the angel of 1913

Every year has its angel. And don’t make the mistake of believing each angel is a good one. For in any age, there are only half as many good angels as there might be, and twice as many wicked angels as there should be. And  even this estimation fails to take into account the ambivalent angels that can feebly preside over a year, and in so doing, cause more grief and discontent than any legion of demons.

It is always on the last evening of each year that the new angel assigned to the new year arrives to acquaint itself with the world over which it will hold sway for 365 days. And so it was on December 31st, 1912, when The Angel of 1913 arrived in town.

The streets were cold and foggy, and the snow, so fresh and white two days ago, was hard and grey. The Angel of 1913 sat in Morrey’s Diner with a cup of coffee, having just finished dinner. He smoked a cigar, and watched a river of souls walk past the steamy window.  He wore a freshly pressed suit with a red silk tie.

The Angel of 1913 was notable among angels. Some angels denied that he was an angel at all. A mere imp, some said. Or a fallen angel, perhaps. But The Angel of 1913 didn’t give a damn what other angels said. He ignored the gossip of cherubs.

For a few moments, he’d been aware of his waitress standing at the counter watching him. This happened frequently. Over the millennia, he’d become used to his power over humans. He relit his cigar. The ember sizzled and glowed bright as a furnace. He deeply inhaled a mouthful of smoke, and made a show of it for her. It disappeared into his undying and incalculable lungs, and he exhaled far more than he’d taken in. It was a Vesuvius of cigar smoke and misty wraiths. The waitress shrieked, and disappeared into the kitchen.

He laughed at this, and in doing so, almost missed sight of a rough looking character with a battered backpack walking down the street past the diner window. There was an air of failure and homelessness about the woman. But there was something else as well; something difficult to define that interested The Angel of 1913. And though it was still 1912, and he had little power over the events of the remaining year, he thought he’d use what power he did have to cause some mischief.

He stood up, snuffing out his cigar in the remaining mound of mashed potatoes on his plate. A silver dollar appeared from nowhere in his hand, and he let it drop into the remains of his meal. It made a sloppy plop sound in the congealing gravy that made him smile. He put on his overcoat, and exited.

The Angel of 1913 walked quickly, staying a few paces behind the backpack woman. What a coup it would be to cause pain and suffering before his year had even begun. He finally caught up at an intersection where a traffic cop presided. There, he stopped next to the woman and said, “Hell of a New Year’s Eve, eh?”

“All the same to me,” said the woman, looking straight ahead.

“Sleeping rough, are you?”

“Maybe. You got some spare change to help me out?”

The Angel of 1913 chose that moment to look down at the curb, and the woman beside him did the same. A twenty dollar bill had somehow appeared there without her noticing; it was unlike her streetwise eye to miss such a rare prize. The Angel of 1913 stepped on the bill, and said, “I saw it first.”

“Fine,” said the woman, looking away. She bit her lip as a familiar spasm of failure travelled through her belly. It merged with the ever-present hunger pangs to create a vicious light headedness.

“But I’ll tell you what….”

“What?” said the woman.

“I’ll take my foot off of the twenty, and you can pick it up. It’ll be all yours. That means a couple week’s worth of room and board and a little hooch, all for you.”

“Okay,” said the woman and she began to bend down to take the bill.

“Or,” said The Angel of 1913, not moving his foot, “you can take a chance on what’s in my right hand pants pocket right now. Before you decide, though, I should tell you that I often carry with me far more than twenty dollars – far, far more, my friend – enough, perhaps, to make you comfortable for all of 1913. However, I feel that I’m equally obligated to inform you that I just had a splendid meal that set me back some considerable amount. There’s a chance that I don’t have much of anything in my pocket at all. You can play it safe and take the twenty now, or gamble on what you can’t see. The twenty under my shoe, or all the money, whatever the amount, concealed in my pocket.”

“You’re nuts. Just let me have the twenty.”

“Are you sure, Maxine?”

“Hey, how the hell you know my name?”

“It’s New Year’s Eve, Maxine. A night of magic and miracles. A night when angels might descend form on high, and change the luck of a down-and-outer like you.”

“You a cop?” said the woman.

“I can assure you that I am not,” said The Angel of 1913.

“You want sex?”

“My goodness, no.”

“Because I ain’t for sale.”

Maxine looked down at the twenty dollar bill. It was a lot of dough, by her standards. But maybe this crackpot did have a wad in his pocket. Maybe this was a night when something good could happen. She looked up again at the man standing there, and licked her lips. Then she ran her finger under her nose and sniffed. “You do this stuff all the time, mister?”

“Sometimes,” said The Angel of 1913.

“Based on your experience, what are my chances?”

“Chances are you will always find life to be unpredictable.”

“That ain’t much of an answer.”

“That traffic cop has changed the direction of traffic twice now during our exchange, Maxine. I hope our business here can be completed before it changes again.”

Maxine ran her thumb under her pack’s shoulder strap. The strap had been digging in all day. It was painful, a disheartening pain. A pain that made the night seem colder, wetter, darker. In her mind, she attempted to calculate the impossible. Could she cash in on what was in this man’s pocket? Could he be a good hearted trickster ready to commit an act of charity? She looked him in the face, and The Angel of 1913 smiled a bland, confident smile.

“Okay,” she said. “Forget the twenty. I’ll take the cash in your pocket, every damn dime.” Maxine held out her hand. “C’mon,” she said. “Give.”

The smile on The Angel of 1913’s face grew broader, and he pulled his clenched fist out of his pocket. It could have concealed a hundred dollars, or a thousand. She waited for the fist to open. And when it did, Maxine felt a familiar spasm in her gut. In the palm of the man’s hand was a nickel and two pennies.

“Shit,” she said.

The Angel of 1913 bent down, and picked up the twenty from under his fine shinny leather boot.

“How do I know that’s all you got in your pocket, buddy,” said Maxine.

“I’m a Gentleman,” said The Angel of 1913. “You have my word.”

“Shit.”

“It’s just stupid bad luck. Isn’t it, Maxine?”

“I guess.”

“You made a bet – you took a risk – and you lost. It’s just too bad.”

“Hang on,” said Maxine. “You’re nuts. That wasn’t no bet. I didn’t lose a damn thing. In fact, I’m up seven cents.”

“Well, that is entirely the wrong attitude.”

“Look, mister, you might have all the money in the world and look real swell in your snazzy duds, but you got no business telling me I got a bad attitude. Now fork over my seven cents. I can get a bowl of soup with that.” Her belly growled at the thought.

The Angel of 1913 didn’t like the way this was unfolding. He’d hoped his little trick would have helped to demoralise this woman. Instead she stood there talking about soup, and how his seven cents could buy some. Perhaps he’d miscalculated. He wrapped his tight fist round the nickel and two pennies.

“How ‘bout we try this,” he said. “I’ll….”

“You’ll do nothing, mister,” said Maxine. “Not a damn thing ‘cept hand over my seven cents. ‘Cause if you don’t, I’m gonna scream blue bloody murder and that traffic cop is gonna come on over, and I’m gonna tell him you mistook me for a women of ill fame.”

