rubber soul

Okay, I'm catching up ever so slowly. Did you ever think about self publishing, Trollheart? You can probably place stuff all over the internet and still be able to do that. I was going to set up a Wordpress site for what would have been my first novel but I ended up abandoning it. I'm actually in the slow process of editing my actual first novel (really a large novella) now.

The thing that sticks out for me on entries three through five is, 'He is coming.' You capitalize He which could mean maybe he's God, or perhaps some guy named He (somehow I don't think it's the latter ). In any event, this mysterious being must be somebody very important.

I'll read some more tomorrow, but so far it's pretty captivating. You're definitely a better writer than I am .

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Trollheart

Given how the world of publishing has changed, yeah I am definitely considering self-publishing. The drawback there is that you get absolutely no marketing, so you have to rely on people picking up your book themselves, without being directed to it. I mean, I hate marketing and advertising, but if you're selling something, dammit you need that. I have no idea about the potential pitfalls, but I will be looking into it. I did come across some crowd that would publish and market your book (almost wrote "some crows" - that'd be good huh? Crows that publish books! Well, better than Penguins I guess! ) for the low, low price of .... five hundred dollars! **** that. I'm not paying someone to do something I can hopefully do myself, and of course there's no guarantee they can help you. I'd love to get published properly, ie the old way, but it's the old story: can't get an agent unless you're published, can't get published unless you have an agent.

I hope you won't end up being disappointed by the ending here. Just bear in mind, as I'm sure you know, everything does not always tie up in a neat bow at the end...
I'm sure that's not true. You should post some of your stuff. But thanks, and thanks for reading. More will be uploaded later.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

“What?”

For a moment I remain disoriented, and the policeman's face hardens, as if to say We can do this the easy way or the hard way, Sir. Then realisation of a sort dawns. I frown, turn it into an apologetic smile. Something screams in my brain, but I ignore it. “Sorry, officer. I guess I was daydreaming. Didn't see the cordon.” In addition to the yellow and black tape, several wooden signs warn RESTRICTED AREA. AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY. The policeman's frown unknots, his lips quirk upwards slightly, but it is not what you would call a smile. His eyes, though I can't see them, say We won't have to make an example of this one. I can't tell whether he's disappointed or relieved.

I briefly consider asking him what this is all about, who is coming, but quickly decide against it. Not only do I realise I don't actually want to face the reality of the answer to that question, but I feel he will not give it to me. Although I can't see his eyes, or those of any of his colleagues, I somehow know that they're dead and blank now, unseeing, uncaring, possibly unknowing. These are, perhaps not automatons, but they are, I feel, being controlled, if even subtly. Their will is not their own, not any more, and they work, even if they don't realise it, for a higher power.

Cockroaches...

As I step back and the cordon is re-established, I notice several pairs of eyes fixing on me. From the bottom of the hill I can see a number of people gathered at the top, all staring down at me, and there is something very hard in the way they look at me. It's as if I've transgressed some unwritten rule, gone where I should not have. Trespasser, their stares say. Defiler. Blasphemer. Bad puppet!

Then, seeing the cops have things (in other words, me) under control, they turn away and like plants reversing their growth cycle, retreat, it seems to me, into the ground, getting shorter and shorter as they walk back down the other side of the hill, ankles becoming knees, knees turning into waists, waists to shoulders until finally what is left of them is just a collection of heads, bobbing angrily, and they too are soon lost from view as the crowd slouches back down the hill, on the other side, the “good” side, and back towards the town centre.

I suddenly ask myself a question. It’s a very good question, and I wonder, in that dim place from which it seems I have been forbidden (Restricted area, Sir!) why the hell I didn’t tell those cops about the suicide I just witnessed? Why didn’t they see it? They must have been nearby. They couldn’t have missed it. It was ....
It was …
It …
What was it?
What was what?
What the hell am I trying to remember? Something just happened, something … something important. Something significant. Something terrible.
What the hell was it?
Why can’t I remember?
What can’t I remember?
What ….?

