Ten minutes. Five seconds. "I know, I know. And...believe me; I appreciate the opportunity: we don't get to talk about it often, but that's rather the point, isn't it?" "I suppose. So...three years? Sounds like a big job..." Still fishing, despite my advice, still aching to know. "You'll see, come the new year. Something that's going to shake it all up. You'll know, when it happens." "Okay. Thanks." "My pleasure." "Oh, by the way...I...you might want to get home some other way...in fact, I'd avoid trains altogether, for today." Sighing, anticipating the waiting, the multiple bus journeys before me. "Thanks. For the warning." "It's okay, man, it's okay." "Should I...keep an eye on the news, later?" "What? Oh, yeah. Yeah. You'll hear about it, if it comes off." I've no doubt. Six minutes. Two seconds. Hissed, distorted announcements through the tannoy system, providing updates on delays and platform alterations, cancellations and arrivals. The boy smiling as he turns, melting away into the crowds, seeking out that one; the mind he's followed and guided here, that he might whisper to. Closing my eyes, finding him almost instantly: a pulsing star of black and red in a smeared mass of grey and brown; a spot of blood amongst shit. So familiar...the taste and texture of him; barbed, jagged; almost fractured, not understanding how they can't see and sense him, how he's held together in his own mind and flesh. Dissatisfaction, disappointment; pain and anger and fury at the world, wanting nothing more than to burn it for the sin of a little pleasure. No religious fanatic or political revolutionary; not one who might murder for God or freedom or equality: a bitter, disappointed man, his loves come to nothing, unable to bear the sight or even thought of them: those embracing, those kissing, those enraptured by the thought of home. Not knowing what he has planned; only that it wil go bad for me if I'm caught up in it. The Choirs will no doubt want to know; the story told detail by detail; information I can't provide, not being the maestro of this particular piece. Three minutes. Eighteen seconds. The train pulling in, grinding against the tracks, its exterior blue and grey, smeared with black and brown, its lights green and red and orange. Waiting, watching as they mill and mass; as they herd towards the doors, collectively praying, aching for the buttons to activate, for the entry lights to flash. Hanging back, feeling him; the man who dreams of fire, of smoke, of twisted metal and ruptured flesh, of screams and prayers and misery, misery, misery; enough to eclipse his own, and make what little life he has left bearable. My friend, my young contemporary, with him; shadowing him, a born temptor, invisible, inaudible, whispering at his ear. I watch, as they board, as they take their seats together. Watch, as the whistle blows, and the train pulls away, slowly disappearing into distant blackness. Later, I'll know. Later, I'll hear the story; maybe even see footage and photographs on the evening news. By then, I won't have the means of understanding. Just another tragedy; another senseless, idiot example of how godless the universe is. Until then, I linger, savouring the scents of oil and diesel, of metal and machinery, of sweat and food and blood. The dead dreams that will never flourish; the stories that will never be told. Confessions of love and hate, of betrayal and undying devotion. All here, as they are everywhere; recorded on the air, seeped into stone and metal and plastic, waiting for minds receptive enough to know them, if only for a moment's grace. * So happy, so happy to be home. Weariness leeching out of my limbs, the last few day's travails slowly fading, forgotten. As always, I try to hold on; making a game of remembrance, even as the memories fade and smear; as atrocity becomes nightmare, becomes fairy tale, becomes nothing. A sweet serenity, peace that few other men know; our reward, for the duty we do, the service we perform. Contentment, in our own company, relief from loneliness and abandonment and disappointment. Later, after food, after a little port, I'll go upstairs, to my loft, my model railways, set the new additions on their tracks, let them get used to their routes and runs; the wider system. Far more efficient than anything the current transport authorities can contrive. Hours and hours; each engine arriving at its allotted station on the dot, the instant; no breakdowns, no collisions; no delays or cancellations. Just the comforting regularity of a system that functions, of utter control. But first, food: no dry, tasteless turkey in this house: a beef wellington, prepared before the last job came through, wrapped in the fridge, awaiting its chance to bake. Flipping on the TV as it does, pouring myself the first of many glasses of port, seating myself next to the window, hoping to see the first flurry of snow. An answered prayer, motes falling, blazing orange embers by the streetlamp light; the