Leaning now against his car, he turns his head once more upwards and then begins to wheel himself around, becoming fixated with the firmament, the stars that inhabit it and the cotton-grey clouds move against it. As he moves, his eyes are absorbed by the pulsating bursts of light burning from a belt of three stars. In worship he gives himself up to the constellation, hoping to feel the earth’s roundness turning inside the sphere of the calming, self-enclosed heavens. He closes his eyes and begins telling himself a story that he has been telling since the day he realised he was dead.

/orion/ /once a young man of great stature and beauty and a mighty hunter/ /he fell in love with the daughter of the king/ /and for her love/ /he worked to clear the land of christian faith/

/but she spurned his love to marry another/ /he was angry and insulted the maiden/ /causing enmity between them/ /so he sought out dionysus to release him from his pain/ /but instead the god threw him into a deep sleep for three years/

/one day an oracle told him to go into the fire/ /and wait to come out of the water/ /so he went into the fire/ /and found out that he whom he thought was living was in fact dead/ /that he who is living is now dying/ /and that the vengeance on her that he wanted to be his/ /was not worth having/ /only reaching the source of his love for her was/ /so that healing could be given to the one who is dying/ /and life to the one who is dead/

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 85

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 86

On the beach, Caul stops to pluck from a clump of rushes, a single reed. It unsheathes itself cleanly from the earth, remaining to swing humbly in his hand. He walks down to meet the ocean’s edge with his hair in a tussle with the wind. His eyes survey the greenness of the bay as it deepens to darker blue. The beaches are shortening and the tide starting to build. Where the sun casts its final rays, the surface of the sea shimmers as waves rush on shore. As the lip of the wave pulls back, he stands mesmerised by the wet sand glistening with its thin sheen of water skin.

He walks along this edge, being pushed ever further as high tide drowns the beach. Twilight turns to darker dusk. The air becomes chill with the viscous edges of winter. Looking back at the mountains he realises that both the fold range and lone mountain have lost their modesty, having given way to becoming vague, black, naked shapes with mouths of carious teeth that cannot eat.

Coming to a standstill, sea water rushing his ankles, the wind brushing his dry skin, Caul is aware that the presence of the enclosing, decaying mountain range is starving the inhabitants of this town, and the encircling sea restless for their lives.

/one can neither stand nor lie nor sit here/ /yet they rely on these mountains for their daily food/ /and they look to the sea to give them rest/

Turning to the triple peaks of the singular mountain, its sight washes through him a sense of the foulest stench. He gags.

/and this one for some reason theyre fouling/

Feet sinking now deep into the sand, he looks from range to mountain, mortified as he realises in the range the inferno that holds the four horsemen, and in the mountain a purgatory where mercy, peace and love might be found.

/in so foul a place/

Though the questioning thought surprises him, a further part of the castle built around him by his mother dissolves. Shaken, he pulls his feet from the sand. Their clear form emerging whole from the soupy mix calms him.

/what if there is still water amongst its rock/

Breathing deep, he trudges away from the ocean, over the dry sand of the still unclaimed beach, desirous to follow his thoughts of a path into the foul place.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 87

The voice of the thunder rolls again powerfully.

/can’t even get any silence from nature out here/ /what is the thunder trying to shout at me/ /is it a portent of fertility or wrath/ /is it trying to tell me how much time we have left before the ice packs melt/ /or an oracle of a coming son/

This time the voice is majestic.

/if we could read its oracles in the rustling leaves/ /could we find our way into the ark/ /or are we forever hopelessly lost here/ /no noah to be a prophet and warn us/ /waiting for the stars to go out and for it to begin to rain/

A crack comes so loud as if threatening to strip the forested slopes bare.

/are you hiding around here somewhere noah/ /building a boat i cannot see/ /if you are/ /do you think you could save a place on your boat for me/

Again, the thunder shatters the air with the intent to break the boughs of trees. Caul sighs.