My hands trembling, my head thumping, I realise I have still the packet of Major in my hand, and with an effort I control the shaking long enough to extract one and place it in my mouth. I barely register the fact that where the usual health warning is printed on the side of the packet it now says He is coming. I think at this point, I am coming to expect this. My silver Zippo, a present from my wife, dead now these nine years, flicks into action, a tiny tongue of fire kissing the end of the cigarette and I snap the lighter closed, pocketing it and inhaling a deep drag of the tobacco. Normally it can calm my nerves, but today it does nothing. I feel the thick smoke swirling around my mouth and in my nostrils, the cloying, choking scent pervading my being, feel it slide down my throat and into my lungs, adding to the thick deposits on the already calcified organs there, surely not long to go now? I feel the moisture on the tip of the cigarette where it touches my lips.

Moisture.

The tip is wet.

Well of course it is, I tell myself sharply: it’s raining! But this is a different kind of wet. Not the clear, clean moisture from the sky, not rainwater seeping into the paper tube and making it sag slightly. No.

This is something … else.

I glance down and a cold shock runs through me. Where my lips meet the cigarette paper it has turned a dirty brown, and I can feel the moistness on my lips, drooling down the shaft of the cigarette. When it reaches the white paper, it is stained red.

Blood.

I'm bleeding.

Or the cigarette is, I think irrationally.

Either way, it's enough to make me drop the Major Extra Tar and feel my lip. There is blood there, but no wound. I assume I have bit my lip in my anxiety just now, and the blood has leaked onto the cigarette. This is not so. My lip is, other than where it came into contact with the cigarette, dry. The cigarette has fallen on the rain-sodden ground; no point in picking it up now to check if somehow the bleeding came from there. Not that it could possibly have done so. With a dark feeling of foreboding and trepidation I fumble the packet back out of my pocket, thumb the lid open, take another prisoner from its cardboard cell, and this time critically examine it, turning the tube this way and that, staring at it, watching it with growing suspicion which turns to a feeling of foolishness as I realise what I'm doing. Laughing at myself in the way I suppose people do to convince themselves they're not mad – especially when they are – I tap the cigarette, light it and – nervously, it must be said – raise it to my lips, watching it intently, my eyes and my lips alert for any coppery taste, any sudden liquid leakage.

There is none. I inhale the fumes deeply, luxuriating in the cloud that wreaths my face, coughing slightly, and remove the cigarette in order to expel the smoke into the air.

The cigarette does not move.

I frown, inadvertently taking another puff which, doing so before I have managed to exhale, fills my lungs with too much smoke. I begin to choke. My lips will not part, as if they have been glued together by some mischievous devil. Grey plumes escape through my nostrils, but that is not enough to expel the growing cloud inside me. And as panic sets in, another inhalation adds to that cloud. My insides are heating up. I need to get this smoke out of me. You can't inhale and inhale and inhale. You have to exhale. I can breathe, yes, through my nose but my sinuses are filling up with smoke and my throat is clogged with the stuff. My lungs feel like they're burning, and my heart is now racing. My fingers are stuck to the cigarette, and it is stuck to my lips. Nothing will loosen it. Like a statue cast in panic, I begin to double up, staring around wildly for anything to remove this suddenly lethal tube from my mouth. I stagger back against the wall. A cop notices me, but barely throws a glance my way.

Shaking his head, his eyes snap Filthy habit! before he turns back to his work. I am alone. Nobody can hear me, nobody knows what's going on. My lips are literally sealed: I cannot scream, I cannot draw any attention to myself other than wildly waving my arms, but nobody is now looking in my direction and without sound to attract that, there is no way to alert any potential saviour, if anyone could save me. What are they going to do, I ask myself acidly? Prise my lips open with a car jack? No, I am on my own. No-one can help me. I need to do something, and I need to do it now. I always knew there was a good chance I would die from smoking, but I never expected it to happen this way. My best friend has turned on me and is trying to kill me.

The rain pours down upon me. I feel like I’m drowning and suffocating and burning all at once. My inner voice laughs cruelly: At least your headache has gone! It tells me. Yes, it’s gone alright. My brain can only cope with one distraction at a time, and I am in mortal terror now. If the headache is not actually gone, it has receded into a far corner of my brain, moved to a remote filing cabinet in a room marked UNIMPORTANT.