“Ill fame?” said The Angel of 1913. “Mistook you for…? My dear woman, have you looked in mirror lately?”

“Fine,” Maxine said. She took a deep breath of air, as though she were preparing to yell very loudly.

“Wait,” said The Angel of 1913, who had yet to receive the advantage of all his powers over the world – the powers that would be bestowed on him a tick after midnight on New Year’s Day. Until then, he was restricted to what were, in his estimation, mere parlour tricks, like the conjuring of coins and bank notes, and the correct guessing of people’s names. Dissuading a dutiful cop from rescuing a shabby woman in distress might be beyond him at this point.

He looked across the street at a bank. Its ostentatious clock read 6:29. He was still five and a half hours away from full influence over Earthly goings-on. He had a thought.

“How would you like to double your money?” he said. “Turn seven cents into fourteen. That’s two bowls of soup.”

“I just need one, mister.”

“Well now, isn’t that just the sort of thinking that keeps a good woman down?”

“You’re too tricky for me, fella. But you owe me seven cents. Now give.”

“Okay, okay,” said The Angel of 1913. He held a pacifying hand in the air. And with that hand, he produced another twenty dollar bill out of thin air. “How would you like another crack at one of these?”

Her patience was wearing thin. The cop in the centre of the intersection blew his whistle, and encouraged the traffic through. It occurred to her then to simply walk away. Even if she could get the cop’s attention, she’d been sleeping at missions for weeks. She was grubby, and the sort of person the cops loved to run off the street and put in the clink. The twenty in the man’s hand seemed to glow, however. And a gust of icy wind blew up the sidewalk. The twenty could buy a lot of comfort.

“Alright,” she said. “What’s the gimmick this time?”

“Do you like riddles,” said The Angel of 1913 with a greasy smile.

“Hate ‘em,” said Maxine.

“Well here’s the gimmick,” said The Angel of 1913. “I ask you a riddle. If you answer it correctly, you get the twenty. Answer it wrong, and you still get the seven cents.”

“Okay, fine. Hit me.”

“Alright, listen carefully,” said The Angel of 1913. “The riddle is this: It has hands but no fingers. It tocks but says nothing. What is it?”

“It talks, but says nothing,” said Maxine.

“Yes,” said The Angel of 1913, tapping his well heeled foot. “It tocks but says nothing. Do hurry; I have tickets for the stage.”

“Hmm,” said Maxine, putting her finger on her chin. “What talks and says nothing?”

“That’s the riddle, my dear. Can you answer it or not?”

“Give me a minute.”

“You don’t have forever. We can’t stand here all night. Time’s a wasting. C’mon, c’mon.”

Just then the bank clock across the street rang the half hour.

“Hey,” said Maxine. “Do you mean talk or tock? Like as in tick-tock.”

“Well….” said The Angel of 1913, looking sheepish.

“Which is it?”

“Must I answer the riddle for you?” he said.

“No, but I think you’re cheating. Talk or tock? Fess up.”

“Do you accuse me of cheating?” said The Angel of 1913. “Me? How dare you?”

“Well?”

“Fine. We’ll do another riddle.”

“The hell we will,” Maxine said. “Talk or tock? Come clean.”

Had he miscalculated? Maxine was obviously no great intellect, but she was proving that she wasn’t simple either. Perhaps he should have given the riddle more thought before asking it. But it had worked before. He’d been asking the same riddle since the invention of the mechanical clock. There was something tediously assertive about this awful woman. So, what now? What could be worse than surrendering the twenty dollar bill to this unwashed trollop? What could be worse than conceding? He never had. For a second, he thought about pushing her into traffic. But he was unsure he could get away with it before midnight came. She might put up a fight.

“Well,” said Maxine. “I’m waiting.”

“I’m calling off the bet,” said The Angel of 1913.

“You can’t,” said Maxine.

“I already have.”

“Then give me my seven cents.”

“Absolutely not,” said The Angel of 1913. “You were only to receive the seven cents if you lost the bet. You didn’t lose the bet because I called the bet off. Therefore, no seven cents.”

“You cheated,” said Maxine.

“I most certainly did not,” said The Angel of 1913. “I’m incapable of cheating,” he lied.

“Then I want another chance,” said Maxine. “And this time, I ask the riddle.”

He frowned and thought for a moment. Then he tried to read her mind, but all he got were bits and pieces. A broken vase and burnt eggs. This would be a challenge. He hated challenges. He liked to win. But he couldn’t turn and run now. It would be admitting defeat. It would be undignified.

“Very well,” said The Angel of 1913. “But let’s up the ante, and make it a real bet.” He bent over and picked up a candy bar wrapper from the sidewalk. He closed his fist round it, and when his fist opened again, the wrapper had morphed into a large roll of bills held tight with an elastic band. “There’s ten thousand dollars here. What have you got to put up?”

“Nothin’,” said Maxine.

“You might have something,” said The Angel of 1913, smiling his greasy smile. “Something you may have never considered risking.”

“Mister, all I ever had I left behind in a shack on a dead and dusty plot of land in Manitoba.”

“Then consider this,” said The Angel of 1913. “If you win, if you can ask a riddle I cannot answer, you get the ten thousand. If you lose, I will take from you everything you ever were, and more. There won’t be enough of you left to deliver to the infirmary, or even for a priest to offer last rights.”

“You are crazy,” said Maxine.

Hearing this, The Angel of 1913 reached out and tightly clasped Maxine’s hand. He hissed: “Don’t count on it.” Eyes dead and colourless now, all humour gone from his face. His teeth sharp for a second, like those of a dog. Somehow, from somewhere, a choir of deep lament, a chorus of anguish and defeat. And there was the smell of something burning.

“Let go,” said Maxine, pulling free. She stumbled backward a few steps, and looked at the man. He’d become a grinning dandy again, but the burning smell lingered.

“Since this has turned so serious, mister,” she said. “I have one condition that I want understood. By that clock across the street, you answer my riddle in sixty seconds. That’s one minute, got it?”

“That’s acceptable,” said The Angel of 1913. He smiled, and was suave and self-assured. “Do you have your riddle ready?”

“I think I do,” said Maxine. Her belly growled again. Ten thousand dollars would buy a lot of soup. She could sleep on clean sheets, and take the tram where she liked. Maybe for the rest of her life. “Here we go,” she said. “My riddle is this: Every room I enter is empty, in spite of my presence. What am I?”

“That’s it?”

“Yup,” said Maxine. “And you now have fifty-eight seconds.”

“Why that’s easy, it’s….”

“Fifty-seven seconds.”

“Oh, stop that,” said The Angel of 1913. “It’s annoying.”

“Well?”

“You enter a room and it’s empty, in spite of you being there. Ha, you’re a ghost. That was so easy!”

“Not so fast, mister. It ain’t a ghost. It’s something you don’t even know anything about, so you ain’t never gonna guess it right.”

“Not a ghost? Then, hmm. Then the fog, of course. You’re the fog. The room is empty, but there you are.”

