Apocalypse of Jude

The street outside the bar is quiet. Jude leans up against the glass door of a phone booth, coins jiggling in his hand. His fingers have finished dialling and the receiver is pushed close to the side of his face. A timid voice transmutes itself into his ear.

“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