Suddenly, salvation. Out of the corner of my eye I spy the small stream that runs parallel to the town. The riverbank is only moments away. I stagger towards it (the cops, thinking I'm about to break through their border again, look up with eyes that, though I can't see them, say Don't even think about it! But I am skirting their cordon, heading for the small stream, and they lose interest in me). In another moment I am on my knees, plunging my head face first into the freezing water. It's a shock, but it works. The cigarette, softened by the water, cannot retain its integrity and deflates, droops and breaks contact with my lips, which, freed from whatever supernatural pressure the cigarette was exerting upon them, sigh open and fill my lungs with less than pure water. The Major Extra Tar falls into the water, floating away, pulled by the tide. I almost imagine it shaking a fist in impotent anger.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

It's over in seconds, though it seems hours, days. I remain kneeling by the water, my chest heaving as I take a deep drink. The water of the stream is by no means drinkable, a fact hammered home by the rather unsettling sight of a Coke can drifting by with a used condom wrapped around it. I may be sick after this. I may be very sick. But that doesn't matter. At least, I'm alive. I swirl the dirty water around in my mouth – careful not to swallow – cooling it down, trying to mitigate the effects of the smoke I've swallowed, and then I spit it out and take what seems like my first breath in hours. The air sears through me, hot and vital, and I feel my head swimming. I manage to stagger to my feet just in time to avoid making the metaphor literal for my body. I can't swim, and I feel that, though the water is not that deep, if I fell in these cops would just let me drown. They're busy.

He is coming.

Back on my feet, I reach into my pocket and with the fury of one betrayed, crumple up the packet of smokes and toss its corpse into the stream, all remaining eighteen inmates rejoining their traitorous comrades, and with a certain dark satisfaction I watch it sail slowly away.

Perhaps it's for the best. Time I gave up anyway.

Assuming there is time left.

He is coming.

V: Outside the box

Once my breathing has normalised and my heart rate has climbed down from the kind of pace that makes me want to think in terms of ambulances, I slowly retrace my steps back up the long road that leads up the hill. For some reason, I think of Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain, almost at the top, only for it to roll back and he has to start all over again. Why do I think of this? What have I done that merits such punishment? Perhaps somewhere deep down, I know I have crossed a line (if unintentionally), broken a taboo and entered a sacred place, an area forbidden to we mere mortals. Other than the guardians of that place, though even the cops don't go into the fairground, but merely patrol, or guard, the entrance. No kids allowed in there now. They never were, of course, but it's a lot easier to ignore DO NOT ENTER signs when there aren't armed guards on the -

Armed?

Yes, yes. Something sparks in my memory and I recall seeing the unmistakable glint of steel behind one of the cops' hi-vis, and a dark shape disturbing the line of that of another. Armed? Have the police around here ever been armed? And what are they armed against? Whoever or whatever it is that's due to come through from the mouth of the ghost train? Surely not. The smallest child here will tell you that bullets will be no use against Him. I have no idea why I know that, but I do. He cannot be stopped by our weapons. There is no stopping Him.

He is coming.

And anyway, they're not here to try to stop Him: they're preparing for His arrival. They are welcoming Him, waiting for Him. Praying for Him? No, the guns are to be used, I have to assume, to deter anyone from entering the sacred area. I recall with a shudder the shaded face of the cop when I inadvertently blundered across their barrier. We can do this the hard way or the easy way, Sir. I realise now how hard that alternative could have been, and I have no doubt in my mind whatever that if that cop, or any of the cops, thought I posed a danger, thought I would somehow try to prevent His coming (as if anyone could! How do I know that?) they would shoot me. And they would shoot to kill. Despite what I have just gone through with my packet of Major Extra Tar, I suddenly feel an almost compulsive need for a smoke.

