Angels and Electrons: A Sub-Suburb Tale

by Paul Hawkins

  *

  With the astronaut gone Blaise decided to proceed with his plan. Over the course of several days he tinkered with the device’s wiring.

  Jude reappeared. He was driving a nice car and was dating a nice, pallid, angular WASP of a fiancé. He had taken a day off from his study of law when he heard Blaise was out, and he wanted to make sure Blaise stayed on the straight and narrow.

  The two men shook hands warmly and Blaise slapped Jude on the back too hard. He then told him about the Eurotrash and his plan.

  "You're not really going to do it?" Jude asked him. “Good God! Just call the police.”

  "Look Jude, they want to kill the world. If you had any smarts you would leave now and let me go about my business and go find Janet and find out what happened to your kid. You always wanted her anyway. If you hadn't screwed around with Tess she would have had you. Maybe time has healed all that – you’ve got your head on straight now. Walk the straight and narrow from now on and she will have you. I think she always kind of loved you."

  “I’m not going anywhere and you’re not going to do anything. I'm going to rescue you from yourself.”

  “I’m going to tell your fiancé you have a kid out of wedlock.”

  Jude’s face blanched. “You wouldn’t - I’m so close to having a normal life,” he said.

  “I’m not doing anything to myself. The damn device will catch fire the next time they flip the switch. They’ll be scared but if they have any smarts they’ll escape. In exposing their frailty to themselves, I may give them a slim opportunity for redemption."

  There was a strange look in Blaise’s eyes.

  “What is up with you?” Jude asked.

  Blaise stared at him. “Oh Jude, I put the headphones on.”

  “What?”

  Blaise looked at him with watery eyes. “I couldn’t help it, Jude. I walked into the room and no one was there and no one was watching, and so I went up to the machine and I saw some genocidal plans of theirs on the table and I put them under my coat and then I flipped the switch and I put the headphones on. Good God, when I saw the awful thing they were planning, I wanted to talk to my father…”

  “Oh Blaise…”

  “I heard nothing!” he said. “I heard nothing - and then I heard the goddamn voice like a whisper across ice, the voice of death and the Void.”

  Jude saw madness in Blaise’s eyes.

  “It said ‘Make the world clean!’”

  “Goddamnit Blaise, make yourself clean!”

  But Blaise shoved him to the ground and ran off. Jude ran back to his car and sat, his hands on the ignition, not knowing what to do. He shook. Surely Blaise wouldn’t do it. Jude should call the authorities, but Blaise had made his threat, and he had so much to lose. Surely Blaise was just bullshitting. He drove by the bait shop and told Ray Jr. and Dale to keep an eye on Blaise but wouldn’t say why. “Just check on him tonight – he seems not quite right in his mind – he’s talking about his father.”

  But Jude did not drive off. He just pulled his cars around Boheme’s back acres and napped. When he woke up it was evening and he resolved to confront Blaise inside his Airstream and call the cops, fiancé or none. But when he went up and knocked on the door, there was not answer. Blaise was not there.

  He swallowed hard and turned to look across the acres to the mansion just in time to see its top floor go up in flames. They had flipped the switch and it lit up mansion like a roman candle.

  Jude turned the ignition and drove his car up as close to the mansion as he could. When he parked he saw Blaise run up out of nowhere.

  “Make yourselves clean!” he shouted.

  Jude ran out and tried to tackle him, but Blaise just shrugged him off.

  He saw one of the Eurotrash throw open a window from the topmost floor and stare down at Blaise. But the man was not terrified. Instead he was smiling. He shouted down:

  “Well done, my Yankee cousin! It takes an American to do the things that take real guts.” He ducked back inside that top floor window and laughed.

  Eurotrash began to stream out of every door and window of the mansion, coughing from the smoke. But some remained inside.

  “They’ve started a party,” one of them said. “A suicide party.”

  “Good God Blaise, what did you do?” Jude asked. “We’ve got to save them!”

  Blaise had been staring at the fire, and it was reflected in his eyes. But Jude slapped him hard. “Snap out of it – I don’t know what came over you, but we’ve got to save as many of these people as we can!”

  Blaise kind of stared ahead but nodded slowly, “You’re right.” Then he tore a sleeve off of his shirt, wrapped it around his mouth and nose, and walked inside the building.

  Jude ran inside too. Here and there people were moving like marionettes to thumping music. They saw him and laughed.

  “Get the hell out of here!”

  “Join our party!”

  Blaise ran up and grabbed them two at a time and began dragging them outside. Jude dragged one. They were as skinny as sticks. Vegetarians. Blaise and Jude would throw them down on the grass and some would thank them but some would just run back in.

  The girl who looked like Maria came running out of the burning mansion and stopped beside Blaise.

  "Why?" she asked.

  "Because there in not a molecule of love in you - there is not a molecule of love in this whole place."

  Something quivered and changed in her face. “I could have learned to love you.”

  “Make yourself clean,” Blaise said.

  She turned and ran back into the burning mansion.

  He turned to run in after her and save her, but a monstrous explosion threw him back.

  Just then Ray Jr. and Dale came running up.

  They ran up and tried dragging the two of them out of there, but Blaise broke away. It took the two of them to bring him down.

  Sirens and flashing lights came up behind them. Blaise flitted in and out of conscious, always seeing fire and ash.

  Jude stared at him wild-eyed. "Good God, what were you thinking?" he asked.

  "I was saving the world," Blaise said. And then he blacked out. Ray Jr. and Dale left Jude and Blaise coughing on the grass ran into the house and saved as many as they could, but they could not save them all.