by Max Jager
"Why are you naked?" The son asked.
"Oh?" Aleistar looked down. "Oh. Oh, some girl spilled her lunch on me. I wasn't even mad, you should have seen her sad face. I took the clothes out, they're in the laundry now." The boy responded with a dull and pale look.
"Is that the truth?" He asked.
"Of course. What's the point in lying about something so small." Aleistar said.
"I don't know, you tell me. What is the point?" The boy said.
By now he was getting nervous again like he had gotten earlier before. He looked around to see who else was outside, neighbors who watered their grass lazily with beers in their hands, another who backed his giant orange truck into a pole. That one was in a hurry. Moving houses, probably, and Aleistar was not surprised. His panorama gaze grew more intense and with it that narcissistic paranoia that drew his eyelids shut and made his eyes beady. He wanted back inside his cove and yanked on his son's arm.
"Come on, get in." He said. He dragged his son who plopped down on the sofa.
"Are you hungry?" Aleistar asked.
"No."
"How was your day at school?"
"Fine. How was your day at the clinic?"
"Fine." Aleistar bit his lips and looked up the stairs. He brought his eyes back to his son.
"Just fine?" He asked.
"I dealt with a young mother, she left her husband and child. Didn't know why she left them, only knew they made her feel terrible." Aleistar said.
"Sounds like it was rough." His son turned on the television.
"A little, for me. A lot, for her. I'm just the man she talks to."
"Rough, huh. Would you still do it if it wasn't your job?"
"Maybe." Aleistar began to climb up the stairs and hung by the rail. This is how it always was, his son sinking into a sort of vegetative state. Ignoring everything, distancing himself as much as he could. It always made Aleistar a little relieved, then sad at feeling relieved. His son looked to his direction as he put another foot on a step. It felt like he was under a search light with the intense heat on top of his half naked body.
"I need to go find a shirt." Aleistar laughed. "Then some forms and stuff afterwords. Long day."
"Dad." Itrus lifted himself.
"Yeah?"
"Let's move."
"What?"
"I've been looking into transferring credits. We can go anywhere."
"Where'd this come from?"
"A couple months of mulling it over. And the city." His eyes narrowed. "The city, mostly. It's draining having to listen and watch the nasty shit going on. They closed off half the school the other day. There was graffiti all over the chemistry labs. Crazy shit written. Junkies did it, the police think."
"I understand. If you want to go I can pay for it." Aleistar was leaning off the guard rail.
"I don't want to go without you." Itrus stood.
"Don't worry about me."
"If mom was here I wouldn't have to, but I can already imagine the loneliness you'd feel without me. That stuffs unbearable, you know that..." Itrus grabbed his elbow nervously. It felt like an anchor.
"I know it better than you." Aleistar gripped the wooden rail. He could feel his fingers digging deep and beginning to crack it into splinters. "I study it, I live it."
"I want us out of this city. It's not good. It's like a fucking dungeon in here, with the people, with the streets." Itrus said. His father seemed unmoved and only grew worse. "I went out the other day to grab a burger. I saw some woman dragging around some flowers in the corner of the street, weeping, just fucking crying and walking around. She looked like a ghost. I turned and next thing you know, she almost became one. Jumped in front of a semi." He gave a desperate chuckle. "Good thing there was a fucking red light."
"Don't curse."
"Who cares about that? What about the sto- I'm fucking nineteen."
"I don't care. You're in my house." Aleistar punched the wood. It bent.
"Alright, that's fine. That's fine…That's fine." Itrus held his breath. His animated hands orchestrated some woeful plea. "We need to move. For the good of both of us. We have the money, I know we do."
"I know we have the money because I made the money. I started the business. Me and your mother. Both. We made an empire through all the shit in our lives."
"Empire? It's an office. An office you can leave any time you want, like mom would have wanted. Don't confuse your crutch for a dying wish."
"To hell with that." The wood broke. It collapsed and sent Aleistar forward had he not readjusted his weight. Itrus fell back on the sofa, he could not speak. "I will not fucking leave, I can't. You're young and brash and lacking in foresight, you don't know suffering. You don't know starvation, you live in the luxury of my spoils. With fucking food in the fridge! With fucking air conditioning!" He began to kick the pillars along the stairs. "My work feeds you. It feeds me. It fed your mother and it would have fed our daughter. It was what made us. It was what we were good at, what we were meant to do until - " His hoarse voice stung Itrus. Aleistar was looking for the words. "You don't think I want to leave this shit hole? I do, but I can't. I don't have that stern stuff in me to weather a future without it."
Itrus was tearing up. "And I'm telling you that's a good thing. It's good to be afraid." Itrus managed to say between sniffling and slapping his thighs.
Aleistar ran down and put both hands against his sons face and he would have maneuvered them to his neck had he lacked the little sanity left.