But my cigarettes are lazily punting down the stream, sodden and useless, and let's not forget: they tried to kill me. Oh yes, it might sound like I just went mad and had some sort of bad hallucination, but I know the truth. It happened. Impossible, crazy as it may seem, it happened. I know it. I feel it in my bones, which are now shivering both from the fright and from the sudden immersion of my face in the freezing waters of the stream which saved my life. I know it happened, and though I still find myself gasping for a cigarette, I will not go back to Benny's newsagents. The newspapers are waiting there. The black, inky, depthless, bottomless, star-spanning, cold and evil photographs that are not photographs are there, and they want me. I will not let them have me. I will fight. I will never read another newspaper.

He is coming.

My trek up the road seems to take ages, but luckily for me, unlike Sisyphus I am not damned to repeat this climb forever, never reaching the summit, and I gain the top just in time to stare into the flat, emotionless eyes of old Josiah Bennett.

He does not speak, he does not even register my presence, but I can see, though logic would deny the evidence of my eyes and tell me I am hallucinating (again) that it is he. I recognise the old battered hat he wore everywhere, a very distinctive style, not available here. Not available in Europe at all. He once said his grand-daughter brought it home for him from Malaysia. I have no idea whether that's true or not but it's definitely the same hat, and there aren't two like that this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

I recognise his gait. He always had a gammy leg, the result of shrapnel he picked up in El Alamein, he claimed. Again, I don't know if that is true, and it really doesn't matter, but it certainly gave him as distinctive a walk as his hat, a sort of shuffling, scuttling gait, like that of a crab. He doesn't have a walking stick – never used one; hated the things. His clothes look a little the worse for wear, and I am mildly surprised, as Mr. Bennett was always very fastidious about how he dressed, always well turned out. Possibly came from his time in the army, if the tales he told are true. Again, not important.

There is, however, something here I should be considering, something that is important. I can't think of it. Something is distracting me. On old Mr. Bennett's hat, there appears to be movement. I can't see what it is, but it looks alive. Perhaps he passed under a tree and a caterpillar dropped onto his hat? What is it I'm supposed to remember about him? It's very important. It didn't seem so, when I remember I mentioned it earlier. Something about menus and ninjas, and people selling Sky TV...

Oh yes. Of course. That's it. How could I forget that?

Josiah Bennett is dead.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

He's been dead for six, no seven months now. I know this, as I went to his funeral. Everyone around here did. He was well liked. But not that well liked that he should be again walking among the living. He had been somewhat irrepressible in life, had Mr. Bennett, and he had lived to a good age – at one hundred years they said he might get one more, but he made liars of them and lasted for two after that. Many people around here thought he would never die.

Seems he didn't.

Except, I know he did.

And yet, here he stands. Irrepressible is one thing. Long-lived is one thing. But when you finally give up the ghost and let them bury you, you're not expected to come back. Death is a one-way ride; there is no return ticket option.

Except that Mr. Bennett seems to have found one.

Before I can open my mouth to speak to him he turns away. Whether this is because he is afraid that if anyone sees him they will quickly re-inter him in the ground (perhaps ramming a sharpened wooden stake into his heart to ensure he stays there – some people watch far too much Buffy and True Blood) or he has urgent business somewhere else (how urgent can the business of a dead man be?) I don't know, but I know one thing: I'm not letting him get away. If only to sate my own morbid curiosity, if only to point him out to some other living soul and confirm I'm not going mad; that the corpse of Josiah Bennett, (1914-2017) is walking the streets as if someone has forgotten to tell him he is dead, and behaving in a most unseemly manner for a corpse, I have to follow him.

Besides, I'm curious: where does a newly-risen dead person go? I thought he might go back to his house – first denuding his door of a veritable family of menus from A Taste of Mumbai, Pizza Haven and Il Bistro Italiano – but he turns in the opposite direction, heading west. I follow him as unobtrusively as I can (can a dead man hear you pursuing him?) and though we encounter several people along the way, and though I point him out with initial excitement and then successively waning enthusiasm, nobody cares. All I get in response is a weak, tired smile and the by now familiar assurances of His imminent arrival.

I can feel the darkness beginning to gather now around me, like thick smoke pouring in to obscure the world, or at least our town. I am reminded uncomfortably of my experience with the Major Extra Tar, and the first faint stars begin to appear in the sky as the weak sun decides it has had enough and retires, ready to try again tomorrow. Out onto the outskirts of town we go, and I see he is heading for the church. A cold feeling gnaws in my heart, and I pull my jacket tighter around me as the evening chill begins to bite. My jacket is wet from the recent rain, so is of little comfort to me, but I cling to it anyway.