fiery fallout of some disaster, of bodies burning. An echo on screen; scenes of fire, of panic, of blood and broken, mangled things: stammering, uncertain reports of some mass atrocity. Trains colliding. Trains exploding. Trains veering off their tracks. Up and down the country, more reports coming in. So terrible, so sad. It might have been me. It might have been... Flicking through the channels, seeking something of comfort, that won't spoil dinner. Some comedian, making light of nothing in particular, raising laughter by referencing nothing more than sleeping and toilet and shopping habits. Not hearing; leaving him to blither as the snow falls, as I eat crisp pastry, savoury mushroom, rare meat. * Retiring, plates unwashed, remains of my gluttony left on the dining room table. Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. The world a dead TV channel, a storm of bewildering white and glowing ash. Thoughts turning to the images on screen; the trains ploughed off their tracks, the scattered bodies, the fires. "Stop being such a morbid prat; nothing you can do." Nothing you can do. The loft cold, but blazing bright, single bulb a sun over the miniature world it hosts. Snow pattering against the roof, winds howling. Flicking on the plugs and switches; electric radiators warming the space. Settling into my chair at the controls. New additions; a replica of The Duchess of Hamilton, proud in her gold and burgundy, the shimmering Silver Fox, not lost, but transplanted here, to this tiny world. New and old, hissing into life, internal mechanisms whispering as they trace their courses around the track. Hypnotic, their regularity so soothing, better than any sedative. I'll likely sleep here tonight... No. Not tonight. Tonight, there is business to attend, duty to discuss. Memory, returning with sudden precision; enough to make me jolt in my chair, to dig my nails into its leather arms. Teeth clenched, grating. The trains continuing on their rounds, sickening, now; nauseating to my far older, more honest eyes. "Do you...have any idea, any idea, how foolish this is?" The intruder stepping out from the shadows, shedding them like the tatters of an old and fraying veil. Stumbling into the light. Burned, bloodied, still smouldering; caught up in his own endeavours. But smiling. Smiling. "I..." Words coming haltingly to his mangled, molten lips, half of his face reduced to black and red ruin. The stink of him...almost enough to bring up my recently devoured wellington. "...I didn't know...where else..." "Where else? Fucking Christ...anywhere, nowhere. Don't you understand? It's nothing to do with me! And here, here? Weren't you taught anything when they took you?" The boy blinking the one eye he still can, sincere confusion welling there, amongst tears. "They didn't, did they? Good God, how far have things slipped? You cannot be here, you understand? Anyone, anyone could have followed you here. We have enemies. You know that much, at least?" Slowly, slowly shaking his mangled head. Massaging mine with one hand. "For fuck's...okay. Okay. First thing: let's get you at least a little cleaned up." Rising from my chair, still unsteady on my feet, seething and uncertain at his presence. My place; mine. The only sanctuary against it all; the only thing I've ever asked for or demanded. Undone, now; tarnished by this violation, never mine again, never inviolate. Slumping in my arms, grinning gratitude, no volition left, no strength to hold himself upright. Carrying him down the stairs, to the landing, the bathroom. A rough attempt to strip him, tatters of burned skin, gobbets of flesh, coming away with the denim and cotton soldered to them. The boy trembling, mewling throughout, but offering no defiance. Idiot. To be caught up in his own work like that... Oh, how quickly they forget... Yes, yes; I remember, well enough: lessons that might have murdered, that claimed so many, from what I later heard: infantile trips and stumblings in the dark; the equivalents of bruising my knee, pricking my fingers, burning myself on open flame. No one there; no one to salve or soothe me; crueller times. "You have made a mess of yourself, haven't you? Wait here a moment; I need to just..." Just what? So simple, on the face of it; just need to pop out and find you...something more suitable to wear. But where, on a night like tonight? The snow already thick, already beginning to pile up. Where..? Stop. There are always places. You know that. Yes. Always places, always those willing to sell themselves for the promise of a roof, a hot meal, a warm bed, especially on nights like tonight. Not concerned about that. Rather, about what might be watching; what he might have already led to my damn doorstep. What price we might have to pay. Easing him into the bathtub, running cold water. The boy sighing, easing back his head, eyes fluttering with something like relief. "I..." No words, no apologies; not here. Breath and time wasted, for both of