The Writer

The Reverend

It was the sound of winter snapping under my feet. Yes, yes, that was it: the ripping of snow from the pressure of my heavy boots; the crackled groaning of its cries. Not even winter could resist dying in my wake. Not even God was above me now.

I began to stomp, marvelling at the death of all the snow. I jumped, up and down, up and down.

Stop it, George, stop it.

No! No, I will not stop! Not even God is above me now.

Despite the cold, I loosened the white cloth ring around my neck and stomped on. The white snow laced the bottom of my black robe; it tried to claw me back to the light. It tried. I kept walking. I kept killing the snow.

What is wrong with you, George? What is wrong?

Nothing. Nothing, nothing. Nothing is wrong. It’s all too right. Did they not see? Could they not see how right it was? The snow was screaming, stop it George, stop it!

The girl.

She was strung up against the trunk of a tree. Cloth was taped into her gaping mouth. Snow had fallen into her hair and dotted it with specks of white. They glowed in her golden blonde locks with an odd alarm of beauty. Her naked shoulders shook and shivered, but they did not make her warm. The skin she bore was perhaps once a pale pink in colour, a charming accolade of life – of soul. Now in the screaming snow she was as white as the dust she laid her bones in. See why it’s right now, Doctor? Do you see? She is home!

I reached her. I was trying not to smile, trying so hard, but the dying snow was satisfying. The smile came; big and fraught with excitement. I felt it burn into my cheeks.

She was the only white life in all the screeching white. What gave her the right? Nothing. It was wrong I let her breathe in the struggle of so much death beneath my boots. It was wrong she advertised a red strip of pain from the tightness of the rope; the red in the white was wrong.

Stop it, George, you’re sick. I can help you, okay? God can help you still.

I looked up into the sky. It mirrored the ground below but it did so with such peace and tranquillity. My boots could not stamp on the sky. Nevertheless, it was life amongst the dying white and it would watch. It would watch me claim the white life of innocence and send her to the blackening realms of the true. Nothing can help now; I was above God.

I fell to my knees so that my eyes were level with the roots from which her golden locks sprawled. I watched a moment. The girl’s hair flew down her defined cheek bones, slipped across the wet of her neck, and ended over those trembling white stumps either side of her petit breasts.

She silently sobbed.

I peered down to my hands, gloved in black leather. My left took her chin and raised it so her cold, blue eyes had no choice but to look into mine. I slipped my right wrist against my snowy knee, taking the glove clean off my right hand. I never let my eyes leave hers. I never once saw her take pity on me. I liked that about this one. She was cold with anger too.

George, there’s no need. George, come on. Don’t do this. I pray to you don’t kill me. I can help you.

No, Doctor. No you can’t, no you couldn’t. And now, now this girl of innocence shall join you in the dark pits of hell. Innocence is a sin too, Doctor. God has cursed us all. But now I know. Now I am above God.

I spat on to my naked right hand’s index and middle finger, which were erect in a pistol like position. My smile faded back behind my shell and I rubbed the spit laced on my fingers down her forehead to between her breasts, then to the stump on her left, then her right.

‘I bless thee child, by my own divine,’ I whispered. ‘Be free of God and burn alone.’

Her crying began to louden.

I let her chin drop and replaced the glove which lay in the snow to my cold pale hand. The fingers slithered in. I took a gun from under my robe, put into my hand and cocked it.

In the screams of dying snow, my boots trudged into a stable stance. My eyes met those cold blue windows to her wicked soul just one last time. I fired the gun between her shivering breasts.

The red draped over the crying snow.

Not even God was above me now.

Her cold blue eyes went black, and all the screeching stopped.

‘Free,’ I whispered.

I lowered the pistol to my side and walked over to the girl’s corpse, removing the rope from around her and the cloth from her gaping mouth. I buried them some metres away. I slugged the corpse away from the tree in the opposite direction, leaving a trail of blood in the snow. It was time for the art now.

George! No! There is still hope, don’t do this! Too late, Doctor. Hope was always too damn late.

After some twenty minutes I walked away from the scene, the snowy forest where another had been claimed. I found a phone booth and pressed in the numbers on the keypad. My smile had returned.

