Joe had been walking for hours. It was well after dark and as the sun had slipped down behind the buildings of the inner city he felt a chill come over him. His hand was still wrapped up, but the makeshift bandage had long ago been soaked through. Apart from some slight light-headedness he barely noticed it. The pain of the wound was actually relieving in some ways. It felt like an anchor, with the sharpness of the sensation dragging on the bottom of the ocean that he found himself in. He had felt like he was doing little more than treading water over the last few weeks, and now that he had pushed everybody away he was likely to float out to sea. The pain of a knife through the hand was sufficient to keep in position.
'These maritime metaphors do not hold up to scrutiny,' he muttered irritably, just as the rain began to fall.
It was light, just a fine mist really, but it was enough to lower his mood even further. It was hard to process anything. He fluctuated wildly between extremes, sometimes enraging himself with the thought of the betrayal of his wife, and sometimes completely indifferent. Somewhere in the middle of these extremes he felt guilty. He knew that everything that had happened was basically his fault. No, it wasn't! It was Grey's fault. It was this thing inside him that destroyed everything it touched. Joe had simply walked to the edge of the cliff, but Grey had pushed him over. As he walked up Oxford Street, he began to look around him, taking in things as he hadn't done in hours. He didn't even remember coming this way, but now he was amidst the nightlife, which was just starting to get messy. Down one alley, a young girl in a glittery dress was throwing up whilst her friend held back her hair. She groaned and turned to glance at him as he walked past, and for a second he was shocked to see that it was Leah. The other girl turned too, and it was Tess, her face looking at him with a glazed expression, one eye more closed than the other, drooping in a hideous caricature of her normal face. Within seconds Leah was throwing up again and Tess' attention went back to keeping her bottle-blonde hair from getting sprayed with semi-digested sushi. Joe walked by quickly, not trusting his own eyes enough to be sure if they were really there or if they were just figments of his imagination, sent to taunt him in his darkest hour. He could feel beads of sweat dripping down his forehead, but each drop was accompanied by pain. It wasn't merely sweat; it was some part of his essence. Something that made him what he was slipping away. It rolled from his body and into the gutter before being swept away and mingling with the essence of everything else. It was all the same stuff after all. Matter and energy. In this state of mind he barely noticed where he was walking and it wasn't long before he was through the busier section and heading down a side street towards Kings Cross. He could hear raised voices and sure enough, just up ahead was a large group of people standing around and shouting abuse. Joe approached cautiously and when he rounded the corner he could see that there was a garbage truck parked there, its orange hazard lights flashing and casting a strobe over the assembled people. There were three men in dirty overalls and each of them had an M-16 rifle slung over their shoulder. As he pushed further forwards, Joe could see that there were at least seven men lined up against the wall, all with their hands on their heads and their legs slightly spread. At least half of them were black, and two of them looked middle-eastern, perhaps Jewish.
'What's going on?' Joe asked an elderly man next to him, who was spitting in the direction of the prisoners as the garbage men frisked them, taking their wallets and watches and putting them into a large sack.
'Something that should have happened a long time ago. They're lining up all the niggers and kikes,' he said venomously, spitting again.
Joe looked about him in disbelief, and only then was he able to make out the words that were being hurled in the direction of the prisoners. Every racist term he had ever heard, and a few he hadn't, was issuing forth from the mouths of those ordinary looking people. One young man on the end of the line of prisoners was yelling back at them, but his voice was nearly drowned out by the constant barrage of abuse. It was a young man with curly black hair, held back from his face with a red headband.
'You fascist pigs! When the revolution comes, your whole bourgeois system is gonna collapse. All your money and your investments won't count for shit any more.'
'Go back to Russia!' screamed the old man next to Joe, sending another parcel of his seemingly limitless supplies of saliva into the young man's face.
It was Mohammed Ashhab. Gabriel's boyfriend. A man who didn't exist.
