(COPYRIGHT 2011/2014 TIM MURR/ST ROOSTER BOOKS)
The air was all warm mist
and misery. The humidity had intensified with the afternoon’s thunderstorm,
which had blown in off the ocean quickly and left everything uncomfortable and
damp. The rain always turned up the garbage smell. Made the neon beer signs and
gas lamps look like something out of a horror movie.
I’d been popping into
the usual spots trying to find Lucky. No one’d seen Lucky, but they all kept
asking me about Lenny. If I’d heard what happened to him. I said no all seven
times and all seven times I was told about how he’d been found down an alley
with his skull bashed in.
Nobody cared that he was
dead. Nobody liked him. It was just an addiction to the sensational and the
dark that kept everyone talking about it. The black trucks rolled down the
streets every morning picking bodies out of the gutters or out of alleys or out
of their desperate little rooms. Death was as common clouds here, but Lenny was
killed with passion. The killer took a minute, not to snuff out a life, but to
say something. That underlined the event. That got people talking. Passion is
currency. Passion gets papers printed. Passion gets radio specters pouring out
of speakers and into the consciousness of the listeners. Passion is a gossip
machine. Passion captures the imagination. Passion is mental cocaine for the
masses.
This particular night
was nothing special, just one out ten million. I strolled past the hookers and
the religious freaks and the bums. Foreign sailors chased girls and cursed in
languages. Young men hassled scrap collectors. Cops cruised by in patchwork
patrol cars with chicken wire welded over the windows. No one was really up to
anything and in this place that meant it was just the calm before the storm.
Whatever the storm wound
up being, I don’t know. I missed it, because I went to church. Not on purpose,
mind you. Just wound up there. Sometimes you get caught up with a movement of
people and just go where the current takes you. That’s what happened when I
rounded the corner into a dark neighborhood, with shot out street lights, and
on to the road that goes past the mission with the big red neon cross. Lots of
people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and species shuffling along, muttering to
each other.
I was lost in my own
head, not paying attention to my feet until the neon cross was directly over my
head and I was being gently pushed through the doors. I’d been here once
before, when I’d had too much to drink and had passed out on the sidewalk. The
preacher who kept the place was a nice guy. I liked him. He took care of me. The
place had been a gym, but they slapped the neon on the roof and painted a sign
that said ‘Mission’ and ‘Church of the Midnight Choir’.
I wanted to turn back,
but I was too tired to push through the throng coming up behind me, so I
grabbed a pew in the back and collapsed. There was a hymnal in the pocket in
front of me and a pot-bellied drunk to my right. The place was filling up
quickly while a stiff looking lady with thick glasses played an old synthesizer
set to ‘organ’. She played one song continuously, I don’t know what it was
called, but I felt it in my bones. Like I’ve always known it.
There was graffiti
carved into the wood on the pews. Some religious, some profane;
‘There is no hell just
endless darkness’
‘That is hell’
‘For a good time suck my
dick’
‘Fag’
‘I want to go home’
‘Thomas D was here
1867-2102’
‘Just accept love’
‘Bullshit’
‘My name is Sid guess
what I did’
‘Jesus is love’
‘No one ever loved me’
The music faded off a
single note and the preacher stepped up on stage. He looked tired, with swollen
lips, like he’d been punched in the face, and a slight limp. He fixed the
congregation with a look of warmth, took a deep breath, and opened his fat
lips.
“We’ve all got blood on
our hands…in one way or another. We’re all guilty of something. So we can begin
tonight knowing that we are all on common ground. We’re all sinners. We all
fall short of God’s expectations. In that failure we can we look to one another
and say ‘brother, sister, I’m with you’.”
He took a sip of coffee
from the Styrofoam cup on the little table to his left that was piled high with
a large Bible and stacks of papers. His congregation looked like they were
waiting in line to be whipped. I took a deep breath and crossed my arms. Blood.
Sinners. God’s expectations. It was going to be a long night.
Preacher man looked
lost, like he had no idea what he was going to say next, or why he was even
there.
“I hear it everyday; Why
are we here? What is the point? Where is God? Well, I don’t know. I preach the
word. I’m not a psychic. I don’t know much more than anyone else, it’s just
that my brain is tuned into a radio wave not everyone can pick up. It’s not a
blessing...it’s hard! You say ‘why that tornado?’ and I say ‘Jesus loves you.’
And you say ‘so what?’ And some of you…why do you even come here? You demand
answers and I tell you what I know and you punch me! One of you tried to stab
me! You come here with all your filth and lies and anger…”
The pot-bellied man
beside me had started vigorously scratching his belly and grunting with discomfort.
“Whether you like my
answers or not…one truth remains…whether you like it or not…and none of your
sorcerers or poets or scientists or soldiers can change the fact…that Hell is
real…and Satan is real…and me and all my ‘useless’ words…are the only thing
standing between you and him!”
The man was clawing at
his belly with both hands. Tears streaming down his face.
“And you’ll never wash
the blood off your hands!”
The man’s lap was
covered in blood and he’d bit through his bottom lip.
“What’s done in the dark
will come to light!”
Skeletal hands ripped
through the man’s belly while the preacher’s neck began to stretch and twist
reaching out across the congregation, coming at me. I couldn’t move.
“The Avenger of Blood
knows who you are! He’s waiting outside those city limits! For YOU!”
The pot-bellied man nudged me in the
ribs and my face fell out of my palm. I looked at him scared shitless. He
whispered, ‘you were snorin’. I thanked him and focused on the smiling preacher
who was talking a wedding and virgins and their wicks.
I ducked out quickly and
hit the wet streets with ghosts breathing down my neck. Just another night.
Except not really. Lenny was dead and in what was left of this world he had
been the best friend I had. Phantoms and nightmares ran me out of my hotel room
and were going to keep me running.
I saw Juliet walking arm
in arm with bullish man with scarred knuckles. She said hello with her eyes
from across the street, but otherwise gave no indication that she’d noticed me.
They went into a building I thought was abandoned and I shuddered hard. A
police car sped past and I hit the first alley I came to, running fast back to
the safety of the hotel bar.
Cheap whiskey, take me
away!
