Apocalypse of Jude

Opening his eyes, the beauty of the night sky is suddenly gone. Caul is back in the warehouse parking lot and the world of death is before him. Orion, the god to whom he has tied his life, the lord of heaven, who sparkled so brilliantly moments before he closed his eyes, Caul realises for the first time hangs upside down and is about to fall out of the sky. The dog star follows at his heels as if to dig up the god’s corpse to make wormwood the fresh waters of the town. Then the stars and the moon in its birth crescent darken as if the sun too, on far side of the world, has lost its light. Frightened, Caul becomes aware of clouds pushing over the dark, black peaks of the amphitheatre, pushing in such a way as to make it appear that the hulking mountainous mass is about to fall over into the sea to kill everything within it and turn it to blood. Unable to do anything else but follow the drift of the clouds, he turns his tiring neck and looks bleakly out past where the lone mountain’s slopes drop away to allow the only gap between mountain and ocean in the basin, out to where the road to the city leads. His eyes fill with the imminence of fiery hail falling from clouds the colour of dried blood that hang in the distant sky above the city. He becomes suddenly shocked at the electric colouring of the city being captured on their surface.

/our doom is being trumpeted back at us by the clouds/ /the skies/ /the mountains/ /the sea/ /why is it that they in this town do not recognise these signs/ /how to keep the dog star from digging up the god/ /or is it being a friend/ /and warning me of our doom/

Looking heavenwards and seeing Sirius scorch brightly, knowledge again of the town’s barrenness claps its shackles on him.

Wasteland Mix: Fragment 28