'Mohammed?' called out Joe, more out of surprise than anything else.
Mohammed's eyes sought him out in the gloom. When he found him, he didn't seem surprised.
'You went into the bank, didn't you?' he said accusingly.
The old man next to Joe looked at him suspiciously.
'Do you know this filthy Arab?'
Before Joe could answer, a little boy who was standing next to his mother and holding her hand turned back to face them.
'My Daddy says they should line up the faggots first,' he said.
The old man rustled his hair with a gnarled hand.
'Don't worry, sonny, they'll get them all. Won't you boys?'
One of the garbagemen, who was trying to tear a wedding ring off a prisoner's finger with little success shrugged.
'So far we got orders for faggots, kikes, niggers, and a-rabs. Just came through this morning.'
'About time! What about the Abos?' said someone near the back of the group.
'Yeah! Send 'em back where they came from,' shouted another, causing Mohammed to start yelling at him.
'You'll see. You've all got blood on your hands. You can never wash that off!' then he turned back to Joe. 'You went into the bank. You oiled the machine, man, and this is what happens. I told you, those corporations run on the blood of innocents. They'll keep killing us as long as there's money to be made. All they're interested in is prophets and you've got blood on your hands too, Finch. You signed it, didn't you? In the bank?'
Joe shook his head.
'No! I didn't. I drew a picture of a penis in the box instead!'
'It doesn't matter what you did. You made your mark. That's all that matters. You signed away control, and now we've got this.'
'Shut up, you!' snarled the garbageman, and drove his rifle butt into Mohammed's jaw, sending his head twisting with a horrible thumping sound and a little cheer from the crowd.
Joe rushed forward and stepped between the garbageman and Mohammed. He checked that the boy was okay, but he was insensible, and slid down the wall to a seated position with his head lolling against his shoulder. Joe turned back on the crowd fiercely, who were now all looking at him angrily.
'What's wrong with you all? You can't just round people up like this. What about human rights? Everybody has the right to a fair trial? Freedom of religion? Don't any of you remember that stuff?'
'I sure remember it. It's hard to forget,' said the garbageman. 'Do you know my daughter brought home a coon to dinner one night. She said he was her boyfriend of all things, and he just sat there eating my food like it was nothing! I remember all right. Now step aside and let me do my job, sir.'
He said the word "sir" to rhyme with "cunt". Joe was pushed aside by the much larger man, and he fell into the side of the truck. It was then that he noticed the smell. In fact, the sound came first. It was a sort of low buzzing noise that had always been in the background but somehow unnoticed. Then came the smell. A smell of meat left in the sun for too long. Joe's head turned slowly but inevitably towards the back of the truck and he peered over the rim. Inside, just as he had feared, was a pile of bodies. They were all different in their skin colour, their clothing and their ages but they all had one thing in common. They were all soaked with the same coloured blood and their chests were all riddled with bullets. Joe put a hand to his mouth as the sight and the smell and the sound all came together at once. He felt weak at the knees and he turned back to the garbagemen, who had finished looting the prisoners for valuables and had formed a three-man firing
squad, to the delighted hoots of the crowd.
'Wait!' screamed Joe, finding a new reserve of strength in him as he rushed forward to try and pull the gun from the hands of the leader.
'Hey, what the hell is your problem, anyway?' said the old man from the crowd.
'They're killing people in the streets! How can you just stand by and let this happen?'
'They're not people. Not like us, anyway. They're selfish and full of hate. They're money hungry too, well the Jews are, anyway. They're only out for themselves,' argued the mother of the little boy.
'Yeah they got some crazy ideas about God, too. Stuff that makes no sense,' said somebody else towards the back.
'Yeah, and they hate our freedom,' added the old man, completely without irony.
Joe had been pushed back against the truck by the garbageman, who this time held his head down in some sort of stranglehold. It was hard to talk but he managed to gasp out the words.