“Nope,” said Maxine.

“Well will you at least tell me if I’m warm?” said The Angel of 1913.

“Not a chance,” said Maxine. “And times runnin’ out.”

“I wonder if you’re not the one cheating this time,” said The Ghost of 1913. “Maybe you’re all riddle and no answer.”

“We’ll see.”

“Something I know nothing about, is it? That certainly narrows it down. But what’s the point if I don’t know about it?”

“Tick-tock, tick-tock,” said Maxine.

The Angel of 1913 was starting to worry. No one had ever asked him a riddle he couldn’t answer. Over the centuries, they’d asked him complex, esoteric riddles. The more complex and esoteric, the easier they were to answer. But this riddle was so simple. Every room I enter is empty, in spite of my presence.

He had a thought; he tried his luck at slowing the clock. But it didn’t work. His full powers on Earth were still hours away. He cleared his mind and focussed.  …empty, in spite of my presence; …empty, in spite of my presence.

Finally, Maxine said: “Five seconds, mister.”

“I have it!” said The Angels of 1913. “I have it, and now you’re mine, you infuriating little bitch. I’ll make you suffer, I will.”

“Two seconds.”

“Air!” he said. ” …empty, in spite of my presence. It’s air. I have you now.”

“Nope,” said Maxine. “You ain’t got jack shit.

“Then what is it?” said The Angel of 1913. “Every room I enter is empty, in spite of my presence. Tell me what it is, or I’ll throttle you!”

“Hunger,” said Maxine. “I told you you knew nothing about it, and I was right. That’s why it didn’t even occur to you.”

“Surely it’s too metaphorical! It was a trick. You tricked me. I’m calling off the bet.”

“Can’t. I played by the rules. Now hand over the cash.”

“Do you know who I am?” said The Angel of 1913 in a last-ditch effort to intimidate. “Do you know how bad I can make things for you throughout the year to come?”

“Worse than what you see now?” said Maxine as she reached out and took the wad of bills from the hand of The Angel of 1913. “I don’t think so.”

She removed the elastic band with a snap, and began to count. There were too many hundreds, fifties and twenties to get through, but she had an idea that it was all there. “Thanks,” she said, and smiled.

The Angel of 1913 watched, slack jawed, as Maxine waited for the traffic cop to wave her through. Then crossing the street, she disappeared into the dark wet city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hamlet, a Halloween Tragedy

shortly before

He wept, looking up from his prison beneath the open air stage on the Thames, through the cracks between the boards where above the actors strode and hammed-it as he lay forever-sleepless in his paralysed and prone position upon the dark and spidery dirt. He’d been there so long that his self-pity had become a script in its own language, written overhead on the stage’s dark underside—an enormous page of words beginning at its centre and radiating out, dense and nearly endless, in all directions. A greedy soliloquy with no one to hear, for muteness was also an infirmity he suffered from the spell that held him in place. He hated her for it, and prayed to demons and angels and archaic realms, if there were any of those, for someone to come to his rescue. But no one had ever come, not for a hundred years.

Until the night he saw the burning red eyes of Cyro, peering at him through the floorboards above.

“Edwardo,” Cyro said. (It was more of a sizzling lisp.) “The stench of self-pity is more repulsive than the grave.”

“Meaning what?” said Edwardo, or thought, since he couldn’t speak.

“Meaning you stink.”

“Bastard. My plight is my own, and I’ll suffer it in my way. And if I stink, it’s because I’ve lain here a century without a bath.”

“Yes, there’s that too.”

“Who are you?” Edwardo said.

“I’ve been called Cyro. Let’s stick with that. I’m a spirit of a kind.”

“You’re the powerful demon, then. The one I’ve beckoned.”

“Not the demon, but a demon. One who once sat at a cross roads and heard a pitiful call, and came.”

“Then you’ve come to set me free from this spell?” Edwardo was delirious.

“Maybe,” Cyro said. “But this spell she’s cast on you is more than just ironic. (A talentless actor imprisoned beneath a stage; that’s rich.) No, a spell like this is like a house with many rooms woven one twig at a time. A clever witch knows how to squeeze time to make it look quick and easy, but in reality, it takes a very long time cast. Stones disappear in the time it takes to cast a powerful spell like the one you’re under. And a house with many rooms, like the one she’s built, takes time to deconstruct.”

“How long, then?”

“A very long time.”

“How long, damn it? How much more do I wait. Maybe I need to conjure a better demon than you.”

“The spell is already broken,” Cyro said. “I foresaw your situation long ago. Before many of your rude, muddy-faced ancestors were even born. Such is the imperceptible unfurling of mischief, as I’m able to see it, but that’s beside the point.”

“So I’m free, then?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well damn it,” Edwardo startled himself by shouting for the first time in too many years, “I can’t move.”

“Try,” Cyro said.

Edwardo lifted a finger. The pain was cruel, but it was a start.

“Now hear the nails,” said Cyro.

Edwardo listened and heard the shriek of nails pushing themselves out of the boards and joists. Then the boards flew away, and suddenly Edwardo saw the light of stars.

“Now, Lazarus, rise up,” Cyro said.

Edwardo did, creakily at first. And as he stood for the first time in a century, he saw Cyro as a whole for the first time. The demon was at once hideous and handsome. A molten monster Adonis, and Edwardo couldn’t help his gaze.

“Don’t fall in love, fool,” Cyro said. “You’ve got a witch to hunt down.”

“Where is she?”

“A city in the New World,” said Cyro. “Look for her there. That’s all I’ll say, until we meet again.”

*   *   *   *   *

She waited for song, walking the streets of dreaming, hovering half haunted above herself in the dark. And she saw its face at her tenement window, its moist poisoned palms on the glass, its eyes of buttons and teeth of stitches. Of all the demons, her lips moved in unconscious summoning prayer, in all of the splendidly lonesome worlds, you are the one. Sing for me again, she said, dreams still thick round her shoulders and endless in the territory behind her eyes. But it didn’t sing, only watched. Night had come, and she woke to the popping of firecrackers and the not too distant booms of larger ordnance.

Having risen, she sat in the light of a computer screen, the grim pixels of war news. She ate thick-skinned grapes and drank coffee in her solitude, sealed in her cherished killing jar of isolation. A man upstairs played his jazz too loud, Monk and Coltrane, others. She listened carefully, and against all rules, lit a cigarette. American forces had been discovered in Niger, inexplicably. The dead marched off a transport plane at Dover Air Force Base. She showered, dressed, and left her rooms. The city was already ablaze. There was the conflicting threat of rain.

Her name was Bridget and she seemed no older than twenty, and she knew that it was her pale absinthe eyes and paper-white complexion that separated her physically from the ordinary. That even now on the burning sidewalks, eyes were on her, and she was glad. She kept the far less ordinary things to herself, however. The things that really mattered¾how she romanced shadow, could conjure and reshape matter, and how she’d survived for so long in her pale, slim body, while so much of what and who she’d known over the millennia had wilted beneath the rays of distance and history.