/i wish i knew what to think/ /so that i could know the words to say/ /that would open my eyes/ /to see a boat/ /if its there/ /because im tired of all this confusion/ /being stuck between a joker and a thief/

Across the sky strikes flashes of lightening.

/but what am i really looking for/ /if i am looking for noahs boat/ /for all men who entered noahs ark knew God/ /it must then be to him i want to speak/ /God/ /i hate that word/ /what else can i call you/ /i know you by no other name/

A final peal shakes the desert that Caul beholds before his eyes.

/are you there/ /outside of me and your own being/ /creator and omnipotent/ /could i tell you all that im thinking/ /would you reveal yourself to me then/ /and tell me if what i am thinking is right/ /so that i could have some peace/ /and the knowledge that i was on a path back to life/

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 88

“If only this town knew whose union it is so blaspheming. But people here are fools despising both wisdom and discipline. If they knew, they would see the birds slowly gathering for great supper of God, so that they might eat the flesh of kings and mighty men and of men, free and slave, small and great. But they do not know, because they have chosen to obscure the Spirit’s counsel that to fear the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Otherwise they would have known that Enoch, seventh from Adam, prophesied that the Lord is coming with ten thousand of his saints to judge everyone and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.

“If they knew this then, they would see that heaven even now stands open before their fornication, with the white rider called Faithful and True about to spit out the faithless bride, and host this feast of the birds with the faithful bride dressed in white, riding out behind Him, His robe dripping with the blood of ten thousand saints. And for their blood, he will give his faithful the blood of those that slew them. He will tread the winepress of God’s fury upon them, for He is called King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

“If this town had knowledge, then this is what they would see. But they don’t know because they do not seek to know. With red sullen faces they sneer and snarl and shout out in vanity from the doors of their mudcracked houses, where is God that we should give Him witness? But beware. The four angels that for eternity have been bound at the Euphrates will soon be released and be given authority to kill a third of man with plagues of sulphur, fire and smoke.

“Now to the remnant who have remained faithful, who have not worshipped the beast or his image, who have through their faith enabled their offspring to fill the earth with God’s glory; your time to rule and judge the nations is coming to a close, after which you will go to your first death over which the evil one has no power. This then is now the time of your final hour, during which it will be given you to bring forth through your faith, the true visions of the One who created you, so that He can complete the great work begun in you, and so that the world may know the I AM.

“Soon you will see the sun become like sackcloth and the moon dim the tides with blood. A great earthquake will split the great city into three. Stars will tumble like ripe fruit from a tree and the sky will close as a book snapped shut. No more will man seek to read in the narrative of God the vanity of his own fortune. No. All men of every status will be made alike to cower in caves of mountains begging to be hid from the wrath of the Lamb.

“But we do not need to be afraid. For we are the faithful and most beautiful of brides. We are indestructible, for our salvation was sealed even before the four horsemen rode out and covered the world with conquest, strife, scarcity and death. Even now we stand before the throne of God in robes washed white by the blood of the Lamb. Neither can we hunger, nor can we thirst, the sun cannot burn us, nor death overcome us, for we have been led by the Lamb at the centre of the throne of God to ever living springs of water.

“In these then, our final days, let ill be to you no ill, but only grace in the form of Christ’s mystery. And by this grace let loss enrich you, let sickness heal you and ridicule be your honour. For to your death you will go and it will be to your gain.”

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 89

Mae stands up, shaking her hands, looking around at the dark boughs and vegetation that surrounds her.

“There’s an oak tree that they’ve let stand in the centre where I work. Every morning and evening as I come and go, I brush my hand against its trunk like just to say hello, and sometimes when I touch it there is so much energy that I feel. That’s the energy I feel now.”

Caul stands up and wipes his hands on his trousers, pensive to the evening’s purpose, wondering why he decided to it at all.

“You ready to go up?”