From somewhere, a sudden scream. I whirl, ready for ... what? I'm neither armed nor any kind of a fighter. I avoid confrontations and violence whenever I can. I'm not a coward, exactly; I just don't invite trouble. You live longer that way. Mr. Bennett would obviously disagree. Forty years in the army, three major wars; you can bet he invited a whole lot of trouble. And dealt it out with gusto too. And look at the age he lived to! Hell, even the grave, it seems, couldn't defeat him! But that's him and I'm me, and what can I do if someone's shriek for help pierces the night? Sorry love: my white charger's in the shop and they repossessed my armour, you know how it is..

But I need not worry, at least not about this, as it's quickly clear that the scream is not one of fear or terror, but a ribald one, an involuntary one which has resulted when one of three women, all very much the worse for wear even at this early hour, tottering down the road in front of me, felt the rather cold hand of one of the three men they are sharing their company with slide up her skirt. She collapses against him, her scream turning to bubbling laughter, and the six of them, sharing a bottle, stagger down the road without so much as a glance from their exhausted, drooping eyes at me. The strains of their drunken song drifts back up to me from the valley into which they have descended, to the familiar football chant Here we go....

He is coming, He is coming, He is coming. He is coming, He is coming, He is com-ing. He is coming, He is comng, He is coming, He is coming. HE – IS – COMING!

Into the valley of death, I think, and realise I have lost sight of the shuffling Mr. Bennett, but how far can he go anyway? He has a gammy leg. Oh yeah: and he's dead. Not likely to cover much ground with – I see him again, entering the church on unsteady feet. I let him enter, then follow, as quietly as I can. I haven't been in a church in years. I think the last time was when - someone - my wife? Not sure; someone close to me, anyway - died. And before that, a long time too, so I'm not in awe of the power of God or anything, but even so, something, some ingrained, almost genetic response makes me lower my head and walk quietly. If, by some chance, I end up speaking to the corpse of Mr. Bennett, I feel sure I will whisper. It's like going into a library. You just naturally fall under its spell.

As I enter the church Bennett is already halfway up the aisle. I watch him, in a mixture of horrified wonder and confusion, asking myself, what is he doing here? Then I remember I'm talking about a man to whose funeral I brought my own best flowers and who I watched being buried, helped throw in the sods of earth on top of his wooden box, as if we were all anxious to get him in the ground, and such questions become almost ludicrous. My real question, asked of myself, should be What am I doing, tracking a dead man across town into a church?

But I have no answer, other than that there is that inside of me that must know. What power could be strong enough, what impetus important enough to wake the dead and call them from their graves? Is Bennett the only one? The sudden implications of this hits me, and I find myself asking myself if I remember seeing any other dead men or women walking in the town, but I can't honestly say. Perhaps those people I thought were tired were really ...? I don't know. My entire life these days seems to be lived in an almost dreamlike state, and I can't be sure of anything.

My headache seems to be making tentative plans for a reprisal against me, gathering its strength.

But if my eyes have not also betrayed me, then I'm watching a dead man stand in the aisle of Saint Jeremy's, standing there, a shaft of moonlight spearing in through one of the high stained-glass windows seeming to catch him as if in a spotlight, as if old Mr. Bennett is about to give the performance of a lifetime. If this is indeed the case, he will have a very small audience.

It's a strange feeling, hearing a dead man talk. I'm not that close that I can make out the words, but I can see his head bobbing up and down and his arms raised in the air, some sort of sound coming out of him. At first I mistake this for a prayer: Josiah Bennett is supplicating himself, offering himself to the god he believed in while alive. Then, as I inch a little closer, ducking down behind one of the rear pews, the cavernous acoustics of the church carry his words back to me, and I know it is no prayer he utters, or if it is, it's a very dark one.

