Apocalypse of Jude

A heavy bank of cloud has rolled off the sea and covers the half moon in a shimmering gauze. The town is now dark of its Christmas lights flashing their colour. Jude’s car swings loosely into the desolate road that sweats its oil and tar on the leeward side of an industrial zone, where buildings like river barges extend their reach from where the river in the west widens its mouth to the sea to down past the dance club in the east.

Jude knows this drift well, and where it will take him. He just lets his hands drive him down the roads, playing a game of solitaire with the street lamps and traffic lights. Lonely music echoes from around his stereo. In his hand is a bottle of wine that feeds his blood with its bitter taste. He drinks five short swigs and places the bottle back between his legs. At a desolate red light, he settles himself to lighting a cigarette, the smoke drifting on still air out of the window.

/i dont have the will to keep this life going anymore/ /this trying to keep my soul alive/ /supposing that my soul will still be alive after what ive got to do/

He changes the music and the air fills with a brooding weialala leia, wallala leialala.

/what other way was there for me/ /a church caught up in the lust of power for this town/ /this was the only choice i had/ /the only way i had to get away from their grip/ /where their lust would have become mine/ /and now im to be a murderous traitor/

The passing glow of orange street lights and the hypnotising droning beat has a mesmerising effect on Jude. He turns up the volume so that it reverberates the whole car, blending his being with the music’s fluid bleeding grief, identifying intimately with the lyric, wandering stars for whom it is preserved the blackness of darkness forever.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 74