Threaded Mode | Linear Mode

Suicide Jack · (03-02-2017)

"Oranges and lemons" say the Bells of St. Clement's
"You owe me five farthings" say the Bells of St. Martin's
"When will you pay me?" say the Bells of Old Bailey
"When I grow rich" say the Bells of Shoreditch
"When will that be?" say the Bells of Stepney
"I do not know" say the Great Bells of Bow
"Here comes a Candle to light you to Bed
Here comes a Chopper to Chop off your Head
Chip chop chip chop - the Last Man's Dead."

“Good morning, Mister Slathe.

Forgive me if I don’t call you “Father.” I only have one of those. When you do as much… travelling… as I do, the titles and formalities we give one another start to become trivial.

I apologize for not directing my earlier communications to you. I hadn’t realized that Tidbits was nothing more than your fetishized little puppet until now. I wonder, though, what the consequences are for a man of the cloth to partake in such obvious acts of human trafficking and cruelty? Is that still so common in 2015?

2017. Sorry.

Mister Slathe, I have a question for you.

Why do you so resist the idea of courage?

You seem to hold only one definition of things. I can tell you from personal experience that this isn’t correct. To a king, sending his men into battle for him is courageous. To a soldier, the king of the opposing army is a coward, though his own king is a hero. Which one of them is correct?

The truth is, courage comes without personal gain. Charity is only charity if it carries no benefit to oneself. Valor is only valor if the shield you hold up for the defenseless does not also serve to protect you as well.

Do you understand?

You don’t, of course you don’t, your world view is too small. It’s not your fault, of course, not many get to see the bird’s eye view of everything the way I do. From your perspective, men are opposed across from one another with great importance and moved with a tactical hand, a surgical precision. Pieces on a chess board. Check and mate and countermove. From where I sit, though, I see only millions of anonymous grains of sand waiting their turn to be washed away by the inexorable tide.

Mister Slathe, will you extend my condolences to your idiot ward, Tidbits? I do not wish him harm. I do not choose to cause him suffering. I simply have lost my sense of empathy for the individual somewhere along the way. I have learned that defeat and capitulation are many times a great gift to bestow unto another. An end to suffering.

Consider, if you will, Mister Tidbits sitting and looking out over the riverbed and thinking of the place he dreams to be someday. You, of course, represent the ranch hands coming to tear him limb from limb. Mister Tidbits won’t ever get to see those rabbits, Mister Slathe, but I, as the bullet entering the back of his skull, am not his nemesis. I am his salvation.

Funny that salvation is what you’ve promised him all this time, is it not?

So please, I insist. Remind him one last time before we meet. Tell him about those rabbits. Bring him to the riverbed.

I will be there.

I wake up in a panic, sucking in a gasp of air with a sharp wheeze. A hot forehead with cool sweat evaporating from it, and a throat raw from dehydration. My sheets are tangled at my feet.

I look to my left and see the wall, its familiar blank façade staring at me with the usual cracks in the usual places. I’m home.

The window is open, no screen, a light gust of midnight air pushing my thing white curtains inward as if they were floating on the moonlight spilling in. I find myself, often, looking up to the stars from many different years. In a lifetime with so much change and so much uncertainty, they remain a constant. Orion chasing his prey across the black firmament night after night, East to West, then vanishing again below the far horizon.

I blink away someone else’s memories, but for a time they persist. I see a an altarman’s robes. Hear an English accent in prayer.

The dysmorphia is strong. I just spent hours in a frail child’s body while it was entered and abused by a man of cloth whom I was supposed to trust. With an absent-minded gesture, my hand moves to my cheek and I find dried tracks where tears fell in my slumber.

The clock beside my bed clicks to 2:47 am… five minutes later than when I fell asleep. But I spent two weeks as that ten year old in Cheapside, London. I do not know the year it was when I spent my fortnight in St. Mary-le-Bow’s, but the smell of ashes was heavy.

I unscrew the cap from a bottle of vodka on my bedside table, and wash away the vestiges of the Father’s taste. The alcohol soothes my throat, and the shadow of tightness from the noose falls away, though the shadows of my own body thrown against a wall while I swung on a rope will not diminish so easily.

I take another sip.

All you that in the condemned hole do lie,
Prepare you for tomorrow you shall die;
Watch all and pray: the hour is drawing near
That you before the Almighty must appear;
Examine well yourselves in time repent,
That you may not to eternal flames be sent.
And when St. Sepulchre's Bell in the morning tolls
The Lord above have mercy on your soul.

Threaded Mode \| Linear Mode Day 369 of 365
Author	Message