Note: Part two. Sorry it's taken so long. I've only just managed to get back into it, after exams which are finally dead. ^^ Again, I would love to hear what you think. Thanks.
Do you know why you are here, Mr Dermott?
The angels took me away.
Sam looks at their white coats. Angels, says Sam. Yes. I suppose we are angels in a way. Do you know why are we are angels?
The beggar looks around. There are just the two of them in a dimly lit room with mirrors for walls and a big white table in the centre, to which he his strapped. The mirrors tricking the walls into thinking there are thousands of Sams and beggars, spreading instantly out like a broken herd of gazelles. Whenever Sam shakes his head there is a crowd all shaking their heads too but in another way, more disturbed, like a dissatisfied pavane.
The lights make the beggar’s eyes wrinkle together. A wall of light spreads in front of Sam.
Mr Dermott? Angels?
You are angels. I know that, says the beggar. And he laughs a little, but not too much in case the light gets angry and burns him up like sausages. Little sausages that Julia used to cook.
Mr Dermott, I am going to ask you some questions. You are going to respond with either yes, or no.
No.
Yes.
No.
No?
No, says the beggar. No. No no no no.
And then there is nothing.
Do you know who you are?
No.
Do you know where you are?
But I—
Yes or no.
No.
Do you know who I am?
Yes.
Who am I?
You are me. You are my son. You are my son. You are my father. You are my father’s son. He is me. You are me.
The holy trinity.
Holy train. Brmmm, says the beggar. Brmmm... and he laughs as he pictures Sam being knocked down by a train.
Are you a religious man, Mr Dermott?
Go away.
Excuse me?
The eyes. They’re watching me. Tell them to go away. I can’t come out. Not allowed. Not allowed. Daddy says no. Shaking his head. He’s not happy with me. Please, please leave me alone.
Do you pray?
I like to play with people’s heads.
Sam looks at him. Right, he says. Right. Goodbye, Mr Dermott.
Goodbye, Sam.
And then a wall opens up and Sam steps out. The beggar is alone and spread eagled out with wires thrown over him and belts tight and his arms locked against the table. The table shakes. Another man walks in. They share a moment of inquisition. The syringe is full.
It is stabbed into the beggar’s arms.
The syringe is empty.
Alarm bells tong.
#
Lucifer wakes as the clouds twist in stirrups overhead. He halloos like a dog and a pack of them turn to him. Their shadows breed beneath the violet haze and they run like the dead. Some dodge the trees but for others there is only God’s expanse. They just run. Lightning rides unprovoked in the sky and it flashes and it sparks until rain falls. Lucifer slumps in his rocking chair and the dogs are still running laps around their tails and brushing together like young lovers. They do not care for the rain. Lucifer is cold, soggy. He is sitting outside his house but it should not be raining. This is a desert. The shore is a mirage. So he ignores the storm and the seamed grey aboard the horizon. The air is sticky. It presses in on him like hungry walls and is felted inside his nostrils but he puts it aside. Stands up. Walks to the door.
Cummon, he says. And he leads the dogs inside, all seven of them. They move as wretched and downtrodden desperados might and furl up against the windows when they enter so the leak drips on their head and some of the light lands on their bodies. Lucifer puts water from the tank into the bowls but it rises up against the sides like saliva and jelly. The dogs stay still and watch him, regarding the thick liquid with concern. Floppy ears drag down their faces like weighing scales.
#
Take him into the Soul Room.
The door opens and the beggar falls in and then it closes and he is left alone. Left with the voices. But this time the voices have faces that he can touch and he walks over and prods one. Real skin, lightweight elastics bulging out like raspberries. The face looks at him.
Take a little seat, it says. Join our little hideout. Do you have a name? Because we don’t; we’re too little. Sit down. Be little with us.
The beggar nods and he slips down onto the marble bench that runs around the room and the walls and all the midsummer suns. There must be suns in here. So very, very brilliant that the fragility of the spotlights is mocked and belittled and he can see every one of the faces beneath them. They are all watching him. There is the general, who commanded the beggar to join them: an unjust order. His hat droops like a saggy icepack, green against his moustache. Clothes the same colour. He is rather dull. But as he looks around and he smiles there is silence for which he sees a woman dressed in pink and her peacock handbag by her side is torn and shredded and her clothes are surprisingly clean. Two tealight eyes rise from her face and if milk is white then her eyes and her skin are daisy petals.
