Apocalypse of Jude

Caul leaves Mae’s house, angered at her silent accusation, with the day drawing its shadow longer and the buzz of daylight fading fresh in the late fall air. From the slopes where he stands, far out, he can see the rippling sea giving up its heat and the horizon hazing with the sky. Turning his head to the sky above, he gazes at the clouds that stretch across the heavens in textures of shapes and layers of heights. He decides to drive down to the beach, the sky meanwhile, busy shading its colours from indigo atop the mountains across the spectrum to glowing shades of orange, and then pink, and then red to the setting sun in the last of its dying trajectory.

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