“... everlasting?” he sneers, his voice sounding like logs popping in a winter fire, all sharp and hissy with an undertone of earthiness, as if he has gravesoil in his teeth, which he very well may do. “Believe in me? He who believeth in me, though he die, yet shall he live, we were told. They preached that, every Sunday at mass, and we all believed it. We wanted to believe it. We told ourselves it was true, must be true, for if nothing existed beyond this life, if there was no reward at the end, why bother being good? Why lead a good life if in the end all there was waiting for you was darkness and silence?” A strange sound issues from him, and I realise that he is crying. Or trying to, anyway: any moisture in his body has by now long dried up, and no tears will come. But his body, that frail, almost skeletal body shakes with dry sobs.

“But it was all a lie!” he fumes, his upraised arms now ending in fists, as he vents his rage on the altar, snarling at the huge wooden cross that adorns its centre, the figure upon it looking more like someone in repose than one in torment. The mild, kind eyes of Christ look down on him. There is forgiveness in them, eternal, endless forgiveness. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. But Josiah Bennett does not want forgiveness - he knows exactly what he’s doing - and he has not come to offer any either.

“There is nothing after death!” goes on Bennett. “Nothing! Just ... just ...”

Suddenly, the energy, the anger, the rage seems to drain out of him like water going down a plughole or air escaping a balloon, and like that balloon he deflates, sinking to his knees with a noisy crack of bones, his head falling so low upon his breast that I fear for a moment it will snap off. “Nothing.”

It's a whisper now, ironically carried, via the acoustics, to my ears as clear and as perfectly audible as his shouts and roars had been a moment ago. For a long instant, Josiah Bennett is not 103 years old, but six, or seven, or four: a child, a child whose fantasy has been ripped from him, a child whose world has collapsed, staring with tear-filled eyes as he realises it is all a lie, and Santa Claus does not exist.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

rubber soul

Good to see you back with writing, Trolls.

Being an agnostic myself, I can see how one would feel cheated when it turned out the afterlife wasn't what he expected. Anyhow, my interest continues.

And I may get around to posting a short story I'm working on in between two projects I'm planning for here. I was going to submit it to one of those magazine sites but I think I'm going to post it here. I'll get it on here once I'm happy with it (I have to work to make it sound believable right now). Who knows, maybe someone will see this and it will end up on the Twilight Zone if they bring it back for the 612th time

Great writing as usual

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Trollheart

Thanks man. Good to hear someone is reading. And I'd be very interested to read your writing too, so don't be shy! Conclusion coming soon...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

I feel sorry for him, and almost go to move up the aisle, to place a hand on his bony shoulder, comfort him, let him know he is not alone. But what would I say? The ultimate hypocrisy: I understand. How can I, one of the living, understand what it is like when you die? How can any of us? Nobody can know what Josiah Bennett has gone through other than those who have also died, and none of them are here to offer comfort. Perhaps I should try though, poor and probably useless though my attempt would be. It would be something, and something is always better than nothing.

But then he raises his head, and though I can't see his eyes I know they are blazing with renewed anger. His voice is stronger, yet for all that, flatter, more emotionless.

Deader.

“Seven months I lay in the dark,” he tells the crucified Jesus. “Seven long months, listening to the sound of the soil settling around and above my coffin, the sounds of things crawling outside, the sound of my own fear. Why didn't you let me die?” There is a plaintive, wailing quality to the question. “Why? If you weren't going to take me to Heaven, send me to Hell. I tried to be a good man in life.”

His voice is dropping now, quieter, more reflective. Sadder.

“I fought for my country. Yes, I killed, but only in war, and I never enjoyed it, or killed a man when I could wound him. I was faithful to my wife, I loved my children. I thought I had probably earned my place in Heaven, but if you didn't agree, then you could have abandoned my soul to the flames. But neither happened, did it? You left me there. My body rotted, and my mind, my very – HAH!” He lets out a short, unpleasant bark, “My very soul began to rot, and nothing. No beam of light to lift me into your presence. No angels. No choirs of heavenly hosts. Not even a demon to torment me. Nothing.” He sighs, shakes his head. “Nothing.”