She nods, and they pick their way up the narrow path winding along the stream until they reach a peculiarly large flat-topped rock from beneath which the stream gushes into the world from its source deep within the mountain. They clamber upon its rough-hewn two-by-two metre surface and make themselves comfortable by sitting beside each other with legs gathered up. She lights a cigarette, and Caul watches its orange tipped glow be the only light in the gloom.

“It’s going to be pitch dark soon.”

She smiles. “You want to light the candles?”

“It will get a bit warm won’t it?” Caul looks sceptically at the rock.

“Probably. We can always blow some of them out if it does. It’ll look beautiful, like a sacred rite’s meant to be.”

Caul hurrumphs. “I’m not so sure sacred rites were so beautiful as bloody and sacrificial.”

Together they place the metal-cupped candles around the square rock, letting their light diffuse the darkness and allowing an eerie glow to cast dancing shadows on the dark foliage around them.

“You want to open the wine?” She says this impishly.

“You’re going to have to drink from a plastic cup though, I’m afraid.”

His hand takes the bottle and corkscrew she offers, half his face bathed in yellow light, betraying a deeper struggle go one beneath.

Once he is done, Mae takes the bottle from his hand and holds it over the burbling stream coming from beneath, her long dark hair falling over half her face.

“On this Midsummer’s Night, we offer the spirit of the vine the blood of its harvest in thanks for your goodness.”

Caul’s mind continues its struggle with the image of offering up sacrifice to the god who has blinded his mythic Orion conception of self. Mae lets fall from the bottle’s funnel a full measure of the blood wine into the waters below. As it is done so, the water becomes as blood to Caul, and he hears the cries of slain souls calling out as if from beneath the alter on which they sit, wanting the avenging of their blood. Then there flashes before his eyes the vision of the rock upon which they sit as a winepress, pressing out in wrath the wine of the vine of the earth.

Mae finds her place again among the lit candles, their thick flames heavy in the unmoved air around them.

“This is one of the most beautiful things I have ever done.”

She pours the wine into two plastic cups, handing one to him. Both their tongues are bitten by the bitter vintage and they let it soak in. In the silence that follows, Caul’s vision continues, as he watches the air begin filling with the relentless beating of creatures wings that look like locusts coming up from an abyss. At this sight, Caul is pierced with thoughts of sorrow and revenge, illness and sad old age, fear, hunger, squalid poverty, destruction, pain, lust and deadly war. And in his vision he realises that these creatures have been tormenting him his entire life and will never let him find the death of being he so eagerly desires.

/if only there were water and not this rock/ /or this rock but also water/ /not this blood/ /but water/ /a spring to find rest in/

Coming to from his vision, Caul looks squarely at Mae. “Aren’t you exhausted from trying to find a place to rest from the dark abyss beneath us?”

Mae looks hurt and shows she has taken offence, turning her body slightly away from Caul.

“But I am finding rest Caul. I am.”

They go silent again, he reflecting on her answer, she probing his question. In Caul’s mind, the continuing sense of restive torment brings to him the thought of God.

/i know you’re the only one who can answer me adequately/ /just wish i knew from which way to approach you/

Caul’s question irks Mae though. Since her time with Jude, her spiritual waters seem to have been cursed and she has sensed their drying, along with an impending sense of plague. As if to dispel the incorporeal spirits haunting her mind, she moves suddenly to the middle of the flattened rock where she begins to reach her arms to the boughs above her, as if seeking to part them. Then, with precise fingertips stretching out from thrust-out hands, she slowly pulls in tendrils of moonlight through the boughs, her fingers then weaving them with the candle light, so that a sphere forms around her as a kind of woven protection against the spirits that assail her.

She now begins to sway rhythmically within this aura, rapt to the dance as her arms, in submission to her body’s sway, circulate the aura of her spirit while her hands move to direct its flow. Caul, unable to help himself, gazes rapturously on as she slowly brings herself to stillness.

“Now that is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.”

She laughs with her face flushed, breath rushing out, but a countenance touched by serenity.

“Come join me then.”

She is extending one of her hands. He just shakes his head resolutely, but her hand stays.

“I know you can still dance.”