us. Downstairs, struggling into boots and thick, thick winter coat, taking a moment to assess myself in the mirror. Not that it matters; a personal vanity: the ones I'm going to meet won't care less what I look like; certainly better than most that call on them, even at my most ragged. * Hurrying along ways where only the most ardent eyes might follow; back alleys and underpasses, old, overgrown side-streets... Not that it matters; if they have a mind to find me, they will. Perhaps they'll have already come for him when I get back; spirited him away from my keeping, my obligation. Almost praying for it, though I don't know what repercussions they might visit on me as a result. How to even explain him? How he came to find me..? I don't know. I don't know. So weary, after the work; ragged and fraying. Needing rest; needing to...forget. Just for a while; a month or so. Then, then, I'll show them some work; hymns the like of which the Choirs have never known...enough to make this idiot boy's bleatings sound like dying infant's croaks by comparison. Though, I have to admit, for one so young...the coordination is impressive: thirteen trains, across the country; one for each of the Choirs. Clever. I'm sure they appreciate the wit. * Seeping by the time I reach the outer fences; wet from more than just molten snow. Unravelling, this man, this forgotten meat...coming apart around me. Still, he'll endure a little while longer; long enough, I hope. The schoolyard still shattered, its concrete undulating; the back of some diseased, buried titan, sprouting with weeds and wildflowers, almost protected from the snow by the building itself: Immense, black bricked, a partially collapsed bell tower rising from amongst its wings. St. Christina's Academy for Boys, once upon a time. Protected; the local council unable to touch it, following a public outcry against its demolishment. Now, left to moulder, hap-hazardly sealed off against intrusion, the makeshift wire fences surrounding it all torn or burned or cut through, the place a known haven for local drug-addicts and runaways, for lost boys and girls. A favourite playground, not indulged in often; not wanting to lose it, to risk myself. A long, long time since my last visit; this face only a boy's, when it was taken. This meat...leaner, taughter, more coherent, than I've let it become. Easing my way through a ragged rent in the fence, snaring the back of my hand on a jag of rusted metal. "Shit." The wound not bleeding right away, what seeps from me dark, cold and viscous. Resisting the instinct to press it to my lips, not knowing what it might do. A tear that might give at any moment, that might spill me out in the snow. What the fuck are you doing here? Laughing, humour becoming sickness as I hack and splutter, as something cold and congealed rises in my throat. Spitting it into the white; a gobbet of hissing black. "Come on, come on..." Someone to greet me, as always; one of their little watchers, the waifs posted on the outer walls. Two: a boy and girl, barely wrapped against the cold, their clothes stained and tattered. The boy glares at me suspiciously, toying with something in his pocket. Unshaven, unfed, sickness and suspicion crawling over him like an infestation. The girl...she smiles, drawing back, a little behind him, already having learned her place and purpose. "Hey! What the fuck do you want? This is private property, you know." I laugh, unable to help myself, thinking of beef wellington, of warm fires, of plastic trains whispering around synthetic plastic countryside. I could be there, now, instead of here, freezing my arse off for some...idiot, idiot child. "Oh, I know that; I'm here to see Simeon. Is he..?" Of course he is. Of course he is. Simeon's always around. The boy's scowl melting, the girl's smile with it. His hand emerging from his pocket, empty. "What the fuck you want, mate?" "Tell Simeon that Fairchild's here. He'll understand." The boy sharing a momentary glance with the girl, the latter furrowing her brow, narrowing her eyes; an unspoken command, dragging him back through the doorway behind. "You just...wait here, okay? Don't...just wait here." Raising my hands, glad of the gloves. Not knowing what they might make of the processes underway beneath. Seconds, ticking away. A minute. New trickles, new tears opening. I feel it; beneath my trousers, in my boots. Something fundamental giving way in the nick of my leg, a seam gaping. Come on, God damn it! Soon, there'll be no means; soon, they'll take one look at me and refuse, even under Simeon's duress. Soon, there'll be sores and clumps of hair falling out. Soon, there'll be lesions and blood and a reek beyond belief. Something...wings in the snow, a flock of tin-winged magpies, taking flight. God damn it. God damn it. Right to my door. I knew it; I knew they'd come, the moment I saw him... "Fairchild?" The man emerging from the doorway flanked by older boys and girls, their demeanour not friendly, but