‘Good morning, emergency operator. How may I help you?’ the voice crackled.

‘Police. There’s been a shooting. The Black Forest. I don’t know what’s happened. I’m scared. I’m getting out of here. Hurry! I heard screams! The snow was screaming!’

‘Stay where – ’

The phone was left hanging in the booth.

I walked away, tightening the white ring back around my neck. I began to whistle in the snow-white light.

.

 .

Maurice White

I thought it was my alarm when I jumped out of bed to the ringing in the room at 6am that morning. It was just the phone. I picked it up and shoved it against my ear. I already knew who it was.

‘Boyd?’ I asked, my breath still a little husky from just waking up.

‘Maurice, we need you. There’s been another one. They think it’s him again, that God-botherer freak.’

I cursed as I slammed the door to my Ford Ka and entered into the freezing snow. Too bloody cold. It was still early morning and the birds were singing. There was always that kind of irony when these things happened outside. Somehow, nature always seemed to carry on smiling. Oblivious.

            ‘Hello, Boyd,’ I said, trudging up to him at the edge of Black Forest. The huge oaks framing the jagged line of the forest were decorated with police tape.

            ‘Maurice,’ he nodded. He was a small ginger fellow, but he had the arrogance of a celebrity. ‘Scene’s untouched, just as your Commissioner friend ordered. Dunno why on earth she’d want a writer poking around the scene ‘fore forensics, but hell I don’t make the orders when she waddles in.’

            I smiled.

            ‘You should be careful, Boyd, you don’t know when Miss Commissioner might be right on your back.’

            Boyd shrugged it off, but I knew as soon as I wasn’t looking he’d do a 360 and survey the area for any plump lady in uniform.

            The crime scene was untouched, as Boyd had promised, apart from more of that tape lacing around the trees, almost framing the blood-stained snow beneath. I looked at the whole picture: the blood splattered tree and spray of bloody splattered behind, the bloody trail that led over to the corpse, the corpse of the white woman with the most immaculate golden locks, and then her position – that God-bothering freak’s signature.

The white woman, or perhaps more a girl, lay on her back, arms outstretched and legs crossing over at her ankles. She was in the position of a crucified Jesus Christ and, between her breasts, was a perfect white rose. I walked over and smelt it. Even above the stench of congealed blood and death the rose smelt so very delicate. It was real.

‘Boyd!’ I yelled, not turning my face away from the girl. I had seen her entry wound below the rose. It was a bullet, no doubt. She’d been shot.

‘What is it, Maurice?’ Boyd said, trudging up behind in snow shoes.

‘The rose is real, fresh,’ I said to him, my eyes still on the girl.

Boyd took out his hand radio and pressed the button on the side. It let out a screech and he huffed out some cold cloudy air.

‘This is DS Boyd, we need to get around all local florists and markets, I want a customer who has bought any number of white roses in the last 24 hours. Do it quick so we can get this bastard and go home, Mrs Boyd has a fire on.’

I chuckled. There was no Mrs Boyd. Maybe one day there would be, but for now Boyd was far too married to the job.

            I suddenly paused.

            ‘No, no, Boyd,’ I said, turning to face him now. ‘Get on that radio. You don’t want a florist, you need the church. You need to check the churches, Boyd. This guy’s a god-damn priest.’

            ‘What? How do you know?’ Boyd shot back. Never good to go disturbing the church without reason, he knew that.

            I spoke quickly now: ‘The girl, her face is contorted and scrunched. Not just from the screams. Get your forensics boys in here and you’ll see the bastard’s wiped saliva down her face in the shape of a cross. He blessed her Boyd.’

            ‘Is that all you’ve got?’

            ‘Apart from the fact she wasn’t raped? She’s clean, Boyd. She’s a symbol of innocence. There’s no marks on her ‘side across the chest where she was probably tied to that tree over there. Not forgetting the great big bullet hole either. This was an execution Boyd, and in the old days you know what they called a damn execution.’

            Boyd’s face was blank.

            ‘Sacrifice, Boyd. Sacrifice.’