Apocalypse of Jude

The desolation Caul feels at Mae and Jude’s leaving is met by the first grey colours of morning penetrating the blackened windows into the ultraviolet fluorescence of the dance floor. With the power of the drugs beginning to fade, Caul stands listlessly staring at a Halloween fresco behind the dj, where bats are crawling downwards with cathedral spires and city towers falling. Within the music, a bell tolls and to Caul it seems as if to toll out the end of the world. Staring at the bats too long, their faces start taking on dull human features to his hallucinating eyes. A little freaked, disgusted and disheartened, Caul picks up Mae’s fallen mistletoe and walks out of the dying party into the mundane reality of morning light. His footsteps take him away from the farmhouse down a forested track. Behind him, voices in the chill-out music coming from the farmhouse sound to him more and more like they are echoes out of an empty cistern, the farmhouse itself, feeling to him like an exhausted well of human possibility.

The sky is light, but the sun not yet up by the time he hits the farm road leading away from the town and up into the mountains. He breaks into a run to try calm his wired body. Quickly tiring, he slows to a walk again, his hands on his hips, and head looking down. The only thing to be heard is the sound of his shoes padding the tarmac. Above him, a pale moon but twelve days old hangs in the sky. He comes to a halt at a cul-de-sac barrier. Beyond it the odd car rushes by, up the mountain pass to over and beyond. The barrier surprises him somewhat.

/this is the town limit/

He stands there, staring beyond it to the ruin of what was once long ago a chapel haunting the otherwise empty mountain slope.

/that where i’m going/

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 98