"Some people like the idea of moving on, they can't bear tragedy and think it'll change. That it's possible to change. But I know the truth. Eight years of psychiatric training, two decades of anecdotal evidence and insanity have taught me this: people don't fucking move on. They can't." Aleistar shook his son. "There's a hole in my heart and it's scary to look at. It's the type of terror that makes people want to jump. But the smart ones? They learn to walk around it Live with it even." He let go of his sons face.
"Or live in it." Itrus said. He rubbed the red markings off his cheeks. What a smite those words were that drew Aleistar back. He raised his finger to his son but was too shaken inside, he could feel it in his chest.
"I'm not jumping in! I'm not letting go. I'm learning how to deal with her fucking death the only way I can. I'll fix it too! Do you understand?"
Itrus did not understand. He only felt his face swell and in response looked for a proper meditative pose to sit in. When he locked in place, he looked like those gargoyle's atop the sky scrapers all brooding like. He sat in silence and turned on the television, raising the volume until the green bars would not go further. Now it was time to be patient. A perfect catatonic state. He hoped his quiet existence would help him disappear from his fathers eyes but it only stung Aleistar deeper. He felt his heart fall into his throat, down to his gut. He cleaned his face of spit and a nose bleed that was coming out. His hands were hot.
"I need to get back to work." Aleistar said to no one. "We're not having this conversation again. You hear me?"
The air was cool against his naked body. He walked up, past a hallway to a corner of the house that seemed highest of all. There was a latch on the ceiling and he began working the lock. He looked back to the loud cartoons and silent son. His chest depressed. It looked clear so he entered, closing it behind himself.
He was in that dark room again where he heard a shingle of metal and shimmy of a man strapped in leather. Aleistar moved his hand into the darkness of the room until he grazed the rope and pulled.
In front of him was a gagged man. Masked, devoid of identity. He looked like cattle to Aleistar, disgusted him like cattle too.
On his back were the runes that spelled out Bael, written around the circumference of a circle. Further within was another circle and more long lines that made it seem like a strange constellation or the lettering of some primeval language. Aleistar spoke the alien tongue and began to feel the sharp designs on the sacrifices back. The tattoo looked gray undernea
th the buzzing fluorescent light, his body looked gray. A stool sat to the rear of the gagged man. Above it a cup that smelled foul like something gamey. It was a boiled mixture, it steamed. Aleistar drank the muddy water and ran his fingers to the right of the cup to a line of cocaine now ruined by his greedy fingers. He sniffed, his nose bled even more. But it gave him courage and he tightened his face as he closed his mouth to muffle a scream.
"He doesn't understand but he will. Won't he, master?" He said with a strained face. It was all hitting him like a diamond bullet through his brain and out his balls, shining out through his perforated body. Aleistar pushed down on the gagged mans back with his palm and inspected the canvas. "You will too. Monster that you are. Rapist. Murderer. You will be redeemed and in your sacrifice we will all see the goodness of my cause." He traced the seal with his fingers. "I've saved you from a terrible fate." Aleistar was trying to convince himself for his hands waned. He took another sniff of cocaine.
His heart would not stop slamming itself inside the cage of his chest. He could feel tingles up to his finger tips and at the touch of the blade felt his energy discharged, collapsing onto metal handle.
"Don't weep. You will not be the last." He said. They both cried. The blade rose high up. There was nothing for the gagged man but the comfort of their heavy breaths like bodies in heat. He could see his death coming, from the corner of his tired eyes where the light reflected from. It looked like a lone star in the night sky and fell like a comet.
5:12 PM
"Does he have a name?" Darr asked.
"It doesn't matter. He's just the Priest. Might be the only one left too."
Ajax took two steps into the church courtyard and already a nervousness came upon his shoulders that made him shudder. It was the first time in a while since he had that visceral gut reaction like his belly had been punctured and everything acidic in him came out. His pace was slow and he looked with close attention at the miserable expressions on the statues around him. It was a mausoleum of pain. The statues of angels and of Virgin Mary and of Christ. His shoulders twitched again as he heard the sound of the giant wooden doors open. There was a clicking sound coming from within. The attendees were leaving and they wore on their face fresh humility.
"Ah, we missed the sermon." Darr said.
"Good." Ajax said.
They slithered through the crowd, coming to the holy water and dipping their hands to put the wet cross on their foreheads. It tingled, it bit. It reminded them of what they were not. Human.
The halls were large and arched, the noise of their footsteps reverberated back to them. They looked at the Gothic pillars and the way they converged into a dome and they looked at the feet of those pillars where the devout sat on their knees. They locked their hands into unbreakable chains of faith. Past them was the Priest. He was smiling until he counted his money.
He jingled the basket and had disappointment on his face as he saw the yield.
"We're here." Ajax said. The painted glass followed them with their neon eyes. He looked side to side and swore their dull faces dragged.
