Apocalypse of Jude

In the bar’s yellow glow, Janice’s jewellery glitters. From her skin pours a profusion of perfumes that leaves a confused effect on the nose, but nevertheless excites the withered souls in the bar, stumps of time among whose dirty ears whispers of jug jug pass. Jude nods with mock courteousness at her.

“To what do we owe this increasingly rare appearance of yours tonight?”

Janice offers him her hand in courtly jest.

“Well, a prince in advancement is a fitting thing to be celebrated is it not?”

She allows her just kissed hand to lightly slide across Gary’s shoulders.

“A large glass of red wine Jude, if you please, to toast such success. One of those lovely goblets that you have hidden away Jude, with the cupids playing coy on the them.”

Janice sinks onto a stool between Gary and Caul in a way that belies tiredness with the world’s pursuit and crosses her short-skirted legs. Gary, somewhat red-faced at her words, a loosened tie around his neck, can’t keep from glancing at her legs. Audrey, feeling like an insignificant tapestry detail swallowed by a sylvan scene, shuffles her feet around the bar and takes the last remaining stool to Gary’s right, sitting like a bric-a-brac lamb on a mantel piece.

Janice meanwhile throws her head back and runs her hand through the locks of her curvaceous hair, the ends catching alight like fire in the yellow light until her locks sit sensuously and yet almost savagely still. She fixes her eyes on Caul, ravished by his looks, then burning a smile at him, gets up behind him and puts her hands on his shoulders and starts massaging gently, bringing her voice close to his ear allowing her thoughts to glow into words.

“What is it that brings you, goddess-born, to this bar over and over again, just to sit so among us? Are you shipwrecked here? Or did Heaven bring you here like it did me?”

“If I am shipwrecked here Janice, it is not from you that I seek refuge or entertainment.”

She looks at him slightly exasperated.

“You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met a man as arrogant as you. There is not a man in this bar that wouldn’t go with me right now, and you’ve got yourself a personal invitation.”

Caul just laughs and takes a long draught from his beer. She sits back down on her stool as like on a burnished throne to pick the glass of wine from the marble imitation bar. She holds up the goblet supported by the glassy stem of a fruited vine.

“To Gary. May the Houses of Stetson and Anthony from this day in lasting concord combine.”

She tips some wine on the bar before raising the glass to her mouth, sipping from it, then passing it to Gary, who draughts deeply.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 31