History and distance, they were nothing without seconds. This she knew. Seconds colliding and fusing. They were the source of everything that appeared and perished, hope and hate. Minutes and hours, atoms and ages, were incidental. Seconds ruled. Almost painfully ignorant, they were monsters, they were chaos. It was pointless to measure them the way men did. Only the dead and the shadows that ate the human heart could measure them.

She could measure them too, and she’d lived too many. She was a crypt of memory, of conflict, much of it thousands of years old, long foxed round the edges. It was the curse of immortality. Memories of torture, lunatic religion, genocides, jungle napalm. Witnessing the history of intentional inhumanity. Witch magic was a blessing; life eternal was damnation.

It was a neighbourhood of dark edges and ebbing angles in an angry, violent city. A left-behind kind of place that excited vandals and the instincts of the unseen. There weren’t even jack-o-lanterns this Allhallows Eve. The first hint of him was an out of place shape, still as a century, silhouetted against vandal-fire across the road. She stopped and said his name out loud, “Cyro.”

“I could never hide from you,” he said to her in his blistering lisp. “Not when so nearby, anyway.” He stood next to her now. “And, by the way,” he said, “I resent that this is how you see me now.” He turned a 360, showing off his filthy voodoo doll-like appearance. No longer robust and six foot tall, but the size of a plump child. “It’s offensive and clearly a slight.”

“It’s how you come to me in dreams,” she said. Seeing him how she liked, after so long was her privilege. “I dreamt you differently when we were lovers, before your many betrayals. When I could still see you beautiful and nearly human.”

“You have to take some responsibility for those betrayals,” he said. “You knew I was a villain when we met, and don’t the girls just love a villain?”

“I was a fool,” said Bridget.

“One of many.”

“Now you must end this curse. That’s why I’ve summoned you.”

“What curse?” Cyro shrugged.

“This curse of endless life; you know what I mean. End it.”

“You called it a blessing once. You begged me for it.”

“I’m begging for something else now,” Bridget said.

“But you’ll die if I do it,” said Cyro with questionable concern. “Besides, I’ll say it again, you were the one who asked for immortality, and it was granted.”

“I was young and ill-informed,” she said, now having a familiar vision, remembering a lantern lit cave in the hills over the sea in what was now Ireland—priests and fellow witches chanting in a circle and in dark passages, drumming, phantoms dancing. It was a memory of them both, the night he granted her wish. Him terrible and handsome, savage and vile. And her, ambitious, a witch too young and guileless to be consorting with a devil, unaware that it wasn’t necessary. She’d seen his cold, warning eyes in that cave, and he’d tricked her by granting her wish of life everlasting. A spell, he knew, that would cause everlasting pain.

After that he used her. He sang so beautifully from afar and in her dreams—a demon’s most powerful lies are told from afar and in dreams, he’d said once—and she was smitten. It was an innocent adolescent smitteness, though, which made it all the more amusing to him.

“I’ll die for certain,” Bridget said, “when you remove this spell. I want that right returned to me, and only you can do it.”

“I saw this coming,” said Cyro.

“Then do something.”

“You should have asked me for wisdom, instead.”

“Just do something,” she hissed.

“Who says that I won’t,” he said, “but you should know that forever doesn’t end with death. Death just changes the scenery.”

“Do it now.” Bridget held her head in her hands. “The suffering is endless. This world is Hell.”

“Immortality requires patience, my dear. Death is an idiot. It lacks discipline. It lacks subtlety and courage. And it routinely fails to follow instructions, even from someone like me. Especially in a case like yours. Immortals scare the life out of death. But don’t worry. Because of this maddening moan of yours, I’ve intervened on your behalf. Watch this night for a man we both know.”

“Who?”

“I’ve granted him certain advantages.”

“Who? Tell me who it is.”

“It’ll be fun for me, entertaining, because he’s only a man.”

“Who, damn it?”

“I think he found you a little while ago, actually, but has waited for tonight to reveal himself—a night of witches and darker things, the moon waxing like an animal chasing itself in orbits. He loves irony. He’s creative that way.”

“Tell me who it is,” she shouted, “or I’ll send you back into the fire.”

“Then I’ll cancel everything.”

She said nothing. Cyro vanished.

There was a massive explosion in a tenement two blocks away, more festive high-explosives. She saw the building’s facade crumble onto the street, as the blast wave nearly knocked Bridget off her feet

“Hey bitch,” someone shouted behind her. “What you doin’ on our street?” It was a neighbourhood gang. They were all wearing devil masks. She thought she recognised the voice of the leader. “Tonight’s some serious shit,” he said. “We’re out huntin’ for some treats, and you’re lookin’ very edible.”

“Don’t hassle her, Elijah,” someone said. It was a gang member heard from the back of the small crowd. “She’s that spooky wench from up the street.”

“Yeah,” said Elijah, “I know it, and I’m sick of lookin’ at her walkin’ round the hood. She don’t sell it; she don’t give it away. Maybe tonight we take care of her.”

“Yeah, yeah Elijah,” came assenting voices. “Take care of her.”

“We’ll cut you up,” Elijah said to Bridget, pulling a knife out of nowhere.

Flames glinted off of the blade, and she wondered if this was it, if somewhere behind a mask was the face of the man Cyro said they both knew. Elijah broke from the group, and walked up to her.

“Take off the mask,” she said, and the man did. Bridget recognised him. He was local. Tall and well built, but a bully and petty criminal. Maybe this was the night he hit the big time. Rape and murder. “You know Cyro, then?” she said.

“Don’t know no Cyro.” Elijah spit out the words, as he held the blade against her throat.

“Then too bad for you,” Bridget said, grinning.

Suddenly there was fear in Elijah’s eyes, as the knife in his grip began to move back, away from her throat and towards his own. He clearly couldn’t stop it. In seconds he was holding the knife against his own throat. Blood began to trickle. Then began to stream.

“See,” she said to dying Elijah, “your homie was right. I’m spooky.” There was horror on Elijah’s face as the blade dug into his throat. He screamed, and Bridget said, “Bye-bye, tough guy.”

Now she heard words like fuck and holy shit coming from the gang, and Bridget set each member afire without warning. There were shrieks of agony and a grotesque dance for several moments, before the scene was reduced to nothing more than smoldering bodies and bones on the pavement.

“Well done,” someone said behind her, slowly clapping his hands.

She turned to see who it was.

“You?” It was Edwardo. “You moldy ham sandwich,” she said, “you’re what Cyro sent me? Last I checked, you were where I put you—under that stage with the bugs. This is very disappointing.”

“Not for me,” he said. “And you had no right casting a spell on me.”

“But you outted me as a witch.”

“But you are a witch.”

“But I was run out of London by the Church, because of you. By a horde of cross-dressing priests with their torches.”

“But I thought you’d enjoy the drama, since you’re such a bloody aesthete.”

“But you only did it to get back at me,” Bridget protested, “for questioning the quality of your acting.”

“But you’re not a drama critic.”

“But you stank,” she said. “Your Clown Hamlet was an apocalypse.”

“It was innovative for 1917.”

“It stank the place up.”