'That sounds exactly like us! We're all as bad as each other. We're all exactly the same!'
The garbageman tightened his grip around Joe's neck, and Joe felt his air starting to give out.
'You know what? That sounds a hell of a lot like commie talk to me. You're not a red, are you?'
'I'm a lecturer in literature,' protested Joe.
'An academic? So you are a commie! All academics do is talk about the great things that other people have done without ever taking any action themselves. You're even worse than this lot.'
The crowd started to yell at that, chanting "commie" repeatedly and laughing. Joe couldn't even get enough air to argue.
'Line him up with the others!' shouted someone, but the garbageman just sighed.
'I would love to, believe me, I would. Trouble is, the red tape, see? We haven't got orders for commies yet. If I was to so much as give this stinking red a black eye I'd get reprimanded. You wait though, the legislation will come through. Next week they'd give me a medal for doing what would lose me my job this week!'
'Bloody bureaucracy, huh?' said the old man.
'Tell me about it. You should see how many forms you have to fill out just to prove someone's a faggot. I mean it's easy enough with darkies and so on, you can tell just by looking, but some of these guys...'
'Yeah, some poofs can be pretty discreet,' agreed the man.
All of a sudden Joe felt the grip on his neck relax as the garbageman released him. Joe placed his arm against the truck, gasping for air. Each breath felt so sweet he could hardly take them in fast enough. He was in danger of hyperventilating, and he almost did when he heard Mohammed's voice again. To his surprise, it was not directed at the garbagemen, but at him.
'I warned you! You're all high and mighty now that's it happening, but it's too late. I warned you and you didn't listen. What is the greater moral crime? To delight in causing pain and suffering like these men or to cause it with complete indifference as you do?'
Mohammed fell silent then, not because he had finished what he wanted to say but because the three garbagemen turned on him, throwing him back to the ground and laying into his groin with their enormous steel-capped boots. Their faces were contorted with a rage that only men who hate themselves can feel for another.
Joe stood paralysed with fear as he watched, unable to move. Mohammed was staring straight at him with an agonised expression, despite the blows that rained down on him from above like wrathful Greek deities playing soccer with his frail, fleshy footballs.
'You will once again become the destroyer of worlds, Finch, and when you do you will not care!' he managed to shout, just as a boot connected with his face, sending most of his front teeth flying in a cloud of red mist.
Joe turned and ran then, feeling cowardly and ashamed, but totally overwhelmed by terror. He glanced back once as he ran down the street with the shouts of the crowd echoing in his ears. Just as he turned, one of the garbagemen raised his rifle and fired at the line of men, who were still standing against the wall, like extras in a movie. They did nothing to defend themselves as the bullets tore through them and they crumpled to the ground. It wasn't heroic and it wasn't meaningful. They simply fell down in heaps, like sacks of potatoes. A second later, just as Joe rounded the corner he heard a single shot and he knew that Mohammed Ashhab, whoever he was, had also been executed. Still he ran, past lines of parked Mercedes and four-wheel drives that were spotlessly clean. As he stumbled into a car, it seemed to explode from the inside, and a spray of glass tore across his face, sending an instant splattering of shaving-cut sized nicks across his neck and cheeks. He stepped back, feeling the blood begin to trickle from him and mingle with the sweat. All of it was part of his essence and all of it was trailing away to finally rejoin the world. On top of the car, which was now horribly distorted from its original design specifications, was a naked man. He was spread-eagled across the top of the roof and he was very, very dead. The blood was already seeping down the channels of bent metal and into the street, to mingle with Joe's own. Joe's hand began to throb harder and he tore the tea towel from it and threw it to the ground. The huge puckered lips of the scar seemed to speak to him, although it was a whisper so soft he couldn't hear what it was saying. With a trembling hand he reached out and put his palm on the face of the dead man. He was real. His body was warm and his eyes were open, as was a large portion of the back of his head. Joe flicked closed his lids with two fingers, feeling wild with