“Mae, its been too many years.”

“This used to be your rest Caul. A long time ago.”

Her hand remains waiting for his. Inside of him, the wound of his failure with her a long time ago is breaking out of the cyst in his soul. The voice within him makes subtle suggestion to him that going with Mae would show him healing. Though he knows the deception, and shakes his head to dispel the temptation, yet the hurt is so great that he takes her hand, which he feels give way in submission to his leading. He awkwardly composes the coursing water of her body to flow around his unsteady body upon the rock. But gradually his arms begin to bring her body into the rhythm of his sway, his hands in hers bringing her in close, wrapping her body round him like a cloak and then unfurling her, their bodies moving in breath, the air swishing around their frames, their minds riveted to the nuance of every move; composure as he lifts her from her gravity and brings her above him to stretch out in flight, then settling her to her feet and their inertia. Both are glowing inside to out, breath tingling with the pumping blood in their breasts that lightens the dense darkness of their matter.

“I didn’t think I could still do that.”

They stand next to each other looking at the number of candles that now stand dark, the rest dancing erratically in the unstable air.

“I told you it was still in you.”

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 90

Janice looks at Gary with a soul burning, disgusted with herself that she is unable to control her sexual lust.

/you have left me nothing paul/ /not even a pool among the rocky beds of this dried up river/ /well im going to take gary down with me/ /if its the last thing i do/

“Want to go to your place and do some lines?”

The light entering Gary’s eyes at the suggestion reflects a greedy hunger that nauseates her, as she realises he knows nothing of the ritual to take place in its rooms tonight.

“Let’s go down to the car then.”

Nothing further passes between them as they leave the hotel for their car. Once in the car, the silence continues as Janice allows her head to turn over the events of the previous day, of the lateness of her returning from work, the kitchen empty of Audrey’s painful smile of greeting, the house empty of her belongings.

Images of lines being snorted between her and Audrey the evening before last start flashing through her head. She remembers leaving a vacant, sad Audrey at home.

/im sorry i had to do that to you audrey/ /where ever you are right now/ /but doing gary was my last chance to try get free from paul/ /what an illusion/

Gary’s car pulls up outside the still darkened house on the hill. Janice continues to look straight ahead, not moving. Gary looks annoyed.

“Hey, I don’t want to sit here all night. I want to snort.”

Her voice snaps “Hey, this is my stash and I’ll take as much time as I want.”

/ok paul/ /whatever you are you up to/ /im ready/ /you just better make sure this beached whale goes down with me/ /hes been living off my lust for years/ /make him weep at my demise/ /then destroy him/

“Let’s go.”

They exit the car and go up into the house.
In the living room Gary slouches into one of the arm chairs while she cuts the coke on the coffee table.

“Here.”

She presents him with two severed lines. In his own hands he rolls a note, while she bends to snort the crystals, Gary unable to keep his eyes off her cleavage open to him. She falls back hard against the couch, her head up against its back, her eyes closed. He gets up and sits himself down next to her, snorts his lines then pulls her astride him.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 91

/i became exactly what my name means last night/ /i practically devoured him/ /i couldnt stop/ /couldnt even see anyone else/ /you frenzied me for him alone/ /what have you made me do my lord/

She runs her hands through her black, tired and knotted hair. Her fingers are getting stuck, aggravating her such that she jerks them through.

/why jude/ /what has he got to do with all of this/ /where is this in the plan of drawing me closer to caul/ /he must hate me now/ /i dont understand/ /i dont understand/ /why would you make me do that/

The pain from wrenching her hair wells her eyes, and the frustration is enough to trip her tears. She runs into the small pine grove shouldering the park she is walking by, and falls to her knees, the softness of the brown needles beneath breaking her fall. Around her the trees guide the wind and birdsong softly through their interwoven branches while her hands cover her face, muffling the convulsive heaves of emotional energy leaving her bloodstream, and being pulled out of the nerves, to be exorcised in these saltwater offerings that burn the ground where they drip, drop, drip, drop, drop drop unappeased.