“Besides,” said Edwardo, now dewy-eyed, placing his hand loosely over his heart, “I thought we had something.”

“You’re mad.” She waved him away. “I don’t carry-on with mortals. I’d tear you to pieces in bed.”

“But we attended parties together. Gala dinners. They said we were inseparable. I thought they were right.”

“It was all for show,” Bridget said. “You’re a fool if you think otherwise, and you know it. A witch either hides or takes the town by storm. She doesn’t have a quiet little flat and attend the shops daily. Not when you stand out like I do.”

“A pale goddess. Everyone said so.”

“It would never have worked, Edwardo.” She was sneering now. “Besides, you stole from me.”

“Well, I was willing to try.”

“You lied,” she shouted. “You told the whole of London that we were sleeping together.”

“I did it because I loved you.”

“You were a pickpocket and an embarrassment,” she said.

They both paused and look into each other’s eyes. So many memories for Edwardo. Just a miserable pinprick in time for Bridget.

“I hate you,” she said to him.

“And maybe after all,” said Edwardo, “ I hate you, too. For leaving me in that prison. When was my term to end? When would you have released me?”

“Maybe never,” she said, smiling as a heavy rain began to fall.

“You pig!” he said, grabbing her round the throat and digging in his thumbs. “I hate you more than anything.”

She’d promised herself that she wouldn’t struggle when her time came, but this was Edwardo. Passivity was out of the question. Cyro had made him strong and had seized her immortality. Suddenly she was witnessing her life passing before her eyes, one infinite second at a time. The carnage and injustices of man. In Washington, DC, a fat sociopathic apricot held the nuclear codes in the sweaty palms of his diminutive hands. Things would never change.

If Edwardo succeeded in killing her, he’d be left behind to live out the remainder of his mortal life, to artlessly walk the streets of an unsuspecting world. Perhaps even to take to the stage again. She knew she had a duty to prevent it, and reached up taking his throat in her throttling hands. Now it was Edwardo’s turn to struggle as a small crowd of revelers raced past, and ran into a derelict building across the street, oblivious to these two people violently trying to kill each other.

“You bitch,” Edwardo gagged and gulped. “Cyro said you’d die easy, so die.”

“No,” Bridget wheezed and heaved, “not at the hands of a degenerate, no-talent stage fart like you.”

“I thought this would be more meaningful,” Edwardo choked. “I hoped for some last minute intimacy coming out of my strangling you, but you’re still the cold blank landscape. I thought you’d show some appreciation, some passion in dying so savagely, but I was wrong about you again.”

Now, as the revelers sped out of the derelict building across the street, he reached under his coat and pulled out a revolver.

“I’m going to splatter your brains all over the sidewalk.”

Bridget knew she was in trouble. Suddenly, she wanted her immortality back. Squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to muster whatever magic she had left to cast a spell. Just a small one would do. As she focussed, she heard the hammer of the snub-nosed revolver against her head drawn back, but no spell seemed forthcoming.

“Say your prayers and good-byes,” said Edwardo, “you little whore.” And he pulled the trigger, somehow missing his target. As it turned out, Bridget did have a speck of magic left inside of her.

The bang, however, was much louder than either of them expected from such a puny weapon, though neither was experienced in such matters. In fact, it was deafening and had caused a shockwave, pushing them both down onto the pavement. And looking up, as they fell, they saw the facade of the derelict building across the street exploding outward, its lethal flame and aggregate soon to snuff them both out as the revelers who’d set their masterwork Allhallows Eve firebomb danced and jumped with joy a block away.

shortly afterward

She was in what was either a small gymnasium or auditorium—Cyro standing in the centre of the room in all of his tall, purple lava-like glory, surrounded by an adoring crowd of geriatric women. He seemed to be signing autograph books. Bridget smirked and made a self-deriding tsk-tsking noise.

“Oh!” said Cyro, looking up and acknowledging her. “There you are.”

“Yes,” Bridget said.

“Well welcome to our little troupe meeting. Ladies, meet our guest.”

The circle of aged women turned its attention on Bridget and applauded.

“And look!” Cyro enthused. “There’s our very famous guest star, Edwardo.”

Edwardo skulked in a far off corner. One or two of the senior women made as though to swoon.

“We’re dead, aren’t we,” Bridget said.

“Why, yes you are,” chirped Cyro. “Isn’t it wonderful? It’s just what you asked for.”

“And this?” Bridget waved her hand, taking in the entire room. “Is this what you meant when you said that death just changes the scenery?”

“Yes it is.”

“Explain.”

“Well,” Cyro said, “this is a ladies dementia ward, and they’re rehearsing their production of Hamlet.”

“Hamlet,” Bridget said flatly.

“Yes,” said Cyro, with joyful enthusiasm. “It’s Hell, don’t you see. The ladies are rehearsing for a Shakespeare Festival that will never come. Never ever, ever, ever,” Cyro grinned. “And you’re the director, and our cringing Edwardo in the corner is the star. Isn’t it wonderful?”

The elderly ladies applauded some more.

“So I guess suicide’s out of the question.”

“Don’t be such a Silly-Willy,” Cyro said.

Edwardo now wept and gnashed his teeth, as a bevy of demented old women danced round him in his corner, nakedly waving their diaphanous hospital gowns over their heads.

“I hate you, Cyro,” Bridget said.

“That’s the spirit,” the purple one beamed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the woman in the red raincoat

Vancouver, 1949

Trudy Parr had been falling all of her life. It was an enduring dream. From a hotel room window, high over the street. She would open it and edge out, earnest in her aim, nauseous from the height. And, having written her brief neatly folded note of apology, she’d fall. Past flags and lighted windows, the moon and tresses of neon, the redemptive pavement rushing toward her. Since childhood. But she had always woken before impact. In her bed, in the dark of night or grey dawn, hearing perhaps a lonesome bird just outside.

But not that night. That night she didn’t wake before shattering like a mirror, seeing herself reflected ten thousand times.

Now she sat on the edge of her bed, smoking a cigarette, seeing the concrete, reliving the stunning ruby flash.

It was 4 a.m.

From her window, she saw the freighters on English Bay shine like cities on the water. It was early July. The sun would be prodding the eastern horizon. She looked west. Her dream had had the density of stone. It would have sunk into the bay, had there been a way.

She snuffed out her cigarette, and had a shower.

10 am Commercial Drive

“Caffè lungo and Cornetti,” said Trudy Parr. “Have you seen Melisa?”

“She no come in yet today,” said Tony Nuzzo, in his broken English, starting Trudy’s order. “That’s strange because she’s usually in round eight o’clock. She come in yesterday, but she very sad I think.”

“Sad?”

“She gets that way, you know?”

“Yes.” Trudy knew. Melisa Patton did get sad. They’d been friends of all their lives, and she could remember Melisa’s long years of sadness. She was an artist, a painter of stunning canvases, sold in galleries as far away as New York and London.

“You take a table,” Tony Nuzzo told Trudy. “I bring it to you.”