panic, and yet unable to move or even make a sound. Just as he pulled his hand away another car on the other side of the road exploded with noise and the roof buckled, setting off the car alarm. Another naked body, this time a woman, although it was hard to be certain. Joe stumbled across to the middle of the street to get a closer look, but it was clear even from that distance that nothing could be done. She was also very, very dead. Then, another, to his right, sending more splintering glass, but he barely had time to look before another fell behind him, this time hitting the bonnet and bouncing out onto the road, limp and lifeless. Joe looked up at the sky above. For a moment there was nothing at all, just the empty sky and the sounds of the car alarms and barking dogs, but a tiny dot soon caught Joe's eye. It was far off and indistinct, but it seemed to be getting larger. Then he saw another, and then two more. Like a picture coming into focus, he slowly realised that the sky was full of them. He already knew what they were despite being unable to make out the shapes, and within a few seconds it was confirmed as the naked bodies began to slam into the street all around him. They were of all sizes, ages and races, much as the people in the garbage truck had been. They hit the ground and the cars along the street in either direction in their hundreds as Joe stood in the middle of the street paralysed as he watched them fall. Miraculously, in spite of the fact that there were so many, not one of them came close to hitting him. It was as if he couldn't be harmed; a duck with a raincoat. Joe could see the faces falling around him as a grotesque series of individual frames, punctuated by the sickening crunch of bones and flesh. Their faces were full of silent anguish and torment. It was an inner sorrow that couldn't be expressed in words and couldn't be talked away by a psychiatrist or even a friend. It was too deep. It was a fundamental flaw in the nature of being, not a medical condition or a state of mind. Joe still couldn't move. His feet felt like they were burrowing into the ground with fleshy roots, searching for the sweat and blood that had seeped away into the street. From a ground floor doorway, two women emerged, laughing as if in the middle of a humorous story. They paused when they saw the street lined with the bodies of the dead and the cacophony of car alarms that drew them down, like sirens calling people to the rocky streets below. One of the women's faces was twisted with dismay at the sight.
'Oh no, it's raining again. And I'm wearing suede,' she said.
The other shrugged and reached into her handbag, pulling out a small travel umbrella, which she popped up soundlessly.
'Oh, Susan. Always prepared. Come on, we'll miss the overture if we don't hurry,' said the woman, and they linked ar
ms and rushed down the street, squealing with exaggerated dismay as a random spray of blood hit them.
'Hold it more this way! I'm not under it when you hold it like that...' Joe heard her say as they disappeared around the corner in the direction of the Opera House.
As the note said;
LET DEAD MEN LIE WHERE DEAD MEN FALL
The rain showed no sign of letting up, so Joe made a mad dash for cover.
That had not felt like an hallucination. Nothing so visceral had yet happened. He had seen things. The woman with her teeth falling from her mouth, the man being chased by wolves, the school children on the train, and even the diners eating their companion. All of those things had been nothing more than visions. They hadn't been real. They were a result of his brain tumour, and they frequently disappeared as fast as they arrived. This was different. Joe paused outside a shop window, trying to see his neck in the reflection. Sure enough there were several red marks where the garbageman's fingers had closed around his throat. He could still feel it and it was difficult to swallow. He had felt the truck and smelt the stench of bodies rising from it, and he hadn't felt the disconnection that normally came with such sights. When he felt his hand on the dead man's face, and when his fingers had closed the lids of his eyes, he knew for sure that it was real. The feeling of the man's eyeballs rolling underneath his skin could not be a mental forgery. There was too much detail to the thing. There was too much tactile information for his mind to have simply made it up. As well, his face and neck were speckled with tiny cuts from where the glass had hit him. He lifted his neck up to better see it in the reflection, tilting his head back as he did so. The cuts were real. Mary and Harry had been having an affair. That was real as well. Everything was real.