seductive, the poses, the looks; the tight jeans and tops. No doubt the best fed, the most pampered; those with rooms and bedding...maybe even functioning toilets. An almost surreal contrast to the man they accompany, the shepherd they follow like the most docile, drug-sedated sheep. Simeon...Eldridge Simeon...one of ours, nominally; afforded a little more...independence than most, for the services he provides. "You look like shit." "Thank you, Simeon. Always a pleasure." A knowing smile. "That is my business, after all." Making a play of hardship, the silver-topped cane in his hand rattling, as he takes the steps one at a time, the numerous layers of lavishly coloured clothing he wears -much of it clearly designed for other frames, other sexes- whispering around his mosquito limbs. A goodly head of hair, for a man his age, much of it still blonde, his eyes still blue enought to arrest, if he has a mind. Showing his age when he smiles, when he frowns; the former far more frequent than the latter. "Speaking of which..." "Yes. I need..." "Something to keep you warm?" Casting a glance to the boy at his side; a wave-haired blonde, pretty, in his own statuesque way, but frictionless, like so many, now; the blankly staring, dead-faced, eye-screaming dolls back at the train station: synthetic beauty, genetically mapped and projected before birth. Expensive stuff, leading me to wonder wonder what sin could have made his parents abandon such an investment... "No. Not me." The man's smile dying, the boys retreating with a flick of his hand. Still casting their needy glances my way, still hungry for whatever drug or addiction he has them tethered by. "Aaah..." Slumping towards me through the snow, dragging his many skirts behind him. "...I told you last time; none of mine, no more meat." "You can't refuse, Simeon." "Can I not?" "No. Not without the Choirs..." "Oh, fuck the Choirs!" Spitting into the snow, swirling around dramatically. "You know how long it's been, since one of them came calling? Since I even heard from one of their agents..?" "I can guess..." "Almost thirty years. Thirty! I've seen boys become old men and die, during that time. I've had the children of boys and girls I raised from the tit come to me, selling themselves for me! I listen, Fairchild; I keep my ear to the ground, and to the skies; more than you've ever done. Do you know what they whisper?" "I...don't have time..." "That it's done. All...falling down. Most of you...you don't even know; you just go on and on, as you've always done...not even wondering why..." "I...I wonder why. But...I don't have time..." "I can see that, Fairchild. I can smell that. And you're not having one of mine. None of you are, ever again." Shambling back, towards the entrance. "What? Simeon! You..." "Go back home, Fairchild. Go back and rot. Oh, and if you do happen to hear the Choirs singing, try listening to what they sing about once in a while, eh?" The man groaning as he struggles up the stairs, not noticing the shape perched on the roof above. But I do. Not there, one moment; a jangle of bladed feathers, in the space of a blink, a heartbeat, and there it is. The warning dying in my throat as it descends; as its wings unfurl, catching what little light there is, blinding me. Simeon doesn't scream; not given chance. When vision returns, the angel sits in stained-red snow, toying with his head, plucking out his eyes with delicate fingers. What's left of the man lies strewn all around; patterns of meat and tinted fabric, no doubt making something beautiful, from a bird's eye view. Not running, though every instinct in my body screams for it. Not turning away, though the sight of it is enough to hurt. A thing of skinless flesh and shimmering metal, of razor and scalpel-blade wings, of fractured-mirror eyes, shards of stained glass protruding from its throat, dangling from the chains looped and fed through the skin of its arms, its chest, its back. Smiling, as it turns to face me; a sudden, bird-like motion, as though it has spied a cockroach crawling on my face, a maggot squirming in my eyes. Blood on its lips. Beautiful lips; those of a girl in lust. The air around it...trembling in pain, parting, weeping with its every motion. Its presence...enough to make me feel as though flea and parasite surgeons swarm across my body, minutely slitting, unravelling... Smiling. A smile too wide for its face, the skin splitting, seeping, its blood mingling with Simeon's in the snow. "I...I know...he lied. He always does...always has...I knew...you were here." Cocking its head to one side, cradling that clutched in its shimmering, serrated fingers. We know. We hear your hymns. So beautiful, Fairchild; so sweet... "I'm...I'm sorry; I know I shouldn't have..." A sudden keening, sunlight lancing through my mind, agonising. For an instant, I sail there, amongst them; tossed and carried like a scrap of barely born meat, the Choirs at war over me, their matter raining down on the spires