“Forgive me
father for I have sinned.”
“This is a bar
sweetheart, not a church.”
“What’s really the difference? Both allow people to
intoxicate themselves with the idea that they can be forgiven of any
transgression without the need of redemption.”
“Alright I think you’ve had enough.”
“RICK I SWEAR TO…” The
salty taste soaked into my tongue before I registered the unholy water flowing
from my eyes
“Hey man, okay, calm down no need to tear up”
Really? You’re crying? Dude that’s like, the third time
today.
SHUT UP CLIVE. IT’S
BEEN A ROUGH DAY.
Sorry sweetums, you wanna talk about it?
Blue. Why blue? It
could’ve been yellow. Or Magenta. Or Smaragdine.
But no, it had to be blue. I hate blue.
I understand that. All those years ago blue was the color
the my wife wore, the color of my little daughters eyes, the color of that
goddamned Subaru that ended their lives and changed mine forever.
Blue. The color of the
sky. Of heaven. The color of God. I thought I was done with that fucking color
when I became his adversary. When I ceased to be his favorite. Apparently not. Yahweh,
the almighty asshole.
_____________________
Whenever people think
of hell they picture Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin as receiving the worst types
of punishment God has to offer. That’s not true; the lowest layer of hell is reserved
for one man. Levi Hutchins, the inventor of the alarm clock.
Rolling over to turn
off the infernal and saw the time 6:66am. Yeah yeah, I know that’s 7:06 and
it’s a bit cliché but what’s the
point of having your own number if you can’t have a little fun with it?
Stepping outside I
could tell it was gonna be a good day.
The blue flashes of
police sirens drove past. All four this slum has. This oughta be interesting.
Using my Nancy
Drew-like skills I managed to tail the 12 down to the asylum on Herbert Johnson
Rd. and there I saw his body.
I had never met this
man before. Never seen him before. That’s impossible. I saw all sin.
Everything. But this man… He was new to me. Even without the blue paint… His
soul was new to me. It was clean. Free from sin. I began to cry. For the first
time in 6000 years I cried.
For an hour I laid
there, weeping for the first and only man I had ever seen that didn’t deserve
to die, dead.
When I awoke on the
ground, my face still wet with salt water, the scene was clear. They took this
man away without even knowing who it was they were truly carrying, an angel. I
stood up. Something caught my eye. On the other side of the asylum some man had
spray painted a single word across the wall.
REDEMPTION
Fuck. Not again. Tears
began to roll trickle down my face.
“GO AWAY!!!” He began to beat against the word, trying to
erase it while the paint still dried. He tried to destroy the evidence of his
weakness, his deepest desire, before it became permanent.
“SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UUUUP!!!”
At this point he couldn’t see anything between the tears and
paint that he began smearing all of his face and hands.
“SHUT UP CLIVE! JUST SHUT UP!”
“Clive?”
I looked up to see the
woman who lives down the hall, Alice Franklin.
“Clive are you
okay?”
“Yeah, yeah I’m fine. It’s just the suicide and everything.
I just freaked out a little bit.”
“Okay. Do you need any help getting home?”
“I’M FINE”
“I was just ask…”
“I DON’T NEED YOUR HELP. I DON’T NEED ANYBODY’S HELP.”
To prove myself, I
stood up and walked away, leaving the woman standing there stunned.
I stumbled through the
streets until I finally found myself behind O’Harley’s. After taking a breath
the events of today began to rush into my head. In an effort to keep myself
from crying again, I began to laugh. Hysterically laugh. I laughed until a
little girl strolled up to me.
“DID YOU DO
THIS???” Alright fuck this. I’m getting
real tired of the crazy-ass women blaming me for things I didn’t do. “Do
you think this is funny, people dying, other’s pain?”
Funny? Do I think it’s
funny? Does this girl think I asked for this? Any of this? Does she think I
want to do God’s dirty work? I want nothing more than to… No. She can’t know
anything about that. How could she? She’s probably just as scared and confused
as I am.
“I’m sorry”
I need a drink. I got
up and walked into the bar.
“Forgive me father
for I have sinned.”