'Hey, handsome. Can't stop admiring yourself?' said a voice from behind him, so close that it made him jump.
The voice laughed and placed a warm hand on his shoulder.
'Sorry. Didn't mean to startle you.'
Joe turned around, fearing what he would see, but all that stood behind him was a woman in her forties. She was pleasant-looking in a motherly sense of the word, but her face was caked with a layer of make-up so thick and in such garish colours that the effect was diminished somewhat. She had a lime green boob tube on, underneath a denim jacket, and a skirt so short you could see her cervix. Beneath this was a pair of fishnet stockings and bright red stilettos.
'Can I ask you a question?' Joe said, relieved to see something so relatively normal.
'Sure thing.'
'Are you now, or have you ever been, a prostitute?'
The woman smiled broadly, which was a fairly positive reaction considering the bluntness of the question.
'Honey, I'm a card-carrying member and a member-carrying card. But don't worry, that's all I'm carrying.'
The clarification was fairly redundant. If Joe was ever required to describe a prostitute to somebody who'd never seen one, there was a fair chance that he would describe the woman standing in front of him.
'So, are you looking for a girlfriend?' she said, taking a drag on a menthol cigarette and blowing the smoke to the side in what she probably thought was a seductive manner.
'Not really,' replied Joe shakily.
'Well how about some meaningless sex then?'
'You mean there's some other kind?'
The prostitute laughed and shook her head, throwing the butt of her cigarette to the ground and grinding it out expertly on the heel of her stiletto.
'Ooh! Somebody hurt you bad,' she said and Joe shrugged.
'I think I gave as good as I got. But I did just find out that my wife is having an affair with my best friend.'
'Your best friend? Well that's part of your problem. You should stop ranking your friends after you leave primary school.'
Joe reached into his coat to take out a cigarette of his own, and the prostitute looked at the pack approvingly.
'Acobapoc, huh? Cheap and dirty, right? Is that how you like it?'
Joe lit one behind his hand, ignoring the not-so-subtle attempt at flirting.
'Fine. My wife is having an affair with my only friend,' he said, amending his earlier statement.
'But I gather you don't like him very much?'
'Okay. My wife is having an affair with a man that I know quite well.'
'Well if he was having an affair with your wife then maybe you don't know him as well as you think you do,' she said, taking the cigarette from his hand and taking a drag herself.
Joe looked at her with disbelief, but she burst out laughing, causing the smoke to come out of her nose and setting off a brief fit of coughing.
'Sorry,' she said. 'I'm just winding you up. My name's Judith by the way.'
Judith reached out her hand to shake his and he reluctantly took it.
'Joe.'
She looked at him, still with a slight smile on her lips, and Joe couldn't help but like her. He knew that this was just some kind of trick of the trade, and that it was all an act, but there was something very comforting about her voice and her attitude. She seemed un-judgmental.
'Judith,' said Joe jokingly. 'Do you believe in love at first sight?'
She laughed again. She laughed easily and without inhibition. She laughed the way Mary used to before the doctor told her she would never have a child.
'Honey, I don't believe in love, full stop. Now do you want to fuck or not?'
Joe looked around the street behind her. They were in King's Cross, where prostitutes were a common sight, and of the few people passing, nobody gave them a second glance.
'Don't worry about what they think. Do you want to come with me?' said Judith, taking his chin in her hand and gently forcing him to look at her painted face.
Joe winced at where her hand touched one of the cuts from the glass. He thought about Harry, hiding in his cupboard amidst his outdated suits, with his well-above-average erection pointing at him accusingly as he'd opened the door. He thought about Mary, reproaching him for his behaviour for years before he'd even become sick. How she would tell him off for making an improper comment at some interminable dinner party that they so infrequently attended. All that time, she had been doing something far more improper than he ever had. He was unbalanced, but he had never been unfaithful.
'So how about it?' said Judith again, leaning in to kiss him on the cheek softly, apparently oblivious to the flecks of blood there.