He falls silent then, and I am reluctant to move, for fear of alerting him to my presence. I feel that whatever strange force has motivated him and brought him back to life, perhaps it is spent now. Perhaps this was his intended destiny, to die on the church flagstones, railing at a god who did not exist. In the morning, the priest would find him there (not Father Liam, of course: he was a charred cinder in the hospital morgue by now, but another of his staff) and wonder what sort of vagrant would allow himself to reach that state of decrepitude, shake his head and wish that the man had come seeking help sooner, so that he could have been helped. The chances were he would not even be recognised as Josiah Bennett, late of this parish.

It therefore startles me when he speaks again, though it is little more than a murmur and I have to strain to catch the words.

“I was afraid,” he confesses, watching the impassive face of the pinioned saviour. “I believed, while I lay there in the darkness, that the worst part of it was the sounds I was hearing outside, the things I imagined. I was wrong. When the worms finally came, when they managed to eat through the wood of my coffin, the only barrier between me and their hunger, I went into a fit of panic. I tried to lift the lid but of course it would not move; I was pushing against six feet of solid-packed earth, to say nothing of the screws that held the lid closed. And so I was helpless as the worms entered my coffin, and then my body.” What seems to be a shudder passes through him at the recollection of the horror he has experienced. I find myself shuddering too. Who would not, hearing this tale of horror?

“They crawled into my ears,” he says, his voice low. “They squirmed over my hair, they devoured my best tie, the one I had asked to be set aside for my burial when I went. They travelled up my nose and when I tried to scream they invaded my mouth. I can still feel them, wriggling, twisting, sliming their way down my throat. When they poked into my eyes I think my mind snapped, and for a long time I didn't remember anything, until I was called forth.”

Struggling to his feet, seeming to marshall his strength, Bennett raises a fist again towards the cross. “You did this to me!” he spits. “You promised – your priests promised – the Bible promised there would be life after death. I would see all those I had lost – my Bella, my niece Julie, my mother and my father. We would all live together in Paradise. But it was all a lie. Like me, they had nothing to look forward to after death but slow, creeping, silent horror. This is what you get, for a life well lived or a life spent pursuing evil. It doesn't matter how you live; we are all, in the end, literally, food for the worms. And that's all.”

There is a soft rustling, and I realise with horror I can now see Mr. Bennett's bony, spindly legs, the flesh on them hanging loose, his bony backside all but sunken in, a few tufts of grey hair still adhering to its mostly shiny, bone-smooth surface. The man has dropped his trousers, or what remains of them anyway. His growl is more an animalistic snarl now as he sneers “This is what I think of you and your priests and your masses and your churches and your pope and your ...” There is the sound of a grunt, and with again a cracking of dusty bones Bennett drops into a sort of squat, and I realise with mounting revulsion (and some sort of sick understanding, surprising myself) what he is doing, or trying to do. The ultimate insult to a God he had revered, and found himself abandoned by.

But nature herself is against Josiah Bennett, and if God does exist, maybe up there He's laughing at the old man's vain attempts. Josiah has forgotten, perhaps, that he is dead, and there are no more waste products to be squeezed from a body which has not ingested food for over half a year.
Try as he might, Mr. Bennett literally cannot give a shit.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

Trollheart

With a roar of frustration that echoes with more than a little unhinged insanity, and a gesture of impotent resignation, he hauls his tattered pants back up and after one more shake of his fist at the cross, whispers “Damn you. Damn you for not being there. Damn you for not existing. And damn me for believing in you all my life. You're not there. You never were.”

Of a sudden, his tone becomes darker, nastier, as if he is mocking Jesus, or His Father, or both. “But He is,” he tells the statue with what sounds like smugness. I think he cackles. It's hard to know; I'm not well-versed in determining the different sounds a dead man makes after resurrection. “Oh yes, He is there. And He will reward me for the work I have done,” Bennett assures the carving. “He looks after his friends. He knows the score. He is coming. And He will destroy you.”

He turns, throws back his head (again, I expect to see it snap at the neck, but it does not) and issues a shuddering, bubbling laugh like the accumulated laughter of every madman in Bedlam. “He'll show you, oh yes. You'll know all about Him soon. And you'll be sorry. Nothing can stand against Him, not even you. Remember that!” he snarls, shaking his fist and then giving Jesus the finger. “He is coming!”