Trudy sat by the widow. Commercial Drive was a busy east Vancouver high street, in an Italian neighbourhood. Through the window she saw merchants and customers hurry by. Tony Nuzzo arrived with her order. He’d placed two small chocolate cookies next to her Cornetti.

“A little chocolate for you,” he said. “You too thin, Miss Parr.”

After twenty years in Canada, Tony Nuzzo still held onto old country ideas. “A man likes a woman with a little width, if you don’t mind me to say so.”

Trudy smiled.

“I’d like to sit down with you,” Nuzzo said. “May I?”

“Of course.”

“Grazie, grazie.” Nuzzo sat. “It’s about your friend, Melisa. It’s none-a-my-business, but she really didn’t look so good yesterday. She’s pale. No smile. No, Hello Tony, how you today? And it’s July. It’s warm. But wears this paint stained sweater, long sleeves. And I see bandages poking out. Some dry blood. Her wrists, maybe her whole arms, wrapped in bandages.”

Trudy tried not to look worried. She’d attempted to return Melisa’s call from the day before, last evening and this morning. Her secretary had said the caller, Melisa, sounded especially unhappy. There’d been no answer when Trudy called back. It was Melisa’s studio number. She was almost always there. Now this. Bandages. Melisa had cut herself before, when things were bad. Her arms. Her legs.

“Did she say anything when she was here?”

“No,” said Nuzzo. “She just had two espresso, bang bang, one after the other, and left. Maybe she’s unlucky in love, huh?”

“Maybe,” Trudy said. She bit a cookie and sipped her coffee. “I’ll ask around, check her apartment and studio. I’ll let you know if I find anything.”

“That’s fine,” said Nuzzo. He stood up with a broad smile. “You good at that kinda stuff, you bet.”

The apartment and studio were on the Drive, a half block away from one other. The apartment door was locked, no answer. But she found the studio door open, when she arrived. She went in.

The large room reflected Melisa’s obsession with neatness, in spite of the paints and canvasses, splattered palettes and linseed oil soaked rags.

On the easel was an unfinished painting of a woman, seen from behind. She was walking away from the viewer, in the rain, without an umbrella. Her coat was bright red, with darker rustier shades in its creases and folds. The surrounding colours, however, people, buildings and automobiles, were bleak and hopeless. It was a treasure, nonetheless, even to Trudy’s untrained eye.

On a countertop, under a lamp, she discovered a roll of gauze and a small metal case containing blue Gillette razor blades. Next to them was a bloody rag and a beaker stained with a dry rust coloured substance. She shivered. Melisa was talented and a striking woman, educated and revered. What provoked her?

“Hello.” A voice came from behind her. She turned round and saw a small dapper man, in a suit and holding his hat in his hand. “Have you seen Miss Patton?” he said.

“No,” Trudy said. “Who are you?”

“A patron. An admirer. A costumer.” His eyes fixed on the painting. “Ah, she’s nearly done. It’s exquisite.”

Trudy Parr looked over her shoulder.

“For you?” she said.

“Indeed,” said the man. “A special commission. A vision.”

He walked into the studio, up to the painting, removing his soft leather gloves. Then he ran his fingers over it gently, feeling the texture of the brush strokes. His eyes were closed, as he seemed to experience a strange ecstasy.

When he was done, he wiped his brow with a yellow silk handkerchief. “Do you know anything of her whereabouts?” he said.

“No.”

Trudy saw odd markings on the backs of his hands. Circles and cruciforms, a cursive script she didn’t recognise. They might have been tattoos, but looked more like blemishes. The man noticed, and put on his gloves again.

“You’re a curious one, aren’t you?” he said.

“Some have said so.”

Suddenly he didn’t seem so small, his eyes were dark. She swore she heard a whispering chorus.

“It’s a hard life for a woman,” he said. “Is it not?”

“That’s a peculiar thing to say.”

“I mean,” said the man, “for a woman to establish herself, in the world of men.”

“What’s your game, mister?”

“If you find her,” he said, taking a card from his shirt pocket, and handing it to her. “Would you call me? I understand that you find people for a living, among other things. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Trudy Parr looked at the card. No name. Only a phone number.

“I think you’re the last person I’d call if I find her,” she said.

“That’s entirely the wrong attitude, Miss Parr.”

“You know my name?”

“My knowledge of things here is limited, but I know that much.”

He grinned, but if he meant it to be agreeable, he failed.

Putting on his hat, he walked to the door. But before he left, he turned and spoke again.

“This painting,” he said. “Melisa is only repaying a favour, in creating it. A favour she asked of me, and that I granted. Do you think I’m wrong for expecting something in return?”

Trudy Parr said nothing, only wished that he would go away. He did, with a nod, but without a sound, no footfalls as he proceeded down the hall.

7 pm Tony Nuzzo’s

“And so far that’s all I know,” Trudy said. She had intentionally failed to mention the small man and the strange whispering refrain that had surrounded him.

“A mystery,” said Tony Nuzzo. “She’s gotta be round somwheres.”

“She’ll show up.”

A man in a summer suit, needing a press, came into the shop, and looked at the menu.

“Can a fella get an ordinary cuppa joe round here?” he said.

“I make,” said Tony Nuzzo, getting up. He knew a flatfoot when he saw one. “I make. I know whatsa guy like you likes.”

It was police detective Olaf Brandt.

“That’s fine,” he said, and dropped a nickel onto the counter.

Nuzzo looked at the small coin, and rolled his eyes.

Brandt took a seat across from Trudy Parr.

“I hear you been looking for Melisa Patton,” he said.

“That’s right.” She braced herself. Cops like Brandt didn’t patronise places like Tony Nuzzo’s, unless there was a reason.

“It’s bad, Trudy,” he said. “We found her this afternoon. She took a room at the Astoria Hotel.”

“And?”

“She jumped,” he said. “Early this morning round four a.m., best we can tell. She mentioned you in her suicide note. How you were best friends. How she was sorry.”

“Four? This morning?” Trudy recalled the sequence and terrible clarity of her dream. “Why’d it take you this long to contact me? I’ve been calling in to the office all day.”

Tony Nuzzo arrived with a cup of black coffee and put it down in front of Brandt. Then he stood and listened.

“No one noticed her until this afternoon,” Brandt said, “when somebody looked out of a window. She fell onto an awning, not the street. Sorry, Trudy. Her note said something about a fella that wouldn’t leave her alone. He wanted a painting in the worst way. She said she didn’t have the blood in her to finish it. I guess that’s artist talk. Her note said that you should run like hell if you meet the runt. A real little swell. Dresses like a millionaire. She didn’t want to write his whole name in the note, said it would be bad juju for anyone who read it. Called him Bub, for short. We’ll keep an ear to the ground, see if he shows up.”

“He ran his hand over that painting like he was gonna have one hell of an orgasm,” Trudy Parr recalled.

“Who?” said Nuzzo.

Brandt sipped his coffee, and raised an eye brow.