below. A moment, but enough, enough... When the sunlight fades, when the night and snow return, the angel, Simeon, the blood...all gone. And with them, every inch of fatigue; every sore and laceration, every imperfection. Raising fingers to my face...different, from before; cares and lines of age sheared smooth, angles refined. Laughing, the blonde boy who'd spared me such smouldering looks before waiting at the foot of the stairs, eager to be away from the point of his Father's sacrifice. * So compliant, almost silent. Following with a dog's unquestioning loyalty; barely pausing to ask why or where. Not some trick of the angel's; Simeon's work, the Father who'll no doubt return to them, by and by. His name Jayden, given without asking, pausing to slip out of his shoes in the hallway, to shrug off his coat. Lingering, awaiting my instruction. "No need to feel awkward; you're my guest, here. Perhaps you'd like to wash up, then maybe some food?" The boy's eyes alight at the prospect of feeding. How long since he's enjoyed a genuine meal, and not what scraps his less privileged siblings can scavenge? Smiling his thanks, padding up the stairs, still somewhat nervous. "I'm...sorry. The bathroom..?" "Oh. Straight at the top of the stairs; first door in front of you." "Thanks...." Suspicious, unused to being treated with any degree of respect, any kindness. No matter. Retiring to the kitchen, suddenly ravenous, setting out two plates of beef wellington, vegetables, roast potatoes... the beef and red wine reduction on to heat. It doesn't take long. I don't disturb them; know how...intimate a process it can be. No screams; the boy at least knows better than that. At one point, before I hear feet on the bathroom floor the door clicking open, a fluttering, a flock of birds on the ceiling, chattering to one another with metal and broken glass voices. Then, a voice, slurred and uncertain, from lips it hasn't used before, a strange and alien tongue: "H...Hell...hello..?" Slumping down the stairs, almost stumbling, leaving him to it, though every paternal instinct inside screams, screams for me to go to him, to help him. Holding on, though forgetting seethes and coils inside like mist; an eager, smothering fog, desperate to erase all thought or memory of the work I've done, the hymns I've orchestrated... For the first time in a very, very long time, reluctant to let them go; wanting to hold on; to know myself, during this season of blissful forgetting. Finding him naked in the living room, grasping the door lintel with slick, bloodied fingers. Still pale, still not quite set in his new skin; his frame slightly askew, the prominent angles of his hips, his ribs, askance. Going to him, taking his arms, levering him down to the sofa. "There we go." The boy glaring up at me, working his jaw, as though it has been recently broken and poorly reset. "How are you feeling?" Mouth opening, drool trailing down his chin. Suggestions of blood around his crown, his shoulders; seams not quite yet knit. "....M...mmmmm...." "Give it a moment; you're barely set, son. And don't worry about the mess upstairs; I'll...I'll get it cleaned up. Meanwhile, we'd better sort you out some clothes." Plenty that fit; bags full, in the upstairs wardrobe; clothes of every size and style. Letting him choose, when he's feeling a little more coherent, when he can form an identifiable word or two: "...he...he came...to me..." "I know. I know he did..." "He...he wanted...wanted..." "I know, I know; you don't have to explain yourself to me, believe me. Or do you think I was born with this face?" Smiling at him, the boy blinking, smiling back. "No. Now, get yourself dressed, and come through to the dining room. I expect you're hungry. I'm fucking ravenous." * As pleasant a meal as I've enjoyed in some time, rare, rare these days that I have someone to enjoy it with. The boy strangely endearing company, not fractious or splintered, not irritating or thorn-like. Watching, as he awkwardly struggles with his knife and fork, as he clumsily cuts each piece of food into the tiniest, bite-sized scraps. Still so much a child; still learning the skin I've brought him. The fog receding, as we eat, as we speak: as the night draws in, and the snow deepens. Perhaps no more forgetting, after today; perhaps that is the angel's gift; a reward for my charity. Smiling at the idiot sentiment of it; a long time since I've been prey to such. But happy for it; that the little, quiet lie of a man with his trains and silent smiles won't be returning, any time soon. That there's beauty in this house again, and new hymns we might sing together. |
AuthorGeorge Lea is an entity that seems to simultaneously exist and not exist at various points and states in time and reality, mostly where there are vast quantities of cake to be had. He has a lot of books. And a cat named Rufus. What she makes of all this is anyone's guess. Archives
May 2020
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