I’m too far away to see exactly what happens next, though I certainly see the outcome. I can’t believe such a huge, heavy structure could just fall, but this is exactly what it does. Whether the supports that hold it, like a toy airplane in a giant’s bedroom, to the ceiling of the church weaken, or whether Bennett lashes out against it and somehow upsets the balance (this seems unlikely: Bennett was never a strong man and now he’s a dead man) of the delicately-hung cross, or perhaps you prefer to believe it is an act of God, a judgement from the Almighty, taking offence at the insult and squashing the puny thing that made it, is, I suppose, in the end of no real consequence.

The important thing is that as Josiah Bennett looks up, his face a mask of hatred (( can’t see it but I can assume, from his speech, that it it so twisted) at the crucified Christ, the instrument of the Saviour’s death swings to one side, there is a sickening groaning sound and a loud SNAP! That fills the empty church, echoing up and down the halls like the last breath of a dying man, and the whole thing crashes to the ground.

There’s no time for me to act, even if I could (or if I wanted to?): it’s over in a blink of the eye. Bennett, seeing the huge cross come falling down upon him, does what we all do in that situation. He throws up his arms as if this will somehow protect him, and cowers as the huge wooden crucifix hits him with a wet slopping sound, the aisles of the church again echoing, this time to the snap of brittle bones and the anguished cry of the old man. A dark stain spreads out from where the cross has fallen upon him, almost amusingly having landed with its arms askew by several degrees.

X marks the spot.

As the cloud of dust begins to settle, I realise there is no further need for subterfuge. Hesitantly at first, then more boldy, I walk up the aisle towards the altar, where the sacrifice lies. Perhaps absurdly, I eye the ceiling, in fear of further missiles a vengeful god might hurl at me. The fact that I do not believe in God is temporarily lost on me. However, it may also be lost on Him, or perhaps my lack of faith shields me from His wrath. Or, more likely, this was nothing more than a tragic accident, and for myself I have nothing to fear. Nonetheless, my eyes continue to dart towards the high, vaulted ceiling as I reach Bennett’s prostrate body (or what remains of it) and kneel down in an unintentional mockery of worship.

There is, of course, nothing I can do for him. Josiah Bennett is dead, if he was ever truly alive. There is little left of the man, in truth. Most of him is pinned underneath the heavy wooden symbol of Christianity, pulped like a pureed fruit. One of his hands sticks out, the fingers somehow all curled inward save for the index one, and I nod. Bennett’s final “up yours” to God. It seems fitting somehow. The force of the impact has separated his head from his shoulders, and I find it on the third step leading up to the pulpit, almost as if, even disembodied, Bennett wished to continue railing against his creator. Loath to touch the thing, I prod it gingerly with my foot, unintentionally nudging the face up towards me.

The dead eyes flicker open, and I jump back before I realise that it is just the motion of my foot that has caused the eyelids to flutter, but my heart is beating quickly in my chest. There’s something in those eyes, some dark, bitter knowledge that, even now fully dead, cannot be denied, cannot be avoided, cannot be ignored.

I know.
I know.

As I stagger back, my mind ablaze, I bump into one of the arms of the fallen cross and trip, losing my balance and landing heavily, my face only inches away from the tortured face of Jesus Christ. His dead carven eyes look at me, helpless, impotent, dying.

And he knows too.

He knows, and I know, and soon everyone will know.

I walk out of the church without looking back.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

rubber soul

Nice, Trolls. So basically it's more of a philosophical bent in the end. I'm still not sure as to who 'he' is. Is he the devil? Maybe it is indeed the second coming. Perhaps it's Benny Hill. Anyway, I liked the twists and turns in what I guess is a novella.


Okay, I'm assuming that was the conclusion so I'll post a short story (large flash fiction really) either tomorrow or Thursday to give you an idea about my writing style. I usually write in more of a comically demented manner, but I was trying a gentle Twilight Zone vibe on this story. It probably won't be perfect (my friend from Croatia proof read it and made a couple suggestions). I also don't write as dark since I do like to use humor in my work. Anyhow, I'll put it up this week so you can take a look.

Great novella.

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