Apocalypse of Jude

On his bed, Caul lies holding his media invitation to the banquet tonight in one hand, Evelin’s hastily scrawled card in the other. But his mind is clear of any abstraction. Cut off from Mae, forced to abandon Jude to his own road, betrayed by Paul, he looks at where he stands—in a town retreating into walls of its own making, trying to blindly keep the church-sanctioned good life going. While beyond the mountains is the capitulated city with its fallen church towers. And between them, on the endless plain, the hooded hordes of his father, oppressed, poor, restless, readying themselves to swarm.

/its only a matter of time before they do/ /but the darker pagan instincts now holding the city are being raised against them/ /even here there is no longer anything to halt that pagan tide/

He hears the sound of his door and looks up to see Paul entering his room.

“You didn’t join me for lunch Caul. I’m disappointed. You dreaming again?”

Caul gingerly seats himself upright on his bed, feet square on the floor and hands steepled together across his knees.

“Doubting rather.”

Paul leans himself back against the inset cupboard.

“Ah. Doubting. That doesn’t become you Caul. What’s there to doubt?”

“Whether there is any hope of life left in this town.”

Paul scoffs.

“Just ask them what they want for Christmas. That’ll give you your answer. Peace and goodwill to all mankind, when all they do is spend money on the luxuries their whore of a city gives them. But the city is almost no longer theirs. We were pagan before the that city came aping Rome with its lies of Christendom. We’ll be pagan again and the people will marvel as we rise, with this town in our wake.”

Paul laughs with a glee.

“Things are finally happening Caul. It’s now me and my three that rule this town. Those real estate empires will collapse under me eventually.”

He lurches forward and pulls Caul up by the arm, clawing him into a huge embrace. He laughs heartily.

“But tonight, Caul, let you and me go and glut on the wine of their downfall, and then go herald our rise. How about that!”

He gives Caul a good hard shake with right arm draped across Caul’s shoulders. He is too exultant to notice Caul’s taciturn grimace as he wanders from the room.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 95