"Who are you?" The Priest was shaking his little basket.
"The Vicars?" Darr said.
"Who?"
"Uh. Hmm. You texted us? Right?" Darr said.
"Mmm. Maybe." The Priest looked up. "Follow me." Perhaps he played stupid, perhaps he was stupid. Either way, it didn't help Ajax from feeling that grating annoyance that made his eyes twitch.
They headed to the graves, through doors upon doors. Doors into doors. Just as Ajax's blood was beginning to boil they made it outside. To the grave and grass and chorus of chirping and of crickets. They were at the graves and Ajax looked down to the piles of dirt, more doors. Entrances into the lives of the long dead who breathed into the two men a sense of mortality as they went past the erected stones. The recent years were the most frightening and Darr felt life come out of him as he read over a strangers grave, '1996-2017'.
Gust broke into the yard. The sound of bells broke into them, their concentration scattered to the all-encompassing sounds. They were hollow tings all around them, coming from the graves. The bells were strung up on the tops of small plastic poles like broken pipeline.
"Why would a corpse want room service?" Ajax asked.
"What? Room service? Oh." The Priest laughed. "Oh! The bells?"
"No, just the sound, really." Ajax said.
"Aha. Yes. We install those into every grave."
"Into? Install? What?" Ajax said.
"It's tradition mostly. Started out of a fear." The Priest raised his hands up and away from himself like a whimsical jester. "We had an accident a few years back. We came around to move a body, Andrew Boyle - God rest his soul - Well about this Andrew Boyle," The Priest stopped. Ajax sniffed, Darr rolled his eyes and looked at the butterflies along the slabs. "I'll cut it short then. We found claw marks in his coffin."
"What the heck." Darr said. "Was it a dog?"
"In the coffin, you idiot." Ajax said. "Not on. In. What kind of fucking dog digs six feet under anyway?"
"Yes, it was very strange. Poor guy must have suffocated." The Priest stopped at a worn grave, made a gross expression and moved on. "You could see the stiff fear on his face, like a statue. Like those poor souls in Pompeii who I'm sure saw death the same way he did, superimposed on their eyes. Blackness."
"How bleak." Darr said.
"Should have made sure he was dead." Ajax looked around to spit and decided better to do it on the path than the graves.
"Aha. Yeah. Well it was a strange thing for us and since then we've added a bell and rope to every hole."
"That's some fucked up room service." He rubbed the dirt off of a plaque. A small karmic gesture. "How can you tell if anyone's still alive when it's this windy?"
The Priest looked up. He closed his eyes and began scratching his head. That was all the answer the two needed to feel that sense of dread grow inside of them again.
"Why'd you move the body anyway?" Darr asked.
"Weirdest thing. His wife wanted it moved." He looked back and Darr could feel the grin pierce him as if nails had been hammered into the gaps inside his vertebrae. He hunched and cringed and then the Priest continued out of enjoyment. "She said she had a dream about him, that he was drowning. She had it four days in a row before she had enough and well..."
"And well." Darr repeated. Sweat collected on his forehead.
The Priest held the tension with his smile before he broke into a jovial mood. The laugh competed with the wind and it drove his hair up.
"Well, that was years ago. We're better now. You make mistakes, you learn. That kind of thing." The Priest said.
Out of fear, Darr laughed too.
The grounds keeper looked at them with his leaf blower aimed without care at a wall. He was driving grass trimmings up and to the vines that extended like green fingers. The Priest looked at him too and copied his dumb face.
"Who are you again?" The Priest said.
"Enough fucking around. We're the Vicars from the Vatican." Ajax's loud voice straightened out Darr.
"How can I be sure of that?" The Priest said.
"On account of us being the only ones here and knowledgeable about the fact. You didn't exactly post up the job in the yellow papers. We have a schedule, a text, a name." Ajax wanted to add more than that but tempered the thoughts.
"Us four. God is here too, you savages." The Priest smiled.
"Us four." Darr's face eased. He still smelled of sweat.
"You have quite a mouth." He looked to Ajax who rolled his neck like a newborn child, he felt something was about to take off in his skull.
"But when you're right, you're right. Right? I've summoned you and for a reason. Come along." He dangled a key. They were in front of a small shed, dense with the smell of dirt and oil. The planks on the wall were half eaten by termites, the room was full with tools; scythes, hammers, nails mostly. The Priest lurked inside of the darkness of the shed where they could
only see the small rays of light from the holed ceiling and the ephemeral particles of dust.
He came out with two rusted shovels.
"I can't kill anything with a shovel." Darr said.
Ajax was still recovering from his headache and rubbed his temples. "I can come up with a couple ways." He mumbled.
"You need to think harder." The Priest pointed to Darr. "And you need to relax." His finger shifted to Ajax. "Your friends brought your stuff in a very strange way. They buried it, didn't tell me where though."