“I’ve been doing some map reading lately, and your big book says it is impossible for those who have received the seal of the Spirit to lose it.”

His finger stops and he looks straight at Jude.

“Months ago, you told me I was right when I said you had the Spirit in you. But then you came to me after screwing Mae, telling me you don’t have the Spirit in you. Well which one is it? Because it can’t be both?” Caul pauses for the question to sink in.

“And who is the third who always walks beside you? Don’t look surprised Jude. I just haven’t told you about it. But every time I’ve tripped since Pentecost, and I’ve been around you, there has always been this person gliding alongside you in a brown hooded mantle; I’m not sure whether man or woman. Who is it? Is the Spirit or is it Death? Because it can only be one of the two.”

Jude suddenly laughs one of his cutting laughs.

“You still think you can heal me don’t you? I can see you working inside your head Caul, trying to grasp hold of the healing mystery of God’s power so that you can use it for your own glory. It’s the self same mystery that the Church has been trying to jealously hold onto, and that the devil wants. But all is lost, because in the process of trying to hold onto it, the Church has lost God, and since healing is a gift that only the Holy Spirit can impart, even if I could be healed, any chance of healing is gone. As for you, you would do good to let your delusions go.”

No change comes over Caul’s complacent listening complexion. But he stands and leaves quietly, going to his room and closing the door behind him, having realised again that a prayer has been answered and that if he is to find God, he needs to find the Holy Spirit.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 93

“Hi Mom.”

“Well I never. Are you coming home for Christmas?”

“No Mom, I’m not.”

“Then you phoned just to make sure we would know that.”

“No, not that either.”

“You are going to Mass tomorrow night?”

Jude smiles at the attempted threat. “Yes Mom, I am.”

“Your Dad’s going to be very disappointed you’re not going to be here for Christmas.”

“Mom, I haven’t been home for Christmas in three years now.”

“You terribly disappointed him by not becoming a priest.”

“Well it’s been five years mom. I think both he and you should have dealt with that by now. Look mom, I just phoned to talk and find out how things are at home and wish you a merry Christmas.”

“But it won’t be the same without you.”

“Mom that’s not why I’m calling.”

“Then why did you call, if you’re not coming? Is that how you treat your mother? Call her to get her hopes up just to deceive her?”

“That was never my intention mom.”

He is too weary to get angry at her maternal lamentation.

“All I want to know is how are things with you and Dad.”

“They would be a lot better if we had the comfort that you were a priest.”

“Can you not answer my question?”

“You do not need to know because you obviously don’t care.”

“Would I be calling you now if I didn’t.”

“It doesn’t matter if you care or not. You’re not going to be here for Christmas and that’s all that counts. I don’t know why you bother to call.”

“I bother because I’m sorry I can’t be with you for Christmas, but I can’t because you make it unbearable to be with. You’re always treating me like a failure. I was really hoping to talk tonight. Tell you about what’s going on in my life.”

His voice is still interminably weary. “But I guess not.”

“There you go again. Only concerned with your life. We didn’t raise you to be so selfish.”

“No mom, maybe you did. For all your religion, you are just desperate followers of ritual that the Church tells you will make you okay with God. That’s pretty selfish to me. No wonder people hate it. Its full of lies and deception, destroying people like me who want to believe in God but can’t because she is drunk on her own power to care about God. Anyway. Here’s wishing you and Dad a good Christmas. Bye.”

The phone is dead on its hinge. High in air he can make out the sound of a woman wailing. He sinks morosely in his weariness to the bottom of the phone booth and into a darker depth of thickening despair, his eyes taking in the dankness of night outside, the lurid glow of neon streetlights, his nose is dulled to the smoke of his own cigarette.

/sooner or later someones going to come along offering the answer to the churchs so called mystery/ /have it in his hand and people will fall before him/ /theyll rejoice they will/ /but theyll have no clue what theyre ushering in/

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 94