Apocalypse of Jude

A jangling buzz breaks into Mae’s fitful sleep on the settee. Though it startles her, she moves quickly to the security phone, with the avidity of someone expecting another to come.

“Hey. It’s Caul.”

His voice carries with it a hesitation that is unsure of its point of entry. “Came to see how you’re holding up.”

Hearing it chills her and a violent anger rises through her. She says nothing, just pushes the gate button and returns to the settee. She grabs up a cushion in her arms before throwing herself down into the seat, blowing a stray strand of her fringe away with her breath. A hand knocks.

“…it’s open…”

Caul peers into the house as through the eye of a needle, then sees her crowded into the settee. He breathes deep to still his fear, and passes over the door’s threshold, determined not to turn back, determined not to be vanquished by her beauty, but to set the badness of his love right. He hears the door close. She glares the coldness of a desert night at him and he feels his loneliness.

“You come here to gloat? Say I told you so?”

“Like I said, I came to see…”

“Let’s not get into that now Caul. I don’t even know where he is.”

“He’s at my house.”

The silence hangs awkwardly. She sniffs sharply, breathing quickly, turning her face away as Caul perches himself on the armchair opposite her.

“Tell me Caul. Should I resent his leaving?”

He says nothing. She reaches out to grab a tissue from a coffee table littered with used tissues that look like a bunch of decapitated flowers.

“He said we should make a new start with my father. That this golfing village could heal the rift. But I told him that would be like me digging my heart out and making me jump up and down on it. He said he wasn’t going to go, but then he went anyway. Now here I am in Moorgate villa with my heart under my feet.”

“I’m sorry Mae.”

She goes through the motions of dabbing eyes and blowing her nose.

“There you go. Still apologising. I see nothing has changed with you in three years. Why are you really here Caul? Coming to see if you can get your consort back?”

He stiffens his back.

“If you want to put it that way. I came to see if you would be willing to try come find me?”

This time it is her turn to freeze warily.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m dead Mae. Somebody’s killed me.”

“What on earth?”

The hint of curiosity in her voice makes him feel safe enough to sit back in the chair.

“Actually, it was about two months ago. I just didn’t realise that was it until last night. I mean, how was I to know what it would feel like.”

She sits looking at him, the blank-blue sky of her face revealing to him that his words have failed to initiate her sympathy. He feels himself yielding to a welling, wounded pride within, and then the weight of its heaviness pressing down upon him. He swallows the welling, determined to try again.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 77