“That’s some good coffee,” he said. “You don’t get this downtown.”

the confession of Atticus Byrd

He dropped the headline onto the floor, Canadian Prison System Confronts Staggering Rise in Number of Geriatric Inmates. He gave it a frail laugh. It was all the laugh he had strength to give. Across the ward, the prison padre spoke quietly with a nurse, looking over his shoulder occasionally at Atticus Byrd, lying in his bed. Atticus was connected with wires and tubes to a jungle of IV stands and electronic apparatus, all of it humming, beeping or dripping. They forced large doses of anti-psychotic medication on him daily, but the army of disembodied voices they eliminated would be a delight compared to the medically necessary mechanical racket.

The padre finally broke off his conversation with the nurse and arrived at Atticus’ bedside.

“How are you, my son?” he said seating himself.

“You’re half my age,” Atticus replied. “Don’t call me your son.”

“It’s just a greeting,” said the padre, his eyes calm and sympathetic. “It’s a respectful salutation.”

“It’s conceited and condescending.”

“You misunderstand, I think.”

“Don’t think, just listen. What I’m about to tell you is important. It has to do with something that happened back in 1957, you see. It was life changing. It was brilliant. It could have changed everything, set mankind on a new path. All of that. But no one cared to listen to me because I’m mental, see.”

“My, it sounds quite grand,” the padre said. “What was it, Atticus?”

“Can’t remember. It was 1957, for God’s sake. I didn’t have a pencil, forgot to write it down.”

“And so…?”

“So just stay focussed, boyo. You come in here and start talking like you’re gonna save my life or something. All you’re doing is confusing me.”

“You asked for me. I only want to offer comfort. Have you reconsidered confession?”

“Hump confession, Father. What I want to tell you is as close as it’s gonna get. God’s the only one that’s got some explaining to do. I’m an open book. And you’re looking at the final chapter, ain’t you?”

“But to die without confession….”

“Means what, daddyo? That universe is a dangerous place? That I might miss the chance to spend all eternity in the presence of omnipotent incompetence? I’ll take my chances. A deity’s got to make himself worthy of adoration. If the only reason to confess to my sins is the threat of damnation, then god hasn’t got much going for him, has he? What I really want you to do is write something down. I can’t see or hold a pen no more.”

“I’ve brought a pad of paper and a pen,” the padre said, “Begin when you like.”

“Good. Now listen and write. 1957, understand? Ok hang on, hang on, suddenly it’s not so clear no more. Give me a minute. Yeah, okay. It’s funny, you know? Sometimes it’s like I wrote my life in drain cleaner, and it just dissolved whatever it was written on. We were talking about ‘57, right? I was seventeen and hanging out a lot downtown, on the street round Woodward’s department store. 1957 was the first time I went crazy. I mean real over the rainbow, daddyo. Voices, visions and accusations. They blamed it on reefer and booze. But it wasn’t no reefer. The reefer back then wasn’t nothing compared to now. I smoked a little here and there, and I couldn’t afford no booze. The wops up on the Drive called me touched by the angels. They’d give me free coffee and sandwiches, like out of charity. Maybe because they knew being angel touched wasn’t such a good thing. But there weren’t no angels, not at first.

“I’ve done a lot of crazy illegal shit – I’ll give you that. That’s why I ain’t been out of prison for more than a month or two, here and there. But it was mostly because of the schizophrenia. I ain’t a real bad guy. It’s just easier and cheaper to put me in prison than an asylum. And I ain’t the only one. Prison’s full of kooks like me.”

“Is kooks the right word, Atticus?” asked the padre.

“That word fits like a glove, baby. Don’t let no one tell you different. I own it. It’s mine. So you can back off on that one.

“Anyway, I wound up in Riverview in ‘57. It was my first rap. I’d broken a window and punched a cop. Agnes, one of the voices I was hearing, said the cops were a virulent worm army from the centre of the Earth, bent on world domination and destruction of the world’s televisions. I didn’t need much convincing. My lawyer said Riverview Hospital would be better than prison. So, we pled insanity. But he was wrong. Riverview was hell.

“It was the first time they drugged me, chlorpromazine. A doctor there, named Dr Wilver, told me I was lucky to be drugged. He sneered when he said it. He said he’d rescued my sorry ass from the ice baths, insulin shock treatments and a lobotomy. Just like that, my sorry ass, he said. I could hardly move or think for three years because of those drugs. And Mr Shiv never went away.

“Have I mentioned Mr Shiv yet? No? I never saw him before the hospital. And he was a creepy fucker, daddyo. He liked to stand in the corner during the day, grinning and wearing his napalm choir gown. It was like he was being baked alive in a gasoline fire, but always smiling about the whole damn thing. There weren’t no pills could make him go away. He laughed at the doctors, who couldn’t see him anyway. And he told me not to tell them I could see him, because the docs would rather kill me than admit that they couldn’t make Mr Shiv go away. And I knew it was true.

“Now I don’t know what you know about Riverview Hospital, but it was like this weird little town up there over the highway. And a town split right down the middle, with the doctors and nurses on one side and the patients on the other. Dr Wilver was the psychiatrist in charge, and he hated the world and everybody in it. Especially me.

“I lived with a bunch of other male patients in the oldest building, West Lawn. Built in 1913. It was like an unflushed toilet, full of bad psychic energy. All of the poor sick souls who came before and never made it out alive. They were invisible except to some of the patients like me. And they screamed and shook the place like they was having some sort of collective epileptic seizure. Only reason I slept a wink those years was because of the chlorpromazine. But that didn’t even work, mostly. Mostly I just sat up in bed, watching it all. Watching Mr Shiv burning and conducting that chorus of damned dead psychiatric patients as they fought with one another and sang their songs. It was all anguish and regret, daddyo. And I rocked back and forth, sitting on that bed. There was an eerie rhythm to it, and hard not to move in time to.

“Another person that rocked to the ghost music was Trevor Meatyard. Trevor was even more batshit than me. He believed he was Lord Krishna and liked to bless everyone. He saw shit you wouldn’t believe. Urinals opening like doors into other dimensions and demons swimming in the alphabet soup. I hung out with him just to see what was next.

“So, one day we’re supposed to have a trip away from the hospital, to a farm somewhere to commune with the cows. There we all were. Me, Trevor and all the other nutbars, standing sedated in the hospital parking lot. We were waiting to get on a big orange bus that said Riverview Hospital on the side, so that anybody who looked would know everyone on board was crazy. And as we stood there, the sky opened up and it rained these tiny crystals that went tink-a-link when they hit the pavement. Trevor Meatyard picked one of the crystals up and swallowed it. And that made his eyes glow all red and blue. And he levitated for a minute above everyone. He’d done this before, and the doctors and nurses hated it. So, I said, ‘Get back down here, Trevor. They see you levitating again and you’re going for electroshock, for sure.’ But then an angel floated down and said her name was Martha, but no relation to Mary like you’d have thought.”

“Goodness, an angel?” the padre said incredulously. He touched his hand to his chilblain cheek.

