Apocalypse of Jude

Caul turns away again to the window overlooking the ocean, flushed and irritated, his shield of self-righteousness strengthening its already tight-fisted hold on his heart. He revolts at having to sit and finish his paid for coffee, so he gets up, leaving the untouched money as payment on the table. Going downstairs, he realises only a beach walk will calm his mind. He crosses the strand road, takes off his shoes at the beach’s edge, and walks down to the sheen of wet sand where waters meet the earth in perpetual rolling motion.
His body is still mixing its blood and hormone cocktail of self-righteousness, but the freshness of the sea breeze encourages him to breathe deeper.

Thus calmed, he walks and looks out over the ocean bay towards the horizon beginning to pile up with cloud visions. The view, in turn brings to memory his thoughts of this world being one big black hole with no way out, and no way for light to get in; just people and nature feeding off each other, breathing each other in, the darkness getting heavier and heavier.

Then he breathes out heavily in a force of realisation.

/what right did i then have to go around passing judgement on mae/ /when i myself am stuck in this dark cycle/ /and should have been scared/ /how more self-righteous can you get caul/

The realisation sends a grief washing over him, forcing him to a halt. His hands grab the sides of his head, pulling back its skin and hair. A thin sheet of water carried by the ocean’s momentum ripples fluidly over his feet. Then in the wake of the ocean’s retreating edge, his feet begin sinking and whelks surface to escape his weight.

/but what does it matter/ /there is no answer to the darkness/ /my failure with mae was because of my pride/ /gary failed with mae as well/ /maybe because his love was overcome by his greed/ /but which ever way she went/ /there had to be failure/

He looks down at his ankles and brings first his right foot and then his left foot out of the soupy sand. With his left big toe, he scratches, without thinking consciously, a heart in the soaked sand.

/but that doesn’t mean we weren’t able to love her/ /we did love mae/ /it’s just that we were overcome by our vices/ /and love died/ /or in my case wasn’t allowed to grow/

Another wave washes up, burying the heart, and then slips away. Caul lifts his sinking feet out of the sand again.

/if two people inside their self-enclosed worlds can communicate with each other so that love can grow between them/ /even if it must fail in the end/ /surely that means this universe can be broken into from the outside/ /assuming of course there is something outside this universe that wants to break in and communicate/ /which is tantamount to admitting to the existence of God/ /and a God who wants to talk to us/ /who wants to love us/

He looks back down along the sunlit contour of wet sand, watching the waves wash away his footsteps that brought him to where he stands, even as another wave swallows his ankles.

/but can that God save us from this darkness that destroys/

Caul raises his eyes to hover above the ocean where the afternoon sun is beginning to fill with burning colours, the tumultuous city of clouds rising to engulf the land, with incredible fluctuations of light being filtered by clouds as it passes to the earth. For a moment, Caul allows the beauteous feeling of light ripple through him, but within the instant knows it to be corrupted by the darkness that flows through all men and into all of creation, poisoning it. In his mind, Caul follows the trajectory of this thought to its own end, realising that as the corruption of darkness grows heavier and nears its culmination, so earth will move to destroy all men. He stands for a moment, an unconsoled Orion, a prince, whose tower he realises is now truly in ruins as his constellation must die within this black hole.

/this darkness will not masquerade as light for much longer/ /even now its beginning to raise its blood-dimmed tide of violence/ /and paul’s got his fingers in it/ /mae has no choice but now to go into it/ /but my hope must now lie with jude/ /with his once upon a time God/ /and save him from paul/ /who must want to use him to usurp me/ /but who has killed me/ /so that my eyes have been opened to all this/ /paul couldn’t of/ /not without my consent/

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 114