Most of all, he thought about the garbage truck filled with bodies and the rain of suicides, dying together but still completely alone. He never wanted to see anything like that again, and Judith felt like another anchor; like the wound on his hand. So Joe made a decision. Or a decision was made for him.
'Sure. Let's go.'
Judith smiled and linked her arm around his. They passed two more garbage trucks on their way through the bright neon lights of The Cross, but Judith merely glanced at their human cargo sadly and commented,
'It's a pity. I guess we should have seen it coming, though.'
They pushed through crowded streets, and soon enough they stopped outside a run-down hotel. A set of uneven steps led up to a chipped and faded door that had once been painted red, many years before. The sign said 'Valhalla' in black letters on the drooping awning.
'I've been here before,' Joe murmured.
'Me too,' said Judith, leading him up the steps and opening the door with her free hand.
The lobby was small and lit by a single, dim bulb. A fat man in a singlet sat in a small booth behind a wire mesh. On the counter was a sign saying "Tony Shapiro – Manager". He smiled when he saw Judith, but Joe felt a shiver run up his spine. Something bad was happening, but he didn't know what it was.
'Hey, Jude. Waddya need?' he said, his words slurring into one.
'Hey, Tony. Is number ten free?'
Tony nodded and swivelled in his chair to take the key from the hook. He passed it to her through a small rectangular hole on the counter.
'For you, sweetheart, anyth
ing.'
She took the key and paused, looking at Joe expectantly. It took him a moment to realise what was going on and then he understood. He reached for his wallet and laid out some bills on the counter, which Tony took, his eyes filled with amusement.
'Do you want some whisky?' Judith asked Joe.
Joe thought for only a second before nodding. He would need something. Tony reached under the counter and pulled out a bottle of amber liquid in a plain glass bottle.
'Whatever you need. It's another twenty.'
Joe took another note from his wallet and slid it across the counter. He took the bottle and then allowed Judith to lead him up the stairs, which creaked in protest at their passing. Whilst she unlocked the door, Joe unscrewed the bottle and took a swig. It was pure poison, and it rolled down his throat like a lava flow. It was essence, running through the fibres of his body and replenishing what he had lost. He offered the bottle to Judith, just as she opened the door but she shook her head.
'I never touch the stuff,' she said, so Joe took another generous swig himself.
'All right. Slow down, tiger. You've got work to do.'
Joe rolled over and took a drag on his cigarette, looking at the almost empty bottle of whisky on the side table. He had not lit it to enhance the post-coital moment, rather he had not bothered to put it out once the proceedings had started and by the time they were finished he still had half of it left.
'That was magnificent,' said Judith, in what should have been an Oscar-winning performance.
'It was nothing,' Joe replied nihilistically, searching for an ashtray on the side table.
He found one and stubbed the cigarette out on the pseudo-wood finish next to it.
'You know, this room was a lot filthier the last time I saw it. There were these strange brown stains everywhere.'
'Well you must have been in a different room. They all look alike,' replied Judith.
Joe grunted and then got to his feet before stumbling towards the bathroom.
'Where are you going?' asked Judith.
'I have to go to the bathroom very badly,' Joe replied and proceeded to do just that as he stood unsteadily in front of the porcelain and urinated down the front of his legs in a drunken stupour.
In fact, he had gone to the bathroom so badly that he probably would have been better off just staying in bed and wetting himself. At least that way it would have been a single wet patch and not the broad, all-over coverage that he managed as he swayed back and forth in front of the toilet.
'Are you feeling okay?' Judith asked from the bed, a certain note of anxiety in her voice.
'Not really. My entire life feels like it's been in preparation for something that never happened. Grey referred to me as God once, but I couldn't feel more mortal...'
Joe never heard Judith's response because at that instant his vision began to darken and he crashed to the floor in a heap.
21
The Lunatic Messiah Page 20