Hello, she says. My, my. You look really cold. Why didn’t you come home last night? You didn’t visit the cemetery again, did you? Honestly.
The posh lady laughs.
Well, she continues. I’m glad you’re back now. The children have missed you dearly.
Her upper lip trembles like a horse in the cold.
Molly thought you were gone. Gone. I tells her, I says, Go to sleep, you’re only dreaming, and she looks right up at me and I’ve never felt such guilt. I thought you were gone too and I just sat there staring at the pictures of my old wedding dress and—
I am not a husband.
You are not a husband, says the general. You are not a husband.
I know, says the beggar.
Sir.
I know, sir. Can I ask a question?
What?
Who’s they? the beggar stabs his fingers at the other two. He has only just noticed them. The light is no darker above them, but the way they sit and contort their stonekissed lips—
He’s a dog, says the general. The lowest kind. The bald one’s a criminal. Murderer. Killed that old woman.
The posh lady sighs. I remember her, she says. The white men came for her. And it was all his fault!
The criminal says nothing. The face next to him with more of those generic, disinherited eyes and tallgrass hairs suspended in grease down his forehead and bent sidewards like striped domino play. He looks so normal. He is the man who passed him in the streets where he begged. He is the man who drove him to the police station. He is the man who sold him a gravestone and smiled about it. But somehow he’s different to everyone else. But as if he shouldn’t be, and the man is silent in acquiescence. That is why he does not say anything. He has no right to.
#
It’s mornin’, says Lucifer. Want to hear my dreams? I could listen to yours, too.
He tells them of beggars and white coats and dead families and smiles that could have been with such father-like precision, and the dogs fall asleep.
Lazy buggers.
Lucifer laughs and stares outside. He wonders how long there has been nothing there for. Years, it seems. All the houses have picked up and run. But it doesn’t matter. Now he’s got the whole of the desert out to serve him, every grain there for watching and the weeds, they are good. He’s always been so irrelevant to creation. But he looks outside and sees that it is good. There is a lot of rain. God’s angels shoot the sand.
It’s pattering against the walls, rattling and cracking like popcorn.
He should be here soon.
The rain begins to ease and west drifts the grey sky. A smoke puffs like tear gas in the distance and the skyline seems to rise and touch the mid-autumn in a dark grey. The car makes its entrance. Bobbing up and down and then dismantling the settled desert and weaving down a modern track where no foot has ever trod. The sound of an engine battering along slurs through the window and it’s trembling. It’s not that cold. Lucifer thinks his house is colder.
The car halts outside and a man steps out. He sees it all through his window. The man knocks on the door with the first of a bell ringer and the dogs look up and growl and Quiet, he tells them.
Lucifer opens the door.
Been waiting, he says.
Good.
What’s the news?
You’re needed, much as it pains me to say it.
Tell me, says Lucifer.
There’s nothing to tell. You have to come or your mother’s to be dead.
Lucifer looks at the eyes that seem to stare right into his soul. He wonders what’s behind them. What good’ll that a do, John Paul, if I’m there or not?
John Paul nods at his car. You comin’ or not?
The dogs, I can’t leave what the desert wants to eat. It’s cold now. Growing dark. You think it’ll show mercy?
No.
They watch each other come up with something to say.
Get in the—
car, yeah. I’m getting in. Lucifer pats the nearest hound and drags his feet to the car, steps in the driver’s seat as the door to his house swings shut. The dogs do not come out. They do not say goodbye. John Paul gets in the passenger seat and pulls his seatbelt across him but it flicks back and he falls back into his chair. Lucifer is driving.
Is this why you ain’t got car? says John Paul.
I got a car. Just not a license.
That’s comforting. Thanks.
And then they say nothing more and just ride through the sand and along the faint track until the house with its driftwood walls and eyeing windows is suspended on the horizon by a rabbitheaded cloud, and then lost.