“That’s right, padre. An out and out angel. It’s funny how you religious types spill all that angel hooey and then act all sceptical when a body reports seeing one. And it’s funny how stories of angels make most people feel all warm and tender inside? Well, I can tell you, Martha wasn’t no warm and tender angel. She was all clock gears, levers and ratchets, wheels rotating inside wheels. She smelled like rotten wood and had a thousand eyes that all wept, and her tears were the crystals going tink-a-link on the blacktop.”

“Now Atticus, really…?”

“Put a sock in it, padre. This is my moment. You just keep writing.

“That was when I had the idea. When I saw the angel, I mean. This is the thing I need you to get down before I die, padre. I figured then that my greatest triumph would be my own death.”

“Really, Atticus! There is no triumph in death.”

“What about Jesus?”

“But you’re not Jesus, Atticus.”

“Jesus wasn’t even Jesus until the resurrection. Before that, he was just some skinny magician in possession of a certain persuasive eloquence, same as ten thousand other sunburnt desert lunatics.

“Anyway, I’d always thought that I’d be more successful dead. You get it? I was never successful in any measurable way in life. But I thought that I might be in death. Maybe that was the place for me. The voices I’d always heard said so. I’d hear them recommending death to me all the time, like it was a career choice. And Mr Shiv said so, too. He whispered in my ear round dawn on rainy days, when the only other sound was the wet hiss off of the highway.

“‘Only you can do it,’ he’d say. “‘Become fire like me. Get matches and kerosene. They’re in the basement waiting for you. You are special among men, and you belong with me.’”

“I belonged with him, you see? There was a place for me at West Lawn. Not as a patient, though. Not as some drugged zombie. But as a fully realised spirit, free of my body and brain with all of their defects. Fire would make me an equal to Mr Shiv. We’d each possess our own powerful cloak of flame.

“So, next day, I slipped down into the basement and took the kerosene and matches out of the utility room and hid them. I was going to wait for my big moment.

“But now here was Martha, the weeping clockwork angel. The parking lot smelling of rotten wood, and all of her crystal tears tink-a-linking on the pavement. And she spoke to me. I mean, she really looked at me with her thousand teary eyes and spoke to me.

“‘Atticus Byrd,’ she said. And her voice was all of the angels of heaven talking at once. It was a sound impossible to hear without dying from it, but I heard it and lived all the same. “’Atticus Byrd, Mr Shiv is a liar and a murderer. His fire is his own and you can never have one like it.’

“And I thought then of the kerosene and the matches I’d stolen from the utility room and hidden behind the boxes under the stairs. And I said, ‘But you could be a liar, too. How’s someone supposed to tell the angels from the devils in this world?’

“And that was when Dr Wilver came over and asked me who I was talking to, and I made the mistake of pointing to where Martha had been and was no longer. I guess she was a flash in the pan angel, same as them demons swimming in Trevor’s alphabet soup. And seeing the vacant space she’d once occupied, I said, ‘No one. I wasn’t speaking to no one.’

“And Dr Wilver said, ‘That’s good Atticus Byrd. That’s very good.’ He nodded all knowingly as he spoke. He was really taunting me. I could tell he wanted me to get all defensive and change my mind and say that there really was someone there. He’d have loved to hear it was some mechanical, gear driven angel. Then I really would get that lobotomy. He was asking for it, boy. So I bided my time. I waited a good six months. And when the time was right, I moved like an incendiary cat.

“Dr Wilver liked to mess around with Nurse Temple. She wasn’t nothing to look at, but I guess she gave it up easy. So, at lunchtime on a Wednesday, I went down and got the kerosene and matches.

“Wilver and Temple were in his office banging against the wall like it was no one’s business. And NurseTemple was going ahhhhhhh! oh, oh, ahhhhhhhh! Most of the patients were holding their hands over their ears, but some were doing other stuff I won’t relate to you here. I mean, Wilver and Temple had absolutely no shame.

“I’d planned to pour all of the kerosene under Wilver’s office door and light it on fire. But Trevor Meatyard came round the corner and saw me there.

“‘Bless you, Atticus’ he said. ‘Chant with me, hare krishna, hare rāma….’

“And I said, ‘Not now Lord Krishna.’

“Then he looked at the can in my hand, and he said, ‘Karma can be a can of kerosene and a book of matches as easily as a small kindness undone.’

“And I stood there for a moment, thinking about that, while Trevor Meatyard hovered several inches off of the floor with a rainbow glowing aura round him.

“Then I heard someone say, ’Do it!’ It was Mr Shiv. He standing down a ways from me, burning like tire fire. ‘Do it! But save some for yourself. Finish it now. Come over to me, Atticus.’

“And Trevor Meatyard was all, ‘hare krishna, hare rāma….’ And I was stumped. I was standing between this weird dualistic binary thing that should never happen to a guy on a Wednesday afternoon.”

“Well, what did you do?” the padre said, engrossed now. All incredulity vanished.

“I said fuck it and poured the kerosene all over me, head to toe. I mean the can was full. It pooled all round my feet, and I knew then that the whole damn place was gonna go up. But I couldn’t take it anymore, always being pulled between the good and the bad by completely unreliable people and cosmic visions, everyone a bunch of self-serving liars. Do you know what I mean, padre?”

The padre nodded, grim faced. He had to admit that he did know what Atticus Byrd meant.

“So what happened?” the padre said.

“I lit the match.”

“But that’s impossible. You’re here now. You’re alive and you have no burn scars.”

“Well, that’s a funny thing, padre. You see, I lit the match and Mr Shiv goes ‘Yesssss,’ kind of like a snake. But Trevor Meatyard just keeps hovering and chanting all serene-like, ‘hare krishna, hare rāma….’ And I figure, why not go out big time. So, I used the match to ignite the whole book of matches. It flared up and burned real good. Then I sort of had this out of body experience. I mean, I was watching it all from on high, padre. I could see myself soaked in a highly flammable liquid with a burning book of matches in my hand. It was weird and liberating and really frightening, all at the same time.”

“So what happened, Atticus?” said the padre. “You must tell me!”

“I applied the matches to my kerosene soaked body.”

“And…?”

“Well, that’s a funny thing, padre….”

“Oh stop saying that, will you. Tell me what happened.”

“I applied that burning book of matches to my body, right about here.” Atticus Byrd said again.

“And, and…?”

“Well, nothing happened.”

“But it was kerosene. How could nothing have happened, for God’s sake?”

“Well, that’s a funny thing, padre….”

The padre clenched his fists and said, “You are testing me, Atticus Byrd.”

“Well, it seems that Trevor Meatyard, AKA Lord Krishna, replaced the kerosene with Windex a couple of days before.”

“Windex.”

“Yeah, the all purpose window cleaner with Ammonia D.”

“I know what Windex is, Atticus.”

“Then I guess you know I didn’t burst into flames, though I did have to do extra kitchen duty for a month for making such a big mess. Anyway, Mr Shiv went away after that. I saw him from my window that night, walking across the parking lot toward the highway. He wasn’t burning so bright no more.”

“This has been very disappointing as confessions go, Atticus.”

“Weren’t no confession, padre.”

“Consider yourself absolved, nonetheless.”

“Hump that.”