Apocalypse of Jude

Caul talks, sitting upright and tense in Mae and Gary’s apartment.

“Until about two months ago, this town was like a beautiful garden with its façade of mountains and ocean views. But since Easter, before my eyes, all I’ve been able to see is this town as a desert that nourishes no roots, or as a heap of broken fragments that once told a story. ”

Mae is hunched forward on her settee, her elbows on her knees, arms still cradling the cushion. “So this is the vision of the vegetative death.”

Caul becomes aware that he is finding his way through her garden.

“Yes, but it is not quite what I expected it to be. Since I realised what was going on at the bar last night, I’ve been trying to say or guess why this kind of afterlife at all.”

“What do you mean? What kind of afterlife?”

“Despite my spiritual death, I still feel love in my heart. I know this because I felt this incredible sense of love for Jude last night. It’s unlike a love I’ve ever known, as if it is not mine at all, but another’s. It makes no sense. The death of the spirit is meant to turn the son of man into a handful of dust, only to be resurrected and made green again. That resurrection is supposed to make me able to love again. And yet I still love, and when I look at the handful of dust that I am, I fear that even after I am resurrected, I’ll forever sense this love but never be able to figure out why this love at all, and I’ll live out the rest of my life in a loveless, shelterless, wasteland this town now is to me.”

He sinks back into the armchair again.

“I’m scared Mae. I want you to come and find me. Show me that what we’ve been raised to be is true.”

Caul’s words break through her, initiating the sympathy that she has been raised to give when the time came. But as that sympathy begins to flow from her, before her eyes, a sudden shadow steals over the squared room, turning the bland colour of the two chairs, settee and TV that sit in fourfold equality around the room into a heap of rubbish. It gives way to a vortex of choking fear in her, and she begins clutching at the tightness of her clothes. She looks accusingly at Caul, suddenly believing that it was he who has initiated his death, he that raped her in the shadow of her dream, he that has broken her marriage with Gary. But she remains harshly silent, then raises herself from the settee, folding herself into a possessive envelope.

“You should probably leave now.”

He looks up, perplexed, sure that she had begun responding.

“Why?”

“Because Gary might come back soon. And I don’t want you to be here if he does. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“It’s got everything to do with me Mae. You kicked me out of your life because of him. Remember? And everything we were raised for.”

She just looks away out of a net-curtained window, more convinced of her notion. He holds up his hands. “Okay.”

He wants to say Gary is not coming. Wants to hurt her with those words. But he finds it within himself to keep his proud words from surfacing. Instead he finds himself choosing to love her regardless.

“If you need any help…”

“I can deal with it.”

The cold lash of her words want to enter his heart and freeze it over with his pride, but he sees immediately it would turn his decision to love her into nothing but dust. And he is suddenly determined not to let this spark of love be drowned by the fear that is turning everything of beauty in his life to dust. He gets up and walks towards the door.

“Maybe later then.”

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 15